Blancheflor

1. Blancheflor
   'White Flower' | Blanchefleur, Blancheflour, Blankeflur, Blankiflúr, Blanzifiore

   The lady of Beaurepaire in Chrétien's Perceval. She was Gornemant of Gohort's niece and Percivale's love. When Percivale, newly knighted, leaves Gornemant and comes to Beaurepaire, he finds the town and castle in terrible plight - impoverished, spent, and starving. Nevertheless, they offer him what hospitality they can. Blancheflor, her eyes either smiling or sparkling with laughter, depending on the translation, greets the newcomer with an offer of all she has on hand: a freshly shot deer, along with a gift of five loaves or rolls and some boiled or reheated wine from another uncle of hers, a prior^No.4. (D.D.R. Owen explains in a note that inferior wine was improved by reheating it.)

   That night, having given her guest a fine bed, she comes in and weeps beside it until he wakes and tenderly asks what troubles her. She reveals that Clamadeu of the Isles is bent on having her and has his seneschal Engygeron (Anguingueron) besieging her. He has killed most of her original 310 knights, captured 48, and left her with only 50 to defend her starving stronghold. Tomorrow the castle must be surrenderd, but she has the knife ready to kill herself before letting Clamadeu have her person.

   That's all, she finishes. Now I'll let you go back to sleep.

   (Sounds pretty calculated.) He naturally comforts her, taking her into bed with him for the rest of the night to do so - whether or not they remain innocent seems largely to depend upon the reader's own interpretation - and afterward defeats first Engygeron and then Clamadeu for her, sending them to Arthur.

   The timely if chance arrival of a ship laden with food also helps Beaurepaire. Blancheflor would have married him and made him lord of Beaurepaire, but Perceval declined. Anxious about his mother, Percivale leaves Blancheflor, promising to return. One may guess that he would have, had Chrétien completed his story; at any rate, Blancheflor is apparently the sweetheart memory of whose complexion later sends him into a long and rapt contemplation of three drops of blood on the snow.

   In the third continuation of Chrétien, Perceval returns to defend Blancheflor from another attacker, Caridés of Escavalon, and in the fourth continuation, he finally marries her. Perceval also weds Blancheflor in the Norse Parcevals Saga, and in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, where her name is changed to Condwiramurs (Kondviramur). In Heinrich von dem Türlin's Diu Crône, she later fails in a chastity test at Arthur's court. She is known as Lufamour in the Middle-English Sir Perceval of Galles.

   
   

2. Blancheflor
   Blanchefleur, Blanscheflur, Blanschflur

   In Gottfried, mother of Tristan (Tristram) and sister of King Mark of Cornwall.

   She fell in love with King Rivalin of Parmenie when he came to Cornwall to assist Mark against Ireland. Rivalin fell deathly ill of a painful wound, but the sight and affections of Blancheflor cured him and the two married. She died giving birth to Tristan on the same day that Rivalin was slain.

   Called Blesinbil in the Norse version of the legend, her character is replaced in later stories by Elyabel.

   
   

3. Blancheflor

   The daughter of King Triamour of Wales.

   A giant named Urgan attacked her father for the right to possess her, but the giant was slain by Tristan.

   
   

4. Blancheflor's uncle the Prior

   Blancheflor^No.I calls him a very religious and saintly man, who has sent her the bread and wine which is all, with a deer newly shot by one of her servants, that she has to offer Percivale for supper.

   Blancheflor is also Gornemant's niece, so the prior might be Gornemant's brother. If so, the frequency with which younger sons entered religion would suggest that Gornemant was the elder. I also see some possibility that, although Blancheflor praises her uncle Gornemant for being a very worthy, rich man, her contrast of the fine cheer he must lately have given Percivale with the poor fare that is all she has to give - most of it thanks to the charity of another and presumably less well-off uncle - might be construed as a veiled complaint against Gornemant. Against this interpretation we should weigh the fact that both Engygeron and Clamadeu fear to be sent prisoner to Gornemant because, in their war against Blancheflor, Engygeron has killed a(nother?) brother of Gornemant's.