Character Analysis
Tristram makes a significant appearance in only one Idyll, “The Last Tournament,” where he behaves, well, badly.
The winner of a disastrous tournament marked by an embarrassing display of dishonor, he slights the ladies of Arthur’s court and breaks with tradition by refusing to grant the title of Queen of Beauty to one of them. Uh oh. Not good.
Plus, Tristram openly questions the idealism of Arthur’s court. When Lancelot implies that Tristram should not have won the tournament because he is not “pure,” he responds that strength and skill, not purity, determine victory. He questions Arthur’s authority to hold men to vows, especially those that run counter to the sensual desires of human nature.
He names himself “pulsing full man” (687), and gives in to those “manly” desires in his illicit love for Isolt. Tristram even questions the permanence of that love, though, believing that we “love but while we may” (706). In other words, love is the fleeting emotion of an instant, not the solemn bond and commitment that Arthur believes it to be.
Tristram’s dark skepticism calls into question all of the beliefs upon which Arthur’s order of knighthood is founded. The brutal throat-slitting that he endures at Mark’s hands is merely a confirmation of Tristram’s perception of life as brutish, nasty, and short, and that all men are ruled by their passions.