Superior craft can gain admiration. The rules of engagement forbid bodily contact. Anguish can arise from defeat on the screen or screed, but adroit gaming tactics give both players tremendous pleasure and avoid serious emotional trauma. Constantia imitates and mocks her male mentor and sometime master. In the key of doting submissiveness, she challenges his claim to superior erudition, versification, and spiritualized sexual passion.
Deference is a device of the disempowered to gain a hearing.
Baudri and Constance's love poetry strike some critics as stilted, artificial pastiches. This was the approved way to do it in their time. Themes, examples, verse forms and rhythms are imitated skillfully. We ought to equal that achievement before criticizing it. Try it yourself.