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.
- Consummate: 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
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bakerstreet2020-08-23 03:09 pm
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A kind of longing that startles her, that almost makes her draw her hand away as one might when accidentally touching a hot pan. But no, Claire holds fast, savoring the heat of his cheek against her palm. She can't feel pain, but she can feel this. It's the most she's felt since that terrible night.
No. She refuses to let that memory haunt her now. It's something she's yet to tell the knight, something she hasn't even thought about since their first meeting. Perhaps something she never wants to tell him.
Claire hasn't spent all this time trying to bury the darkness in her past only to have it come digging its way out of the grave now.
Her thumb grazes over his cheekbone, and then -- a true testament to her daring nature -- his lips, fingertips tracing his jaw as she finally begins to draw back. Even before today she could close her eyes and see Gawain's face, now she can recall the gentle warmth of his cheekbone under her thumb, the exact angle of his jaw, the rough scratch of scruff against her skin.
The curve of his lips--
As Claire's hand lowers, it passes over the leather of his breastplate before it finally drops to her side. As the realization of what she's done catches up with her, she swallows hard, trying to quell the heat that seems to have taken her over. She quickly ducks her head and takes a step backward, a few strands of blonde hair falling from the ribbon holding it back to frame her face.
"Forgive me, my lord," she says, her embarrassment nudging her into excessive politeness. "I forget myself. I-- I only thought it fitting that I should have a little something to think of you by as well."
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So he shouldn't be surprised by the startlement mingled with longing, clear-etched on her upturned face; and he isn't, especially not while realizing he's imposed on her, just as he'd promised himself he would not do. (For his desire itself there is no shame, as such is not his people's way. It's only for what he sees as a failing to not further exacerbate the heartache of this, and any inevitable future parting.)
What does perplex him are other, weightier emotions, just barely glimpsed, like a rock-strewn jetty within the shifting tide of her expression. The fact that Claire traverses it anyway to cup his jaw and cheek, to learn for herself the shape of his lips, fills him with such tenderness, he knows he'd wait a Fey age and a day if that's how long she'd need to even consider more.
Assuming either one of them could ever forgo duty for time.
As she lowers her hand he lets it go without any hint of resistance. The way she steps back, head bowed and words of apology the first to her tongue, can't help but cut him to the quick. But the rest of what she says makes him smile, sincere if still a little too unshielded about the eyes, in want and in wistfulness.
"On your part there can be no pardon needed." Gawain's voice comes out rather more hoarse than is its wont, but he takes it quickly in hand, straightening his shoulders as he clears his throat. "You thought rightly, and if-- if you will remember me, too, the honor's all mine."
He glances around the glade, at its gathering shadows, and back to Claire's face. Oddly, perhaps, the immediacy of the day's ending helps him shake off a bit of his own resumed over-formality.
"Well. No use sending you home in the dark, skipping through brambles."
no subject
There's a growing sense of finality as she draws back, and she mentally curses herself for having done so, as though the simple act of staying close to Gawain would somehow have him stay. Of course that's not the case.
At least he's given her one more smile to memorize.
Claire knows he's right, as much as it pains her to admit. She should be going before her absence is missed. It's not out of character for her to take a walk at sunset, but it certainly would be noticed if she returned too late after dark. Her plans to slip away and carve her own path would prove more difficult were she to arouse her parents' suspicion now.
"Yes, the sooner I get home, the sooner I can leave home. But I'll be careful, I know what I must do to survive." No use in hiding it now, not when he's guessed as much by offering the assistance of the Fey.
It has to be soon. There's nothing here for her anymore. Another home left behind.
She has to push all that down deep, now; she has no time for self-pity. So she stands up straighter, taking a deep breath. To face what's ahead, she has to be brave and strong, like so many times before. Though she can't help but feel as if part of her is already missing with their impending separation, and she knows what it is.
