Tibaut

1. Tibaut
   Tiebaut of Tintagel

   Tibaut raised his deceased lord's son Meliant de Liz to the age of knighthood, at which time Sir Meliant challenged him to a tournament in order to win his elder daughter. At first Tibaut seems to have been reluctant to let the tournament actually proceed, but the chance arrival of one (or, it was first thought, two) of Arthur's champions inspired Tibaut's vavasour Garin to urge his lord to let his own knights leave Tintagil and fight at their pleasure.

   Garin seemed to assume that Arthur's knight(s) would enter on the town's side - not sure why, unless Tibaut was one of Arthur's avowed allies or leigemen. When Arthur's knight (Gawaine, though they did not know his identity) abstained all day from the tourney, Tibaut listened to his elder daughter and was about to arrest the stranger as a merchant illegally disguised in order to avoid tolls; Garin explained that the stranger, now his guest, was honorably saving himself for trial by combat.

   At Garin's home, Tibaut found his younger daughter, the Maid with Little Sleeves, pleading with the strange knight to fight next day for her sake. Sounding much like a modern parent, Tibaut tried to make her stop pestering Garin's guest; the later showed his true fatherly affection by having a fine sleeve of crimson samite made especially for her to give her knight as a token, meanwhile scolding her elder sister for slapping and otherwise mistreating her.

   
   

2. Tibaut's Elder Daughter

   Loved by Meliant of Liz, she insisted that he prove his worth by doing great feats of chivalry in a tournament against her father. There seems nothing in this to outrage medieval sensibilities.

   She explained that she set a high price upon her love because paying for a thing made it sweeter - a sentiment hardly unknown even in our day. It is her treatment of her younger sister, the Maid with Little Sleeves, that gives us our first pause in considering how good Meliant's choice might be.

   The elder sister can hardly be faulted for seeing her own would-be lover as the best and handsomest knight present; when she slaps her little sister's face and pulls her hair for opining that a better man is in sight, even their attendant damsels act shocked, finally intervening to rescue the child.

   Again, the elder sister seems maliciously eager to seize upon some ladies' theory - that her sister's knight is a merchant in masquerade - as a reason for their father to arrest him. No doubt some longstanding sibling rivalry exists between the two sisters, but to try to have a stranger, even a shady merchant, arrested on a hanging offense carries sibling rivalry rather far.