A to Z Blogging Challenge 2020: I Is For... Iseult!

Iseult, Isolde, La Beale Isoud, Yseult... Today I will spell her name Iseult. The lady appears in quite a few mediaeval poems and prose pieces, with variations on her name.

Iseult, William Morris. Public Domain.

Iseult is the daughter of Irish king Anguish. Unlike other heroines of these stories, she is a surprisingly tough cookie. No sitting around doing embroidery, kidnapping and waiting to be rescued by her knight for her. 

For starters, she is known as a “noble surgeon”(Malory), possibly the world’s top doctor. When her future lover Tristram comes to Ireland to be healed of a serious wound he got killing her uncle, she is the one assigned to look after “Tramtrist”. 

They fall in love during this time, no matter what Wagner tells you - the love potion only seals their romance - and after he is healed he hangs around, recuperating and romancing his doctor. 

Soon after, her father offers her hand to the winner of a tournament. As this seems likely to be Saracen knight Sir Palomides, whom she doesn’t want, she goes to Tristram to ask him to compete. 

“I’m not fully recovered!” he protests, but Iseult is a tough girl, and she does not want to end up married to Palomides. She persists and he agrees, probably just as well because at the tournament Palomides knocks out ten of Arthur’s most famous knights. Tristram defeats him and makes him promise to stay out of armour for a year and give up his wooing of Iseult. We never do find out about the armour, but he certainly doesn’t give up his love of Iseult. More about this in a later post.

Later, after getting caught out by Iseult’s mother, who finds his chipped sword and realises the missing piece is what killed her brother, Tristram flees Ireland and then returns to win Iseult, not for himself but for his uncle, Mark of Cornwall. 

You’d think at this stage our tough Iseult would let Tristram know what she thinks of this, but she keeps quiet and it’s on the ship to Cornwall that the lovers drink what they think is a good quality wine, but is the love potion Wagner makes such a fuss about in his opera. Iseult’s mother handed it to Brangaine, Iseult’s lady in waiting, to be opened on the wedding day, so that Mark and Iseult would fall in love. Oops! 

When they get to Cornwall after several adventures, the wedding happens but the consummation doesn’t; our dear, sweet Iseult, in some versions, sends Brangaine to do the job in her place and then, fearing her handmaiden will blab, tries to have her killed. As I have said - tough! I can’t imagine Guinevere doing this. 

The poor girl is found, tied up in the woods, by Palomides, who takes her to a nearby convent and leaves her to recover from the shock. By this time, Iseult is feeling guilty and trying to find Brangaine. Palomides says he will bring her back on condition of a “boon”. You can guess what that is, but Iseult doesn’t, and agrees. 

I won’t go into too many details now, as I’m planning a post for Tristram, but needless to say, Iseult has a number of adventures, gets out of some predicaments with her wit and, at one stage, locks a castle gate against a would-be kidnapper. 

There have been a couple of films on this subject in recent years, though I haven’t seen them, and of course, there is the opera, which I have seen, though I have made a vow never again to go see anything by loud, vulgar, antisemitic  Wagner. 

In The Once And Future King, she does get a mention. Guinevere sort of envies her, as being elegant and witty, something Guinevere doesn’t think she herself is. 

Rosemary Sutcliff wrote a children’s novel, Tristan and Iseult. Diana Paxson’s White Raven is another Tristram/Iseult book. 

For more, here is a list on Goodreads.

 https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/75166.Tristan_Isolde_Retellings

I’ll go into more detail in my T post. See you tomorrow!