Erec et Enide, Le Chevalier de la Charrette, Le Chevalier au Lion, Le Conte del Graal are all so good - they live in my head rent free & apparently a lot of people writing after Chrétien felt the same way. And then there's Cilges. Cliges for me is so dull. I want to love the characters, but I don't; I mainly find them dull or frustrating.

Alexander & Soredamor are so frustrating; Cliges & Fenice are slightly more interesting, at least in parts. Thessala is fascinating & I would've loved more of her. Alis... I genuinely don't know how Chrétien wanted me to feel about him. Like, he should be the villain: he's marrying Fenice when he gave Alexander his oath that he wouldn't marry & would pass the throne to Cliges, his nephew. But then we're told (during the combat between Cliges & the Duke of Saxony) that he cares about Cliges & holds him "...as dear as he should..." (p.135 of the David Staines translation). To me, Alis doesn't make sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Soredamor: *monologues for two frickin' pages about the personification of Love making her fall for Alexander*

The personification of Love:

[...]

I was looking through Chretien's Cliges and came across a footnote regarding Thessala, the sorceress-nurse of Fenice. Something about the name being a generic word for witch or sorceress.

Lo and behold, turns out, "Thessala" really is a term for witch.

Lol, Chretien. Very Subtle.

But more interesting to me is how this word came about from Greco-Roman culture. Thessaly is the home of the (infamous) Greek hero Jason, leader of the argonauts and husband of the sorceress Medea.

Apparently, Pliny the Elder here states that Thessaly owes its knowledge of the Healing Arts to Chiron, the centaur mentor of Jason, Achilles and other Greek Heroes.

The funny fact is: Jason (Ἰάσων (Iásōn)) means "Healer":

So, it seems to me the association of Thessaly and Witchcraft came about through Jason's knowledge of Herbs and Medicine and through Jason marriage to the barbarian Medea.

The study of medicine, and drugs, in Ancient Greek is Pharmakeia - the origin of the word "Pharmacy"... and is synonymous with Witchcraft. Indeed, the magic of Medea is described as "Pharmakon" and certain translations of the Bible also use the term "Pharmakeia" to refer to magic and witchcraft.

But Death cannot restrain herself from acting as her custom is. Every day, to the extent of her power, she blots out the best creature she can find. So she wishes to try her power, and in one body she has carried off more excellence than she has left behind. She would have done better to take the whole world, and leave alive and sound this prey which now she has carried off. Beauty, courtesy, and knowledge, and all that a lady can possess of goodness has been taken and filched from us by Death, who has destroyed all goodness in the person of our lady, the empress. Thus Death has deprived us all of life."

i wonder if it's just Chretien de Troyes who refers to Death as a she.

(where's that post about the Arthurian mythos being a series of peoples OCs that got famous)

Any way I'm about 50 pages into Cliges and I think I've found mine. There is a Greek prince, Alexander, who travels all the way from Constantinople to be a knight under King Arthur. He seems to be fitting in very well, becoming friends with Gwenyfar falling stupidly in love with a girl he can't look in the eye, capturing some traitors, standard knight shit. But my brain is going WILD imagining a Greek prince--and one from Constantinople, one of the greatest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world--showing up in England and the culture clash of this. The weather ALONE is going to be an adjustment.