"My heart will be with you," Claire says finally, green eyes blazing, then turns to leave the glade.
no subject
It drives home to him all the uncertainty that lies ahead for her, the reality of leaving behind any semblance of security and just surviving, as she puts it, by herself; to say nothing of continuing the fight for her fellows' safety, which he knows she will, even at the risk of her own well-being... if not in body, then certainly in soul.
It's not that he doubts her ability to figure out a way, to push past seeming obstacles and forge ever on. It's that she shouldn't have to. Not alone, not like this, with him a sea voyage and a continent away, unable to serve her as even a bloody sounding board.
His offer of the Fey's assistance was no fair-weather pledge, but he sees now what cold comfort it must make, knowing only strangers' ears await her.
Then she says -- Gods, she says --
No sooner is her profile half-obscured, cloaked by a golden spill of hair as she turns, than he calls after her. Not sharply, but with an urgency that leaves his horse tossing its head.
"Claire, wait. Please."
no subject
Claire wouldn't dream of denying him in these last moments, or ever. If whatever he has to say (or do) is so important to stop her leaving, surely she'd wait however long it takes. The one commodity she has in abundance is time, after all.
There's something in his voice that cuts through her, and for a few seconds she's almost afraid to turn around, knowing that as she does that she won't want to turn away again. But she does turn, slowly, and though she tries to keep her features in check there's still a kind of desperation in her eyes that she cannot hide.
"Gawain?" It's all she can say, her voice heavy with the hope that maybe it doesn't have to be this way, after all. A silly, childish hope, but one she's found herself swimming back to cling to as though adrift at sea.
Seeing him makes this harder. She could have just walked away...
no subject
But it will serve something greater. The Green Knight would never allow it to do otherwise.
Even on the brink of apparent disaster, he's been capable of drawing forth a confidence for others to borrow, a low-simmering but steady optimism that's contagious, however unlikely. (Not because of slim odds so much as leadership style, which in Gawain's case tends to be decidedly un-sugarcoated, to say the least.) In these efforts he has made Fey believe him entirely convinced, when privately he felt the Widow's veil trailing whisper-thin past their feet.
But he knows here it won't be enough merely to drop hope over his face like a helm, to be grimly removed after the fray. Claire is not one of his men, and she isn't a child, for all the heartbreaking sweetness now warring with turmoil in her voice. He must find a way to dredge up the thing for himself, to believe in it, whatever the cost.
He thinks back to the way he felt, seeing her burst into their glade with a grin. Coupled with the declaration she'd made moments ago, glorious to him even in despair, he finds -- enough.
Not much, but oh, enough.
"I'll bring it back to you."
Gawain brings up an arm, crossing its vambraced length over his body. His hand moves past her arrowhead, comes instead to rest in a fist against his chest, where the source of his pulse beats determined as the promise.
"In the meantime, find Nimue." He looks at her across the glade, his features all settled into a warmth like the sun's setting rays, transitory but no less tangible. The tension's melted away from the corners of his gaze, and the way he holds himself straight, it's no longer like he's stiffened by anguish, but buoyed by pride.
"She has heard of your character, and of what it means to me. She will be an ally to you and yours. Not on my say-so, but because by your own merit you've earned it."
no subject
Claire finds herself struck with the desire to cross the glade again and throw her arms around him, to cradle his face in her hands once more and say those words herself. Her body tenses almost imperceptibly with the effort to keep herself from doing so. It feels foolish; like a reckless, vain attempt to try and sway him from his duty. No, she would never.
She can't believe she's said as much as she has already.
Instead she keeps her gaze on him, unwilling to look away just as she'd predicted she would be. He's looking more knightly than perhaps she's ever seen him, standing tall and proud, framed by golden sunlight and their verdant glade. Gods, she loves him--
"I will," Claire promises, her face slowly lighting up with a smile that echoes the moon rising to replace the setting sun. "I've been hoping to meet her, actually. And she'll have my aid however I can give it."
