The pace and import of this passage have severely tested modern critics' sense of a satisfying conclusion. In 1981 Leslie Topsfield wrote, “The ending of Yvain is unconvincing, and Chrétien's commonplace references to the mutual joy and peace without end of Yvain and Laudine leave some doubt whether he did not see in this conclusion the patching together of a story which on its higher level of meaning had transcended its narrative framework.” In 2001 Joseph Duggan argued that the reconciliation (...) occurs “only because Laudine does not wish to renege on her oath. Remarkably Chretien declares that Yvain is happier now than he has ever been, for he is loved and cherished by his lady and she by him. The notion that one can be constrained to love is as bizarre in a twelfth-century context as it would be today.” He concludes that in Yvain Chretien's “portrayal of motivation has come up a bit short.”. (shrink)

Early in 1067 Count Roger of Carcassonne — known to some modern historians as Roger II and to others as Roger III — died without direct descendants and probably intestate. He was still a young man. Roger was the son of Rangard of La Marche and Count Peter-Raimond. With many others he proudly traced his lineage back to the tenth-century Count Roger “the Old” and his brother Odo and through them claimed a cousinage to counts and countesses from the high (...) valleys of the Pyrenees to the ancient cities on the Mediterranean. By the time of Roger's death the houses of Foix, Comminges, Couserans, Béziers-Albi-Nîmes, Bigorre, Barcelona, Navarre, and Aragon were all related through male descent, through daughters who had married out, or through heiresses who had married in. They were but the remnant of an even larger number of branch lineages, three of which came to an end in the 1060s. (shrink)