As I discuss in my Introduction, one of the larger contributions of this study is its revision and rehabilitation of the traditional reading of the romance heroine as a passive and vulnerable figure. I contend that these characters and the romances in which they appear actually modeled a particularly far-reaching and powerful form of cultural agency in the late Middle Ages through various interventions in social and political systems such as patronage. However, in tracing the active forms of intellectual and financial influence demonstrated by the heroine in late medieval romances, we must avoid reading the male figures in these texts – those who are patronized – as passive recipients of female sponsorship. The knights who benefit from women's influence in these texts may be incorporated into the process of patronage without their initial consent, as in Partonope of Blois, and often must struggle to get a word in edgewise, as in Amoryus and Cleopes. However, the lessons provided by the influential models in these romances are not only for the benefit of the female readers in the audience; male readers of these texts may also glean productive models of behavior as well. In order for the patronage system to be successful, men must both recognize and value the counsel and support of the women who seek to advise them. Moreover, they must understand that the system is predicated on the need for acts of sponsorship to be perpetuated; what they learn from their female sponsors they must enact in their own chivalric careers.