“the subtleties of inner debate and the scenes of emotional see-sawing.”129 While the queen in Sadius and Galo is the clear villain, she is without a doubt the most compelling character, an effect largely created by her wonderfully impassioned inner monologue. “I am my own deception,” she laments at one point, “my own betrayer; I’ve caught myself in my own net.”130 In these long inner monologues, Walter reveals that he has absorbed not only the motifs of romance, but its stylistic innovations as well.
The question of exactly what romances Walter had read is not particularly important for my purposes. Rather, I merely wish to draw attention to the fact that Walter had read broadly in contemporary romance, a fact that Sadius and Galo easily demonstrates. That said, the other three romances in distinctio 3 have received considerably less critical attention than Sadius and Galo. Yet all four romances are thematically linked and respond to one another, indicating that Walter thought about romance in a sophisticated manner, on par with the best romancers of his age. All four romances in Walter’s collection concern problematic love triangles that eventually reach some resolution, destroying the original triangle in the process—a plot structure that has much in common with Marie de France’s Lais. Marie’s Eliduc suggests that religious sublimation is the only acceptable way to disentangle the love triangles of romance. Walter, on the other hand, prefers another strategy. Every romance reasserts what we might call traditional male values, usually at the expense of women.131
The second romance, which the chapter heading calls On the Variance Between Parius and Lausus (De contrarietate Parii et Lausi), contrasts the perfect friendship of Sadius and Galo with the poisonous one of Parius and Lausus.132 The two men are chamberlains of King Ninus of Babylon, and their friendship is broken when Parius grows envious of Lausus. He murders Lausus and covers up any evidence of the murder, thus committing homicide, as well as what Walter playfully calls morticide.133 However, King Ninus soon grows fond of Lausus’s surviving son, which stirs up Parius’s jealously once again. Parius devises a plan to remove the boy from the king’s favor. He tells the boy that his breath stinks so badly that he should take care not to offend the king with his stench. In turn, Parius tells the king that the boy, now reluctant, has been avoiding him because he has compared the king’s own breath to sewage water. Incensed, the king plans to murder the boy during a public celebration. Lausus, however, convinces the boy to yield his place of honor to him, and thus when the murderer attacks, he kills Lausus—not the boy. After some confusion, the truth comes out and King Ninus restores the boy to his high position in court.
The homosocial love triangle of Parius, Lausus, and Ninus is the only romance from distinctio 3 not to feature a woman in any prominent role. Nevertheless, the beginning of the romance dwells on the feminized allegorical figure of Invidia (Envy). We read that Invidia was born in the heart of Lucifer and crept into Paradise to cause the fall of man. A conqueress (victrix), but expelled from heaven, she now makes her home with us, attacking everyone, regardless of station.134 Invidia is explicitly made the cause of the outbreak of jealousy at the Babylonian court: “She secretly entered the seat of proud Babylon.”135 Thus, this romance begins with a feminine allegorical figure attacking the Babylonian court. Moreover, Parius murders Lausus in a way that invokes female deceit. While trying to discover a way to murder Lausus, he finally calls to mind Hercules and Deianira and the poisonous sheet that she almost inadvertently kills him with.136 For Walter, this classical example is a memorable act of female betrayal, one that he also recounts in his antimatrimonial treatise, the Dissuasio Valerii.137 While no female characters exist in this romance, Walter still manages to give the story’s betrayal a feminine veneer.
The next romance features Raso, Raso’s wife, and an emir. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath would have approved of Raso’s approach to his marriage, since, moved by classical examples, he decides to grant his wife control over herself: “and so he released the horse from the bridle, so that she could seek fodder wherever her hunger directed her, and he praised her voluntary chastity to the stars.”138 Her appetite, however, leads her to the emir, whom Raso has captured and placed in confinement. Eventually, she helps the emir escape, and Raso is himself captured in the counterattack. Raso’s son saves his father and kills the emir, but Raso’s wife escapes with a knight whom she intends to take as yet another lover. Before the two can flee the city, Raso kills this knight, puts on his clothes, and travels in disguise with his estranged wife. The pair are attacked by hostile forces, but Raso’s son again appears and saves his father, killing his stepmother in the process.
Those unfortunate enough to have read even a small selection of medieval misogynistic texts will be able to see from this bare summary that Raso’s wife exhibits several stereotypical traits: she abuses her freedom, betrays her husband, and recklessly jumps from man to man. This story, however, is not a simple retelling of the unfaithful wife motif. Given the conventions of romance, one could imagine this story focusing on the bond of father and son, or even on a grudging, mutual respect between Raso and the emir. Walter, however, introduces an element that brings this romance close to parody. Raso’s true love turns out to be his horse. The emir flees Raso’s city “on Raso’s favorite horse” (equo Rasonis carissimo).139 The loss of this horse causes him the greatest grief when he learns his wife’s deception: “He sobs without restraint, but not because of the loss of the emir, or his wife, or what they had taken from him—only from the loss of his horse. Neither his son’s nor his household’s consolation lifts his spirits.”140 When the lady evades Raso’s counterattack, she escapes on “this excellent horse” (optimum equum).141 Later, when Raso is disguised as his wife’s new lover, the two exchange horses, and so he finally gains what he has most desired. As they travel, Raso eventually falls asleep from exhaustion on his beloved horse. The horse proves to be a trustworthy companion, since it warns Raso of an impending attack: “Just as the men are drawing near, Raso’s horse, who was not used to remaining idle in battle, lifts his head, neighs, and paws the sand with his feet to protect his lord from death.”142 Raso awakes, and in the ensuing battle he bursts through the enemies and “is carried wherever he wants thanks to his horse’s speed.”143 Raso’s horse becomes a better companion than his wife, and readers are implicitly invited to compare the two, since Raso’s initial misguided laxity toward his wife has already been described in bestial terms: “he released the horse (iumentum) from the bridle that she could seek fodder (pabula) wherever her hunger directed her.”144 With the wife dead and Raso’s son restored to his rightful place in the household, the romance suggests that keeping a bridle on female agency will help one avoid a cheating wife, hostile capture, and even horse theft.
The love triangle in the final romance in distinctio 3 consists of the nobleman Rollo, Rollo’s wife, and a young knight named Rhys.145 Rhys pines for Rollo’s wife, but she scorns him, forcing Rhys to recognize that he has little renown, especially when compared to Rollo. Chastised, he sets out to make a name for himself in the world of chivalry. Guided by “Master Love” (magister amor), Rhys becomes famous and gains a name for himself.146 Rollo takes note of his accomplishments and he praises the knight in conversation with his wife. Trusting Rollo’s opinion, the wife decides she has been too proud and agrees to a tryst with Rhys. She then tells Rhys why she changed her mind: “Rollo was the cause,” she baldly states.147 Rhys is shocked. “Rhys will never repay Rollo’s good will with wrong,” he says, “since it is uncourtly of me to stain his bed, which all the world denied me and he himself granted me.”148 The romance ends by invoking Ovid, claiming that he was wrong when he stated that a lady cannot be made a virgin again.
It is tempting to read Rhys’s love as ennobling, as the driving force making him into a superb knight, but that is not the case.149 Walter describes Rhys’s chivalric education in a thoroughly scornful manner. Outwardly, he appears a great knight, but inwardly he is, in Walter’s opinion, one of the worse things a man can become—a woman.
He conquers ranks of iron, walls, and towers, and the spirit [animus]
