40 Fun Facts About Tristan and Iseult

Which color sail does the dying Tristan's jealous wife falsely claim to see in the medieval poems?

Black meant Iseult was not aboard, but the ship really flew white, the signal that she was coming to heal him. Tristan dies of despair before she lands.

In Béroul's Tristan poem, a dwarf reveals that King Mark has the ears of which animal?

A horse is a pun on the king's own name, since marc is a Celtic word for the animal. The tale echoes the Greek story of King Midas and his donkey ears.

At Pedro II's invitation, which city did Wagner consider for the premiere of Tristan und Isolde?

Rio de Janeiro would have heard it sung in Italian, the language of Brazil's Imperial Opera, and Wagner even talked of settling there. Nothing came of the plan.

Which scrambled form of his own name does the wounded Tristan use in Ireland in Wagner's opera?

Tantris simply swaps the two syllables of his name. In the opera, Isolde recalls nursing a wounded stranger of that name and then discovering who he really was.

In most tellings, who provides the love potion meant for Iseult and King Mark's wedding night?

Her mother, the Queen of Ireland, is also named Iseult. She meant the drink to guarantee a loving marriage, but the wrong pair shares it at sea.

In the Prose Tristan, what is Tristan playing for Iseult when King Mark fatally wounds him?

A harp is the hero's instrument, and the romances rank him among the greatest musicians of his day. In the older poems he dies in Brittany instead, far from Mark.

Which legendary sunken kingdom off Cornwall is Tristan's homeland in the later romances?

Lyonesse is said to have stretched from Land's End to the Isles of Scilly before the sea swallowed it in a single night. Tristan's father, Meliodas, is its king in the prose romances.

What does Tristan place between himself and Iseult as they lie together, fooling King Mark?

His sword lying between them looks like proof of innocence. Mark stumbles on their wilderness hideaway and leaves half persuaded that they are not lovers after all.

Two 12th-century French poems, kept at Berne and Oxford, send Tristan back to King Mark's court disguised as what?

A madman is his disguise in both poems, and each is known as a Folie Tristan, a title that means Tristan's madness.

The fatal mix-up over a ship's sails in the Tristan legend may echo the myth of which Greek hero?

Theseus forgot to hoist the agreed sail on his way home from Crete, and his father Aegeus, believing him dead, threw himself to his death.

Which emotion has Tristan's name long been tied to, through similar Latin and Old French words?

Sadness suits a hero orphaned at birth, and in the great German romance the baby is named for the grim circumstances of his arrival.

Which handmaid guards the love potion and then takes Iseult's place on her wedding night?

Brangaine secretly takes her mistress's place to protect Iseult's honor. Iseult later panics that the secret will come out and nearly has her killed.

Which Irish champion, sent to collect tribute from Cornwall, does young Tristan kill in a duel?

Morholt is the brother of the Irish queen in the early poems, which makes him the uncle of Tristan's future love. They fight on the remote Saint Samson's Isle.

Which part of a slain dragon does Tristan show to expose a steward's false claim to Iseult?

Its tongue was already in Tristan's keeping when the steward turned up with the severed head, so the trophy proved nothing and the liar lost his bride.

What clue reveals in Ireland that the disguised Tristan is the man who killed the queen's brother?

A gap in his blade matches the metal fragment taken from the dead man's skull, like a missing puzzle piece. In several versions he is caught out while sitting in a bath.

In Béroul's poem, where does King Mark send Iseult after sparing her from burning at the stake?

A leper colony is her punishment only briefly: Tristan escapes his guards by leaping from a clifftop chapel, rescues her, and the lovers flee into the forest.

How does the love potion in Béroul's Tristan poem differ from the one in the courtly versions?

It wears off after three years in Béroul, yet the lovers carry on regardless. In the courtly branch its effects last for the rest of their lives.

In the Folie Tristan d'Oxford, which animal knows the disguised Tristan before Iseult believes him?

A hound named Husdent greets him joyfully, and a ring Iseult once gave him settles the matter. Until then she had refused to believe the stranger was Tristan.

Which Cornish castle is King Mark's court in the Folie Tristan and other medieval Tristan romances?

Tintagel is called an enchanted castle in the Folie Tristan d'Oxford. Geoffrey of Monmouth had already made it the place where King Arthur was conceived.

Which knight lends Tristan and Iseult his castle, Joyous Gard, as a refuge in the prose romances?

Lancelot had captured the castle himself, back when it was still called Dolorous Gard. He and Tristan fight a great duel that neither wins and come out of it firm friends.

