The Knight's Tale
Part 1
The Greek hero Theseus rocks home after going on some kickass hero adventures that the Knight says he's not going to get into because he already has the second-longest story in this book.
Anyway there's a bunch of women crying on the street, and hero Theseus is kind of annoyed because they're ruining his parade. But he talks to them anyway, if only to move the plot forward. They say, well, our husbands died trying to defend Thebes when it was sieged, and the guy who sieged it isn't giving their bodies back so we can bury them properly.
Theseus says okay, I'm bored already, and I'll take any excuse to leave this conversation and go to war. So he does, dropping his wife and her sister at an Airbnb in Athens on the way.
Being Theseus, he kicks ass. We don't hear about this in detail either though because SOMETHING needed to be left on the cutting room floor.
While his soldiers are heroically looting the corpses, they find two guys who are only mostly dead. These are Palamon and Arcite, say some locals; they're nobility, and also cousins. Theseus says, cool, uh, I guess just take them to Athens so they can be prisoners forever.
Years go by, supposedly. Except we cut over to the sister-in-law, who I guess got left behind in Athens? Because she's still there for entirely unexplained reasons. Her name is Emely, and she has golden blonde hair and fair skin despite supposedly being Greek.
She's out Disney princess-ing in the garden when Palamon sees her during his yard time. He's like, Aw damn!
Arcite says, whoa, everything okay?
Palamon goes, definitely. That lady? She is fine, and I want to marry her.
Arcite looks, and says damn, she IS fine, and I want to marry her too.
Palamon says, for real? You're my cousin, so you're supposed to back me up, not betray me like this. Besides, I called dibs.
They bicker back and forth for a bit, but nobody really wins because they realize it's futile because they're going to be in prison forever.
Except that's not the case. Theseus gets visited by a childhood friend, and the Knight is like, yeah, these two are so tight that when one dies the other goes to the Underworld looking for him. That story is wicked metal, but I'm not telling it now either.
Anyway this friend is a mover and shaker in Thebes, and he asks Theseus to let Arcite go. Not his cousin and equally-noble Palamon though, he isn't even mentioned. To this, Chaucer says, look, are you going to question every single plot device, or are you going to let me set up this story?
So Theseus sends Arcite back to Thebes, with the stipulation that if he ever shows up here again, Theseus will have his head cut off. But Arcite is actually distraught; he wishes he were Palamon because Palamon can still see Emely and HE can't, and he whines about it for a bit because he's nobility, it's not like he has real problems.
Meanwhile, Palamon is whining wishing he was Arcite because he's a free man again, while Palamon's stuck in prison, and if HE were the one who was free he'd march an army on Athens just to take Emely away. Which does not sound very emotionally stable but it did work for Menelaus in the Iliad, so there's that.
Part 2
Arcite goes home to Thebes, where he basically spends all day every day pouting about this woman he never met, to the point where he's not eating and his appearance is drastically altered.
He's such a tortured emo boy about it all that eventually the god Mercury comes to visit him in a dream saying, shit, if you're just going to sit around here and act like death all day then you may as well go back to Athens and risk being beheaded because it has to be better than this. Arcite says, wow, that's a great idea I just had, but I'd better go dressed as a pleb and use a fake name because I am decidedly not welcome there.
This plan works, and even though he takes work as a laborer, he's so well-spoken and well-liked he eventually works in Theseus's house, and even becomes a squire to Theseus, so he's not that far removed from Emely anymore.
Meanwhile, Palamon has had zero help from any convenient childhood noble friends or deities, so he's spent seven years in prison becoming ever more run-down. Then he realizes one of the Skyrim potions he's been hoarding all this time is actually opium, so he drugs the guard and makes a break for it one night.
His plan is to go home to Thebes, raise an army, come back to Athens, kick out Theseus, and take Emely. Or die trying, which is more likely, but even just trying to win the lady has to be worth it. Conspicuously absent is any question over whether the armed conflict would be worth it for all the other guys who would end up dying, but also, c'mon, the Iliad already answered that. Probably. Admittedly I'm a little fuzzy on the details because every time I think of it I remember that goddamn chariot race at the end and I get pissed off all over again.
Anyway, Palamon needs to lay low for a bit before he can book a flight back to Thebes, so he hides in the woods outside Athens.
One day, Arcite decides to use his copious free time to have a fun little jaunt through the same woods that Palamon is hiding in. Palamon, not recognizing his cousin and fearing he's going to get caught, stays hidden. But Arcite begins reflecting out loud about the series of events that led to here, to be serving his mortal enemy Theseus, and on top of that he can't even use his real name, which by the way, empty woods, is Arcite, and also he needs to clearly emphasize that he's doing it all for Emely.
Palamon, furious at this, leaps out and attacks Arcite, but Arcite brought a sword into the woods today, so there's not much Palamon can do besides verbally berate Arcite because, again, he saw Emely first, that's how it works, everybody knows this.
Arcite says, fine, we can fight over the girl, but because I'm a nice guy, we'll do it tomorrow, and I'll send over food and armor and crap tonight so we're basically on even footing if you don't count that you've been wasting away in a prison the past couple years.
The morning comes, and the two meet in the woods and start whacking at each other with swords.
Meanwhile, Theseus decides he wants to go on a hunt, and he brings everybody, including his wife and Emely. Naturally, he runs right into Arcite and Palamon fighting. Chaucer takes the time to blame this coincidence on the gods, thereby absolving himself of any claims of bad writing.
Theseus breaks up the fight, and Palamon immediately spills the beans about everything, including how they both fancy Emely. Theseus is about to have them executed for escaping prison/returning to Athens, but the ladies plead for the two of them, pointing out that they only did it for love.
