Courtly Love

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
He loved her dearly in his heart, but knew better than to love her any more closely.

I say William Shakespeare had the right idea--

Put your passion in a poem she won't hear
—I Get By, Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives

Courtly love was a medieval European idea of love dating back to the noble courts of the eleventh century. In essence, courtly love was a contradictory experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment. Courtly Love is having a romantic affair without ever imagining it'll get consummated. The man in question will be in love with his lady, do almost anything for her and in her name. She may love the fella back, if he's fortunate—though that's not expected, and not really the point. The lady in question (and, indeed, the man in question) will almost certainly be married to somebody else: when Courtly Love happens, marriage isn't for love, but for more pragmatic reasons. In periods where Courtly Love is popular, it may be the only form of affair that doesn't get condemned as evil, simply because nothing more intimate than kisses, handkerchiefs, and sonnets get exchanged. In modern times it might happen just because the characters are too young like in a Childhood Friend Romance.

Almost as soon as it appeared, it was Newer Than They Think; the King Arthur mythos and the Matter of Britain were hammered into shape, and people began to lament that love was no longer what it had been in King Arthur's day. It has now been an Undead Horse Trope for a matter of centuries.

There is, of course, a dark side to this seemingly idealized fairytale. Just as Courtly Love is the only genteel and "proper" form of romance short of marriage in nobility, the only outlet for carnal desires falls on the shoulders of those not subject to the respect of chivalry; the peasant class. Malory's writings contains candid accounts of Lancelot casually advising Galahad to rape a local village girl to mend his heart wounded from a failed courtship. And this is the most benign examples of the consequences of unfulfilled lust stemmed from the stifling constraints of Courtly Love.

In more recent times, Courtly Love may be the only way for a Celibate Hero, or someone whose superpowers are Powered By Virginity, to express his (or her) love for someone. The difference between Courtly Love and Unresolved Sexual Tension is, Courtly Love is supposed to be satisfying in itself because of the mix of the romantic and spiritual. Even when it was popular, it didn't always work that way; Lancelot's love for Guinevere started as Courtly Love but developed into a different sort of affair.

Later on, this trope helped make the era look far more romantic than it already was. Thus we have Knight in Shining Armor, Prince Charming, and Princess Classic.

Older Than Print. Also known as Petrarchan Love, after the Trope Codifier, Petrarch, whose lovesick series of sonnets to Laura made poetry an essential facet of Courtly Love. Today, if one of the two is married, this is known as "emotional adultery".

A Sister Trope to Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date (a more recent romantic ideal).

Compare The Lady's Favour.

Please do not mistake for Courtney Love (who is pretty much in a polar opposite position of this trope).

Examples of Courtly Love include:

Anime and Manga

  • Ranma 1/2: Ryoga's love for Akane.
  • Ryota Miyagi of Slam Dunk. He loves Ayako and even states he's satisfied as long as he can make her happy.


Film

  • Spoofed in The Court Jester.
  • Subverted in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones because the whole point of the Anakin/Padmé relationship was that he was not satisfied with Courtly Love so when she professed her love to him they consummated their romance which resulted in them getting married secretly and conceiving Luke and Leia.
  • Rick in Casablanca is a rather complex zigzag of this. In a flashback he met her in Paris and presumably did French things with her, though of course the movie doesn't say directly. Later Rick is understandably angry at not being told she was married (though in her defense, she believed her husband to be dead). In the final scene he settles on being satisfied with Courtly Love because he wants his beloved to be happy.
  • Bryce and Julie in Flipped never even kiss although they are only in seventh grade when the story ends.


