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.
See also
Tibaut of Tintagel | The Legend of King Arthur