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The old woman
The unnamed queen, who is probably Guinevere out of Arthurian legend, wields most of the power in the kingdom: she orders the king to have mercy on the knight, and she dictates the terms of the punishment. The assembly of women gathered to hear the knight’s answer is reminiscent of the major arena that Theseus builds in “The Knight’s Tale”.
The queen Quotes in The Canterbury Tales
The The Canterbury Tales quotes below are all either spoken by The queen or refer to The queen. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Get the entire The Canterbury Tales LitChart as a printable PDF.
The queen Character Timeline in The Canterbury Tales
The timeline below shows where the character The queen appears in The Canterbury Tales. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
...The court is outraged, and according to law, the knight should be beheaded. But the queen and her ladies intervene to spare him, and King Arthur bows to his wife’s counsel....
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The knight and the old woman go to court, where a large audience of the queen and her maids is assembled, waiting to hear the knight’s answer. He tells them that...
(full context)