Which enchantress supplies the lance King Mark uses to kill Tristan in the long version of the Prose Tristan?

Morgan le Fay wanted revenge because Tristan had slain her lover, so she enchanted the lance and sent it to the jealous king.

Which Saracen Knight of the Round Table is Tristan's rival for Iseult's love in the Prose Tristan?

Palamedes loses to Tristan at a tournament in Ireland and is forbidden to court Iseult again. The two knights fight a string of inconclusive duels before they are reconciled.

In some versions, what grows from Tristan's grave into Iseult's, however often King Mark cuts it?

A briar grows so thickly that it forms a bower over the two graves, and Mark has it cut three times in vain. Later versions make it a vine twined with a rose.

Which plant gives Marie de France's Tristan lai Chevrefoil its title and its symbol of the lovers?

Honeysuckle twines so tightly around a hazel in the poem that neither plant can live once they are parted, which is how Marie pictures the two lovers.

Which German poet's Tristan, left unfinished at his death, was the main source for Wagner's opera?

Gottfried von Strassburg's poem breaks off with the last part of the story untold, and two later poets, Ulrich von Türheim and Heinrich von Freiberg, supplied endings.

Which novelist edited the Middle English poem Sir Tristrem and wrote his own ending for it?

Walter Scott wrote the closing stanzas himself for his 1804 edition, since the poem's only copy breaks off before the end. That copy is in the Auchinleck manuscript in the National Library of Scotland.

Which English author cut the vast French Prose Tristan down into his own Book of Sir Tristram?

Thomas Malory folded it into Le Morte d'Arthur. Scholars still debate whether he meant the Tristram story to stand alone, a question raised when the Winchester Manuscript surfaced in 1934.

Which Victorian Poet Laureate has King Mark kill Tristram from behind in The Last Tournament?

Alfred Tennyson has Mark split Tristram's skull just as the knight fastens a ruby necklace on Isolt. The poem is one of the Idylls of the King.

Which Victorian poet published the narrative poem Tristram and Iseult in 1852?

Matthew Arnold first met the story in a French review while staying at Thun, and it gripped him before he had even looked at Le Morte d'Arthur.

Which Victorian poet considered his 1882 epic on Tristram the crowning achievement of his career?

Algernon Swinburne gave the poem a prelude and nine cantos. William Morris was less impressed, saying such work seemed founded on literature, not on nature.

Which honor did American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson win a third time for his 1927 poem Tristram?

Pulitzer Prize wins came to Robinson three times in the 1920s. Tristram rounded off an Arthurian run that had begun a decade earlier with his poem Merlin.

In which city did Wagner's Tristan und Isolde finally premiere after Vienna abandoned its attempt?

Munich staged it in June 1865, after more than 70 rehearsals in Vienna had earned the opera a reputation as unperformable.

Which philosopher, discovered by Wagner in 1854, helped inspire Tristan und Isolde?

Schopenhauer taught that human striving can never be satisfied, and the opera turns that idea into two lovers who can only be united in death.

Whose piano transcription gave the name Liebestod to Isolde's final scene in Wagner's opera?

Franz Liszt, later Wagner's father-in-law, made the arrangement in 1867, and it became known across Europe before the opera did. Wagner himself had used the title for the prelude.

Which actor played Tristan opposite Sophia Myles in the 2006 film Tristan & Isolde?

James Franco led a cast that included Rufus Sewell as Marke and a young Henry Cavill as Melot. One of its producers had wanted to film the legend since the 1970s.

Which French poet claimed in his romance Cligès to have written a Tristan tale, now lost?

Chrétien de Troyes mentions it at the opening of Cligès, a romance often read as an answer to Tristan because its lovers get a happy ending.

Which French scholar tried to rebuild the lost 'Ur-Tristan' in his Roman de Tristan et Iseut?

Joseph Bédier stitched the tale together from Béroul, Eilhart and other medieval versions, and Hilaire Belloc later put his retelling into English.

Which Irish tale about Fionn mac Cumhaill's runaway bride is often compared to the Tristan legend?

Diarmuid and Gráinne flee across Ireland with Fionn's warriors in pursuit, after the princess drugs the guests at her own betrothal feast.

Which 11th-century Persian romance do some scholars see as the model for the Tristan legend?

Vis and Rāmin may have travelled west with storytellers during the Crusades, though the evidence for the link is largely circumstantial.

Near which Cornish town stands the Tristan Stone, a 6th-century pillar inscribed 'Drustanus'?

Fowey lies along the road from the granite pillar, whose Latin inscription calls Drustanus the son of Cunomorus, a name some link to King Mark.