page_title: Gawain
section_title: Origin narratives and alternate siblings
hierarchical_section_title: Gawain / Gawain / Origin narratives and alternate siblings
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Chapiteau de la nef représentant le chevalier Gauvain au lit de la Merveille (roue, flèche et clochette), épisode du roman de Parzival, dans l'église Saint-Pierre à Caen (Calvados) Base Mémoire
context_page_description: Gawain, also known as Gawaine or Gauwaine, among various other forms and spellings, is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table in the Arthurian legend. Under the name Gwalchmei, he is introduced very early in the legend's literature, being mentioned in some of the earliest Welsh Arthurian sources. As Gawain, he appears in Latin, French, English, Dutch, German and Italian texts, notably as the protagonist of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Other tales of Gawain include Historia Regum Britanniae, Roman de Brut, De Ortu Waluuanii, Diu Crône, The Awntyrs off Arthure, Ywain and Gawain, Golagros and Gawane, L'âtre périlleux, Le Chevalier à l'épée, and The Weddynge of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell, as well as the works of Chrétien de Troyes and the prose cycle Lancelot-Grail.
  Gawain is one of a select number of Round Table members to be referred to as one of the greatest knights and closest companions of King Arthur. He is usually the son of Arthur's sister Morgause and King Lot of Orkney and Lothian, and his brothers or half-brothers are Agravain, Gaheris, Gareth, and Mordred.
context_section_description: Les Enfances Gauvain, based in part on De Ortu Waluuanii, tells of how Arthur's sister Morcades (Morgause) becomes pregnant by Lot, at this point a mere page in King Arthur's court. She and Lot secretly give the child to a knight named Gawain the Brown (Gauvain li Brun) who baptises the child with his own name and puts the infant Gawain in a cask with a letter explaining who the child is and sets him adrift on the sea. The cask is found by a fisherman and his wife. Sometime after Gawain is ten years of age, his foster-father vows to make a pilgrimage to Rome if he recovers from his severe illness. When he indeed does, he takes his foster-child with him to Rome, where a clerk reads the letter and understands that the boy is of high birth and the Pope takes Gawain as his own foster-son. Accounts similar to this can be found in Perlesvaus, the Gesta Romanorum, and many other texts.
  In De Ortu Waluuani, the young Gawain, incognito as the Knight of the Surcoat, undertakes a duel to determine whether Rome or Persia should possess Jerusalem. On his way, Gawain and his men defeat the pirate king Milocrates and his brother Buzafarnam, rescuing the Emperor's niece whom Milocrates has abducted. In Jerusalam, he fights the giant Persian champion Gormund and slays him after three days of single combat. He is then sent to King Arthur with the proof of his birth. Arthur's queen, here named Gwendoloena and possessing prophetic powers, warns Arthur of the coming of a knight of Rome who is more powerful than him; Arthur and Kay meet Gawain on his way but he unhorses them both. Gawain then arrives at Arthur's court, but the king rejects him despite learning of the knight being his nephew. In response, Gawain vows that he will do what Arthur's entire army could not do. The occasion comes when the Lady of the Castle of Maidens sends to Arthur for aid, having been abducted by a pagan king who wants to force marriage on her; Arthur and his forces go to fight the pagan army but lose, yet Gawain single-handedly succeeds and returns with the Lady and with the pagan king's head. Arthur is finally forced to publicly accept the knight's worth, and Lot and Anna formally acknowledge Gawain as their son.
  Similar to this tale are the stories of the Castle of Wonders in Chrétien's Perceval, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, Diu Crône, and the Norse Valvens þáttr (The Tale of Gawain), wherein Gawain comes to the castle where, unknown to him, live his grandmother (King Arthur's mother), his own mother, and his sister. Gawain ends the adventure of the castle and becomes its lord. It would be only right by normal rules if he married unknowingly either his mother or his sister, but Gawain discovers who the women are. In a variant included in the Gesta Romanorum, Gawain-derived character named Gregory comes to a castle where his mother dwells, besieged by the Duke of Burgundy. Gregory enters the lady's service and succeeds in winning back her lands, after which he unwittingly marries his own mother.
  Later romances, however, abandon the motif of Gawain being brought up, unknown, in Rome. In the Suite du Merlin attributed to Robert de Boron, a marriage between King Lot and a daughter of Ygerne (Igraine, Arthur's mother) is part of the negotiations arranging for Arthur's father Uther Pendragon's marriage to Ygerne; Gawain must be thus about the same age as Arthur, or even older. In the Vulgate Merlin, he first appears as a young squire in his father's kingdom. Gawain, his brother Gaheris, and a number of other squires, most of them sons or kindred of the kings who are rebelling against King Arthur, come together and defend the land of Logres against the Saxons while Arthur is away aiding King Leodegan (Leodegrance) against King Rion (Rience), after which Arthur knights the squires. During this time, Gawain saves their mother Belisent (Morgause) and the infant Mordred from being kidnapped by the Saxon king Taurus. This is different in the Post-Vulgate Merlin, where King Lot fights against Arthur but his forces are defeated and he himself is killed by King Pellino
caption: Parzival's Gawain in a capital relief at the Church of Saint-Pierre, Caen
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