Genuine understanding of roughly half a millennium of early European history will falter without an effort to analyze the phenomenon of chivalry, for the ideals and practices of chivalry formed an essential component of society and civilization throughout those generations. Its voice was prominent whether the inquiring listener focuses on the practice of violence and war, governance, social and cultural life, the framework of religion, the process of getting and spending, or the bonds of friendship and ideal and actual gender relations. The ideals and actions of elite arms bearers always put them in a prominent position, ever playing a crucial role. Since the close engagement of chivalry with such basic issues of life makes it an inescapably important subject, we do the topic and ourselves a disservice if we relegate chivalry to the slight category of fanciful escapism or imagine it to be some ideal system in a long-ago fairyland.

Of course the forms in which chivalry was expressed were indeed impressively colorful and could take on a superficial playfulness of speech, action, or attire; and in their bright hues and utter quaintness, chivalric displays have proved continuing attractions to modern audiences for whom the contemporary world may seem a bit drab and tirelessly pragmatic. Much publication about medieval chivalry seems intended to meet this need, which is likely felt by many a writer or picture-book compiler, as it is certainly felt by the filmmakers. In all such presentations, chivalry intrudes few questions into the minds of consumers of print, film, or video game, nor does it raise problems for analysis that could engage scholarship. If brave men in shining armor fought evil, if muscular men protected the weak and unfailingly honored all females, if they humbly practiced the piety taught to them, then surely all was well.

The medieval evidence we have examined, likely to have caused surprise by its abundance no less than its themes, presents a much more complex and vastly more interesting chivalric world – one that, however colorful, was built not simply on easy agreement but on conflicts, contradictions, and paradoxes. In studying these complexities, we learn about real people, about multiple sets of ideals in dialogue and often in contention, and about the role of governing institutions with power emerging to match their claims.