Courtly love tropes unquestionably informed Tudor spectacles, such as jousts and masques, as well as Henry VIII’s own propensity for disguises, Gristwood points out.

Courtly love may have seemed the apotheosis of gallantry; the political consequences were anything but. Indeed, the rituals of courtly love were used to break Anne.

Love and Marriage for Medieval Citizens. Posted: March 13, 2025 | Last updated: March 13, 2025. When most people think about medieval marriages they are either practical, cold, and loveless, or ...

Historian Gristwood (The Queen’s Mary) offers an engrossing look at how the Tudor dynasty employed the “stylish and stylised game” of courtly love.Popularized by medieval Arthurian legends ...

Soon, courtly love was popular enough to have its own genre of slightly creepy self-help guides, including one that offered a series of points on how the infatuated courtly lover should behave.

The origins for this marriage proposal tradition go back to the days of knights and courtly love. Medieval knights were known to bend the knee, which may have influenced modern-day marriage proposals.

When Courtly Love Goes Wrong, It’s Deadly In “Hunting the Falcon,” the historians John Guy and Julia Fox take a fresh look at an infamous Tudor marriage — and find there is indeed more to ...

On April 27, Boston Baroque presented a thrilling production of one of the gems of baroque opera, George Frideric Handel’s opera “Ariodante,” which is a tale of love’s triumph over evil ...