The Estoire, in its current form, begins in earnest with Gaimar’s account of the challenges faced by the exiled Danish prince, Haveloc, and his wife, the British princess Argentille (37–818). It hinges on misidentification: the scullion Cuaran receives the hand in marriage of the dispossessed Argentille, niece of the treacherous British king, Edelsi, only because the latter is unaware of the young man’s real identity as Haveloc, a prince of Denmark exiled as a child by the treachery of the usurper, Edulf. When the young couple learn the truth after travelling to visit Cuaran’s adopted kin in Grimsby, they overthrow Edulf in Denmark and regain Haveloc’s throne, a triumph followed in short order by the abdication of Argentille’s defeated uncle on the advice of his nobles.

The Haveloc episode is crucial to the Estoire. Its length and position in the work mark its significance, along with the fact that it was interpolated at a relatively late stage in Gaimar’s drafting of his work. All the character models found in the Estoire are present in this early tale, enabling the episode to serve as a tool for interpretation of everything that comes after it. Gaimar’s account of Haveloc and Argentille has received very little scholarly attention. Where it has been analysed, it has either – as with the other major passages in the Estoire – been examined in isolation, or certain elements of its story have been taken out of the broader context of the Estoire as part of surveys of particular themes. Gaimar’s history as a whole cannot be understood fully without reference to this opening interpolation, and an examination of its key players and themes serves as an interpretive key to later episodes in the work.

The two kings who oppose Argentille’s and Haveloc’s right to rule in Britain and Denmark respectively, Edelsi and Edulf, are effective prototypes for two fundamentally negative models of kingship. One is the powerful ruler whose hubris causes him to exceed his capabilities in attempting to acquire territories to which he lacks any claim, while the other is the usurper who violently seizes a kingdom and drives out a king to fulfil his own ambitions or to satisfy some private grievance, whether justifiable or not.