No doubt she would have preferred a different introduction, but she also has no doubt that they'll get along, despite the circumstances. The fact that she isn't exactly sure how or where she'll find Nimue is concerning, and though she probably could ask for help... she thinks better of it. They have their own paths to take now.
She rocks on her heels, truly meaning to turn around and go this time. And yet she lingers, searching for some last, profound farewell that doesn't come.
no subject
And if there was some ribbing regarding his support of such an interspecies alliance, it didn't move beyond. He'd long since grown to accept Arthur, after a fashion, and even cautious partnerships with other humankind in their region.
Then someone had stumbled upon a chest salvaged from their burned village, from the depths of his father's old stone storeroom, no less. In it were some undamaged articles belonging to Gawain's older sister, from one of her first journeys to the Desert Kingdoms, many years before he'd followed her ghost there.
Nimue thoughtfully had the chest brought to his chamber, where they sat together on his bedroll looking through the contents. He'd expected to feel some sadness, but as he handled those souvenirs and trinkets all Gawain could think was that they were just things, albeit potentially pleasing things to folk other than himself. He'd been about to tell Nimue to give away the keepsakes to whatever families she saw fit, when he saw the seashell.
It was just a small one, delicate and whorled, its tapering point and smooth peach inside not wholly bleached of color by tide or time. He'd no notion, then or now, how it had survived intact the trip back to England.
But he'd hefted it almost gingerly in his broad palm, made some remark about saving it for Claire. He doesn't even remember how it was worded, he'd done it so thoughtlessly.
And Nimue, looking straight into his eye, had replied, "Neither the shell nor anything else will shatter, Gawain. If you'd like to just tell me you're in love with her."
He had put the shell down with the rest, walked out of his own room, and never spoken of it again.
Now that he longs to tell, to give up those minimal yet agonizing words to the one they most concern, he knows he cannot. They've each made the best of it, and lent one another purpose, here in their glade now lit only as gold darkly burnished. But some things could still shatter.
All he can do is bask in Claire's smile, for one moment more; then he unties his horse's reins, swings easily up into the saddle. He guides the bay courser a few paces closer to where she stands, from its back bowing his head, though his eyes don't waver.
"Born in the dawn," he says, almost a murmur.
no subject
They'd spoken during that first meeting about the afterlife, a conversation which had stuck with her as much as anything else that day. If someone had told her then that she'd be feeling this now, she might have laughed at them. She almost wants to laugh now, but she doesn't, instead her smile grows more subdued, eyes brimming with tears again but this time not of sadness or despair.
As trust and friendship had grown, Gawain gradually told her more about the Fey, and about his clan in particular. In his peoples' culture she had finally manged to find a little peace with her losses. And now, in their glade, feeling smaller than ever as Gawain approaches on his horse and says those words to her, though his voice barely audible, she hears the hope in it.
It's a farewell, yes, but that sense of finality has gone and left her with optimism instead. Less goodbye and more, see you again soon.
He will return. He will find her. She's as certain of that as she is of her own heartbeat, now.
"To pass in the twilight," Claire returns, soft as a feather.
no subject
Still, he looks into her tear-sheened gaze, and the sadness, however sweeping, fails to tear like an arrow-point barbed.
The parting words of his people are no great secret, spoken as they are in not only their private language but the common tongue. They've been overheard by enough humans to be oft discussed, in ridicule and repulsion, and sometimes even mimicked back to them like the flimsiest attempt at truce.
The mere prospect of encouraging an outsider to use them would once have enraged him. He is not a Fey without flaws, still subject to deep-rooted and long-nursed suspicion. But in this moment Gawain feels himself far from the kind he used to be.
And the knowledge in no way disappoints him.
The last word of Claire's reply hangs in the air, velvety as the dusk it seems intent on bringing into being, as he nudges his horse's side. Agilely the courser turns, easing past where she stands, those first hoofbeats hushed, as though in deference to the glade's protection. But as soon as they touch the forest path it surges forward and away, allowing its rider, mercifully perhaps, no instant in which to look back.