bakerstreet | Courtly Love Meme

The Courtly Love Meme

That's COURTLY LOVE. Not COURTNEY LOVE.

Courtly love or domnei was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife.

The "courtly love" relationship is modeled on the feudal relationship between a knight and his liege lord. The knight serves his courtly lady (love service) with the same obedience and loyalty which he owes to his liege lord. She is in complete control of the love relationship, while he owes her obedience and submission.The knight's love for the lady inspires him to do great deeds, in order to be worthy of her love or to win her favor. Thus "courtly love" was originally construed as an ennobling force whether or not it was consummated, and even whether or not the lady knew about the knight's love or loved him in return.

The "courtly love" relationship typically was not between husband and wife, not because the poets and the audience were inherently immoral, but because it was an idealized sort of relationship that could not exist within the context of "real life" medieval marriages. In the middle ages, marriages amongst the nobility were typically based on practical and dynastic concerns rather than on love. The idea that a marriage could be based on love was a radical notion. But the audience for romance was perfectly aware that these romances were fictions, not models for actual behavior. The adulterous aspect that bothers many 20th-century readers was somewhat beside the point, which was to explore the potential influence of love on human behavior. The behavior of the knight and lady in love was drawn partly from troubadour poetry and partly from a set of literary conventions derived from the Latin poet Ovid, who described the "symptoms" of love as if it were a sickness. The "lovesick" knight became a conventional figure in medieval romance. Typical symptoms: sighing, turning pale, turning red, fever, inability to sleep, eat or drink. Romances often contained long interior monologues in which the lovers describe their feelings.

tl;dr characters are in a fantasy/medieval setting and having a courtly romance.

How to Play
- Comment with your character, preferences, etc. Also, be sure to include what "role" your character will be taking on in this little affair.

Lord/lady
Knight (gender neutral, of course)
Prince/princess
Bard or poet
Servant
Commoner (for the ultimate "forbidden romance")

-Comment to others, using the RNG to determine your fate.

Prompts

When I First Saw Your Face: You are meeting your liege or your knight for the first time. What you see takes your breath away.
Lovesick: Your pining for your beloved has made you ill! You can't eat, you can't sleep, you're in loves throes.
Playing Hard to Get: If you're of nobility, you at least have to pretend you're not interested.
You're So Coy: The art of flirtation is just getting started, but you have to be subtle about it.
In Your Honor: Be it a jousting match or a battle, you're going to win this for your lord/lady's name!
A Token: You must give your knight something for good luck.
A Gift: This is the reverse of the above. You must give your love something.
Keep a Secret: Kisses behind columns, holding hands under the table. You must sneak away little moments together, but you have to keep others in the dark.
Back from War: Your knight has been away in combat, and now they've returned. You want to shower them with affection.
Consumate: Believe it or not, courtly love could have a physical angle, as well. Sometimes physical afairs happened.
To Defend Your Honor: Someone has insulted your fair lady or lord. You know what that means! DUEL.
I'll Protect You: The lands are under an attack, and you must protect the person you love!
Breaking the Rules: You've decided to abandon the pretense of courtly love and actually be with this person, even if that means running away.
WILDCARD

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Knight, rogue or commoner, he's open to anything.

( sometimes padmé wishes she wasn't queen. sometimes she wishes she didn't have a title, that she could have a normal life free of rules and regulations. but then she thinks of her people, and she knows she wouldn't be anywhere else - even if it is sometimes lonely.

she's walking through the palace halls, she had just finished a meeting and had managed to slip away from her handmaidens. she needs a break. she knows that if she wasn't queen she'd be a politician but sometimes they can just be so ...exhausting. sometimes they're so worried about how there choices look to the rest of the galaxy, they don't stop and think about how they actually effect people. that's what she had once thought politics had been about. but it wasn't, was it? it was about power. when it came down to it, it was always about power.

she steps out onto a balcony, overlooking the capital city. padmé can't help but smile just a little. it's then she notices, there is someone else on the balcony. she turns and notices it's one of her guards - or knights as one of her handmaidens insists on calling them since it sounds more romantic. which makes it all the more ironic it's this particular knight as he's the one her handmaidens talk about the most, the one they keep calling handsome. padmé agrees, not that she'd ever admit to that. )

Captain Harkness, it's a beautiful day isn't it?

( King or Prince here, front and center. Could be set in Atlantis, or we can AU it up. )

[Princess here, with a soft spot for commoners!]

[She's a sheltered princess! ~~Also a tad oblivious, have fun with that~~]

[Royal mage, knight, or even a commoner with an inflated sense of worth!]

[Knight!]

[A rather weary knight, or a commoner blacksmith.]

[ Lord or knight. ]

What do you think of Asch as a knight and Camilla here as a (particularly masculine-behaving) princess? And possibly going with the wildcard option just for additional "let's wing it"?

As a note, I prefer to use prose, but I don't mind action tags. :)

I'm good with that! Could you start us off?

It was one thing being the only descendant of a kingdom, but for a princess that "didn't act her station" and often dressed in male clothing (and adopted the name "Cain") in order to participate in tournaments was probably enough to give the king and queen pause, if not heart attacks.

In truth, Princess Camilla didn't care - men got to have all that bloodshed-worthy fun and she couldn't? If she was a prince, she thought, it probably wouldn't be as much of an issue. Besides, even when she lost, she was happy. She stood on her own feet and accomplished something other than trying not to gag at the assortment of dresses she was often instructed to wear.

But there was one person in particular that she tended to listen to the most: a knight named Asch. While normally Camilla didn't even consider flights of fancy, it was hard to help it when it came to him. Sometimes, she wondered if it would have been better if he'd had her station. It wasn't like she wanted to be born to royalty, but... since it made seeing this knight possible, the burden of the title seemed less heavy.

Behaving herself for once, she took to wandering the grounds (forsaking the dresses as usual for a white and blue tunic ensemble that she'd used some of her prize money to obtain.) There were no tournaments today, and Camilla didn't want to sit around in her room and read (she'd done that a lot yesterday,) so she decided to see if she could spot Asch and bother him for awhile, if he didn't mind her being there.

He was also pretty much the only person that she felt comfortable speaking frankly (and even crudely) with. Sometimes it was hard to tell if what she said was either brilliant or inane - if it wasn't outright jarring first and foremost.