Literature

  • Petrarch's Laura sonnets are the Trope Codifier.
  • The Canterbury Tales plays it straight in the Knight's Tale. Averted in every other part.
  • Along with every other facet of chivalry, parodied and deconstructed in Don Quixote.
  • William Shakespeare plays this dead straight in pretty much all of his sonnets.
  • Dante's love for Beatrice in The Divine Comedy. And in Real Life.
  • The Mimbrates of David Eddings' Belgariad universe are based on the ultra-idealistic romance take on medieval knights (to a comical degree), and thus also includes this. The Mimbrate Knight, Sir Mandorallan, is one of the main characters, and stuck in one of these while he's single, he is hopelessly in love with a married woman whose husband is significantly older, and happens to be Mandorallan's mentor and surrogate father. Mandorallan is too knightly to be anything less than completely courteous, she is too noble to betray her husband, and meanwhile, the husband knows what's between them, knows that he's the only thing keeping them apart, and that they're both too noble to betray him in the least. He decides to take up a few dangerous hobbies. Generations of Mimbrate maidens apparently cry themselves to sleep over the sheer, tragic nobility of the situation.
    • Even after he dies, they're still caught up in this. Annoying Garion until he finally forces them to get married and be happy. Ce'Nedra chastises him (tongue firmly in cheek) for ruining their noble suffering.
    • This trope could also pretty much describe what went on between Polgara and Ontrose, despite Polgara's best efforts.
  • Also from Eddings, this is what the knight Sparhawk was planning in the Elenium trilogy, intending to basically bury his love for Queen Ehlana under the veneer of duty and find her a good husband closer to her own age. She had other ideas.
  • Gimli from The Lord of the Rings has this with Galadriel.
  • Kate Chopin's The Awakening is also a (relatively) modern example of courtly love.
  • Deconstructed in James Branch Cabell's Domnei.
  • Mocked without mercy in The Squire's Tales, particularly in The Ballad of Sir Dinadan.
  • The second mate in The Captains Wife.
  • In the novel The Widow of the South Carrie McGavock develops this with wounded soldier Zachariah Cashwell, and interestingly, Carrie's husband knows full well what's going on and supports her.
  • The idea was probably more popular back in the Romantic Era with such novels as Julie, or the New Héloïse written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and published in 1761 where the heroine virtuously renounced her love for Saint-Preux and forced herself to be faithful to her dull husband.


Live-Action TV

  • Gets an interesting treatment in Babylon 5 with Marcus Cole and Susan Ivanova. For him, it's a standard case of shyness and Unrequited Love, but she doesn't appear to notice (being Married to the Job). Thus, in effect, their relationship is a form of Courtly Love...IN SPACE!!!
    • Lennier is a sadder version because of the class difference and because he is just too shy, far shyer then Cole. In his case it ends badly.
      • As B5 is meant to be in the style of The Epic, borrowing from old tropes is really not surprising.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Spike/Buffy relationship in Season 5 shows aspects of this, as pointed out in this essay.
  • Plays out between Lancelot and Guinevere in Merlin. Lancelot will do anything for her (up to and including a Heroic Sacrifice without any expectation that she'll love him in return.


Music

  • The Queen Of Argyll by Silly Wizard (though the narrator does intend to actually try and win the star of his daydreams):

Gentlemen it is me duty
To inform you of one beauty
Though I'd ask of you a favour
Not to seek her for a while


Tabletop Games

  • Forgotten Realms has it as common practices in the Order of the Ruby Rose (Knight Errant style followers of the goddess of love, including different sorts from paladins to bards) to write songs of courtly love and to "adopt a beautiful individual to adore from afar whether that individual would be flattered by such attentions or not".
    • Alustriel Silverhand, the 11th High Mage of Silverymoon, nicknamed "the Queen of Courtly Love". She spreads rather informal and poetic atmosphere in her court and city, and "many adventurers come from all corners of Faerûn to offer their swords in the service of High Lady Alustriel, drawn by stories of her beauty, wisdom, and grace". Excess of admirers to choose from comes as a bonus, what's with being very good-looking and immortal, she keeps around (works with) a few children from her former consorts, and some of those former consorts too (including a doppleganger), but it's not the point. Mostly, she just likes people in general and lavishes enough of personal attention on whoever she deals with to make them feel really welcome.


Theatre

Le Bret: But why embroil yourself?
Cyrano: Le Bret who scolds!
Le Bret: That worthless drunkard!—
Cyrano (slapping Ligniere on the shoulder): Wherefore? For this cause;—
This wine-barrel, this cask of Burgundy,
Did, on a day, an action full of grace;
As he was leaving church, he saw his love
Take holy water—he, who is affeared
At water's taste, ran quickly to the stoup,
And drank it all, to the last drop!...


Web Comics


Western Animation

  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars has the romance between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Duchess Satine Kryze of Mandalore. They met when they were young and he was assigned to protect her from political enemies. He was noble enough to be willing to leave the Jedi Order for her; she was noble enough not to require that of him. The result, years down the line, is a Masochism Tango in which the participants are Twice Shy, as Anakin looks on in amusement and subtly takes his revenge for Obi-Wan's snark against his relationship with Padme.


Real Life

  • It was rumored that the British ambassador had this for Maria Theresa. Seems likely enough actually.
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