Theseus realizes that, yeah, these guys had every opportunity to go home and live like kings, and instead they're here killing each other over a woman, so they're really nothing more than harmless idiots. So he announces, okay, these guys are my friends now, and they shall no longer be persecuted for whatever the heck their crimes were to begin with.
BUT, obviously they need to sort out who gets the girl, so Theseus tells them, there's less barbaric ways to do this than killing each other in the woods. Instead, both of you go away, I don't care where. A year from now, both of you come back here with a hundred dudes, and THEN you can kill each other and see who wins.
Part 3
The first half of Part 3 describes the big-ass arena that Theseus built. It's so big it has three temples around the outside. One temple is for Venus, which is supposedly full of art depicting every different type of love, but which is very obviously just pornography.
Another temple is for Mars, with art depicting lots of violence and war and strife. There's even paintings of Roman emperors like Julius Caesar getting ganked and stuff, with the book acknowledging that this art is so good that it's depicting scenes that, in the timeline of the story, haven't even happened yet.
The third temple is for Diana. While the other two gods get domain over abstract concepts that are representative of the human condition, Diana is basically the goddess of female empowerment. Of course, nobody in their society actually knows what this looks like, and scrying a thousand years or so into the future doesn't turn up any hits either, so the art in this temple is basically depicting all the stories where Diana gets perved on by creepy entitled men.
Anyway the year passes by and Palamon and Arcite each rock back up to Athens with a hundred of the mightiest and best-outfitted warriors who were willing to join up, which was actually not hard because the ranks include multiple kings who are like, yeah, I'm unreasonably excited to give up my life of being a goddamn king to go fight and probably get stabbed by a spear for the sake of this petty feud because somebody hard-sold me on the concept of "glory".
The night before the battle, Theseus throws the best rager ever, you just had to be there.
But before sunup, Palamon finds himself awake, so he goes to the temple of Venus to pray. He says, okay look, I don't even really want to do this stupid fight, I just want the girl. I'll go get stabbed for glory if I need to, but if you have any pity for me, just let me have her instead. The shrine of Venus shakes, and Palamon takes it for a good sign.
Right at dawn, Emely pops out for a bit of prayer too; she goes to the temple of Diana. She says, okay, look, I'm actually quite happy with how things are already, thank you, and if it's all the same to you, I'd really rather just never get married or have kids. I get that I'm a woman during the classical Greek era and I have zero say in anything, but like, if I HAVE to marry one of them then at least make it the one who wants it more; but really, I'd rather just do my own thing and be my own person, and if anybody understands that and could possibly help me then surely it's you.
Then Diana actually no joke full-on shows up in the temple.
And she says, yeeeah, so, the heavens decided you're going to have to marry one of them, but I can't tell you which. So, uh, okay bye.
Finally it's just after sunrise and Arcite gets his turn. You don't need me to tell you that he goes to talk to Mars; and he says, man, we're fighting over this stupid girl, and she doesn't even really know who I am, and she never will unless I win this fight, so I guess I want you to make sure I win this fight. And he hears the the earth rumble the word "victory", so he takes that as a pretty good sign.
Up in the heavens, Venus and Mars argue about how to resolve this, and Jupiter is too hung over to deal with it... but wise old Saturn has a solution.
Part 4
It's the day of the battle, and the whole city has come out to watch some blood sport today. The hooting and hollering from the crowd wakes Theseus, who, apropos of nothing, announces that actually, he had a bit of a think about this, maybe we shouldn't encourage all our nobility to ruthlessly murder one another. But he did promise everyone a fight, so he figures, you can still try to maim and kill each other, but instead of burying a knife into your foe's jugular when you down him, just drag him back to your corner of the arena, and he's considered "out". Isn't that benevolent of me?
Everyone agrees that it is, so the fight starts and the knights go on maiming each other anyway. It's bloody and visceral in much the same way as the Iliad, except it's also a lot shorter and Chaucer knows better than to name every asshole who's about to get shanked in five seconds.
The fight, of course, is incredibly even, and neither Palamon nor Arcite can get the better of each other at first. After a long while, Arcite is finally able to get twenty of his guys to drag Palamon kicking and screaming over to his corner of the arena, at which point Theseus stops the fight and declares Arcite the winner.
Arcite understandably does a couple victory laps around the arena on horseback. He removes his helmet to look upon Lady Emely… and in that moment, his horse spooks and bucks him off, sending him crashing headfirst into the ground.
The doctors try to cure the head wound with leeches and cupping. This goes about as well as you'd expect, so in a couple days Arcite calls in the rest of the named characters and says, ah, I know I just spent the last year of my life raising a miniature army to kill my cousin over a petty squabble, but actually Emely, he's an okay guy, and he'd be a good husband if you ever got the chance to marry him. Then he dies.
Theseus says, alas, we will need to think of some place to lay him to rest. Oh, I've got it! That glade in the woods where he and Palamon fought for love a year ago? I can't think of a more lovely, fitting place. Anyway, go there and chop all the trees down to build a funeral pyre.
There's a funeral, and a lot of paragraphs of people being sad. Then there's a paragraph where Chaucer mentions something about a wrestling match taking place, but he decides not to go into it after Skep gives him a dirty look because we are NOT having another chariot race incident.
Years later, the city-states of Greece are going through their Christmas card lists and trying to sort out their alliances. The people in charge of Athens are like, hey, what about Thebes? How do we get them on side?
Theseus says, I have an idea. And he invites Palamon back over to his place.
Theseus goes on a little monologue about the nature of life and death or some nonsense like that, honestly I kind of skimmed that part. Then he says, look, Palamon, why don't you marry my sister-in-law Emely like you always wanted, our cities become allies, and everybody is happy.
So they did, and they were.
Here ends the Knight's Tale.