This hero is not born until about line 2380 of the romance bearing his name. D.D.R. Owen tells us in a note to his translation that a still-extant 13th-century text, 'Marques De Rome', may preserve another version - also with hero named Cligés - of whatever main source Chrétien de Troyes followed.

The name "Cligés" can sound much like "cliches". I do not know whether this pun would have occurred in Chrétien's lifetime, but I suspect that it might have pleased him.

At the age of fifteen, his golden-haired Cligés, orphaned son of Alexander and Soredamors, is not only more handsome and charming than Narcissus, but already highly accomplished in arms. He twice defeats the Duke of Saxony's nephew in joust (the second time killing him); on the spur of the moment, and with a slight leg wound, he leads the combined armies of Greece and Germany against the attacking Saxons; he singlehandedly rescues his uncle Alis' bride Fenice from twelve abducting Saxons; he then asks Emperor Alis to knight him and proceeds to fight the seasoned Duke of Saxony into submission in single combat ... all this while acting with irreproachable loyalty to his uncle although himself secretly in love with Fenice. After all this, Cligés begs Alis to let him go to Britain in order to put his prowess to the test! True, his dying father Alexander had charged Cligés to prove himself in Britain someday; also, we may suspect the youth of wishing to escape his tricky love triange for a while. Nevertheless ...

He takes four different chargers - white, sorrel, tawny, and black - with him to Britian. Arriving at Wallingford and learning that Arthur is about to hold a tournament near Oxford, he sends his squires to London to buy him three extra suits of armor - black, crimson, and green. (Money is definitely not a problem for this lad.) Wearing the black armor and riding the black horse, Morel, Cligés starts the first day of the tournament by defeating Sir Sagramore in the opening joust, afterward carrying off all the honors in the melee, until it is considered an honor even to dare go against him and be taken prisoner. Getting back to his lodging, he hides the black armor and has the green displayed, so that when his prisoners come to present themselves, they cannot find him. Next day, wearing the green armor and riding his tawny horse, he defeats Lancelot in the opening joust and proceeds to fight so well that he is called far better than the unknown black knight of the day before.

This time he hides the green armor at the day's end and displays the crimson,in which he rides his sorrel horse on the third day, defeating Percivale and repeating his general success. By now people are tumbling to the fact that this is the same unknown knight in different armor, and Gawaine - still at this stage in the romances Arthur's greatest knight - modestly decides to try his hand on the fourth and last day. When Cligés shows up this time, he matches the great champion so sell that Arthur declares it a draw and ends the tournament a little early.

Cligés reveals his identity: through his mother, he is Gawaine's nephew and thus Arthur's great-nephew. All are delighted, and the young knight stays with Arthur's court until the following summer, traveling throughout Britain, France, and Normandy performing knightly deeds - it seems like crowding quite a bit into a year or less - while Arthur makes more of him than of any other nephew.

On returning to Greece, Cligés enjoys a secret liaison with Fenice, in a hideaway built to order for them by his loyal serf John. Being discovered, the lovers escape back to Britain, where Arthur prepares to go to war to help win Cligés the emperorship of Greece and Constantinople, which should rightfully have been his anyway. Alis conveniently dies before the war can start, so Cligés peacefully becomes emperor and marries Fenice.

Aside from those two relatively short sojourns, Cligés appears to have spent no other time in Britain, which makes his story only peripherally Arthurian.