Tristan

A 13th-century prose Tristan (Tristan de Léonois), fundamentally an adaptation of the Tristan story to an Arthurian setting, complicates the love theme of the original with the theme of a love rivalry between Tristan and the converted Saracen Palamède and represents the action as a conflict between the…

…romances, such as the prose Tristan, in which a number of episodes depict him as treacherous and brutal to women. These darker aspects of his character were transmitted to English-speaking readers in Sir Thomas Malory’s late 15th-century prose work Le Morte Darthur.