Recent critical interest in Sir Palomydes the Saracen has led to various interrogations of his alterity within the context of the Malorian universe. Kevin T. Grimm attributes the modern interest in Palomydes to his ‘apparent psychological intensity’; this is frequently on display in ‘The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones’ through intense exhibitions of grief and frustration at his failure to achieve superlative status in the knightly community. Palomydes's Saracen identity is central to his inability to fit fully into the Christian world of Le Morte Darthur, as many critics – perhaps most notably Dorsey Armstrong in her postcolonial approach to Palomydes's plight – are quick to point out. I would like to take this concept one step further, to consider how Palomydes's Saracenness might be read through blood and sex, the themes that bind this volume. The interplay of different kinds of blood is a frequent source of disquiet for Palomydes: certainly, the spilling of blood in combat, but also the blood bonds of kinship, the inescapability of racially marked blood, the letting of – or, more accurately, the failure to let – sexual blood, and the relationship to Christ's bleeding, sacrificial body through baptism. I argue that all of these experiences of blood are tinged by Palomydes's Saracen identity, and contribute to the troubling of Palomydes's masculinity. Malory's homosocial fellowship aspires to inviolate masculinity, and the contradictions that comprise Palomydes's character – contradictions of which he is painfully self-aware – appear to threaten his ability to claim a place as a ‘hoole’ knight in Arthurian society.