Well, I'll be totally honest - it was the promo post and your Yuletide letter which got me to! I was trawling through the Yuletide letters on the app looking for potential treats and saw your description of the books and thought, Well, that looks right up my street.

The chivalric thing is so - like, Chretien de Troyes's Lancelot does all this crazy stuff for Guinevere, right? Undergoes humiliations galore, injures himself trying to rescue her, all that. But Lancelot at least is half-man, half-metaphorical representation of Love (as opposed to Reason), so you're not meant to take it as realistic. Tristan is doing all the same things in a fantasy world that we can safely assume has something similar going on, and the shift in the readers' (and other characters') view of him from "ah, yes, the faithful knight in sable armour, how obviously romantic" to "...hang on" is simultaneously hilarious and very neatly done for maximum drama.

I genuinely would really love more on the status quo ante, either from the author or in fic, because what a set-up. Vianne running round court trying to fight fires because one of Lisele's love affairs has gone scandalously awry, Tristan stalking taking an official interest in what this potential heir is doing, probably horrifying Vianne. More on why Vianne clearly thinks no one would ever seriously be interested in her! For all that she seems to have tried to avoid it, my guess is that the King wasn't the only person playing mind games at court. I know why the author went with the explosive start, but I would have loved to see more of Vianne in her element.