“Beorhtnoth accepted the challenge and allowed them to cross. This act of pride and misplaced chivalry proved fatal. Beorhtnoth was slain and the English routed; but the duke’s putting down ‘household’… containing the picked knights and officers of his bodyguard, some of them members of his own family, fought on, until they all fell dead beside their lord” (122).

I chose this quote because it highlights the role between the knight and his lord. No matter how foolish the decisions of the lord may be, there are always loyal men willing to do what it takes to keep him alive or avenge him in death. The speaker seems to criticize the actions of Beorhtnoth as he mentions that it was his “pride and misplaced chivalry” that got everybody killed. The speaker isn’t trying to say that he is a bad guy, but that it would have been better if he hadn’t done so. He is trying to show that it is possible that the code of chivalry has some imperfections because many people die as a result of a leader who can’t see past himself. In Anglo-Saxon works, concern for the lives of the knights isn’t a part of the decision making. Even if they are spared a fight like in Beowulf, where Beowulf decided to try to take the dragon out on his own, it wasn’t because he was worried about his people being killed. He wanted more glory. In his pridefulness, he didn’t remember his kingdom which would be doomed in the event of his death. With that being said, the men did run away when he needed them the most, so that could be an example of when the code breaks down. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, King Arthur makes the decision to take the Green Knight up on his offer to play a game of tit for tat. Unfortunately, it is the duty of the knight to take the place of his king in a dangerous situation, and that is what Sir Gawain did. I can only assume that he will die by the end of the poem. For the most part, I don’t believe that actual knights and lords would find the point of the quote above to be persuasive. There was a code of chivalry which needed to be followed at all times. It wasn’t the job of the men to tell their lord that he was making a bad decision. The king had people for that.