THE LEGEND of Artegall shows interventionist equity doing what it does best – intervening – in situations where each of the parties in dispute has a justifiable basis in one or another of the various codes (natural, divine, human) governing civil life. However, this kind of interventionism costs Artegall, like his sometime-antecedent Lord Grey, a good deal of trouble. Prematurely recalled by Gloriana from the ‘saluage Island’, Artegall is harassed by a pair of hags, Envy and Detraction, and set upon by the Blatant Beast. The cause of their onslaught, beyond the inherently malicious disposition of such figures, is not explored in Book V, but we may surmise that something about Artegall's conduct has rendered him vulnerable. His fault may lie in his very interventionism itself – at once the basis of his authority and the means of its subversion.