As a matter of fact, the knightly way of life was forgot, which is a good thing for the image of the knightly way of life. The actual content of the tales of medieval chivalry, which were set in the 6th century and written between the 11th and the 13th, was not the stuff of a typical Broadway musical. The medievalist Richard Kaeuper tallied the number of acts of extreme violence in the most famous of these romances, the 13th-century Lancelot, and on average found one every four pages.

If the word saintly deserves a second look, so does the word chivalrous. The legends of knights and ladies in King Arthur's time have provided Western culture with some of its most romantic images. Lancelot and Guinevere are the archetypes of romantic love, Sir Galahad the embodiment of gallantry. Camelot, the name of King Arthur's court, was used as the title of a Broadway musical, and when word got out after John F. Kennedy's assassination that he had enjoyed the sound track, it became a nostalgic term for his administration. Kennedy's favorite lines reportedly were "Don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot / For one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot."

Beyond these readily enumerable acts there are reports of three private wars (with, in one case, 100 casualties on one side, and with 500 deaths with poison in another)… In one [tournament], to provide the flavor, Lancelot kills the first man he encounters with his lance and then, sword drawn, "struck to the right and the left, killing horses and knights all at the same time, cutting feet and hands, heads and arms, shoulders and thighs, striking down those above him whenever he met them, and leaving a sorrowful wake behind him, so that the whole earth was bathed in blood wherever he passed."

Limiting ourselves to quantifiable instances, at least eight skulls are split (some to the eyes, some to the teeth, some to the chin), eight unhorsed men are deliberately crushed by the huge hooves of the victor's war-horse (so that they faint in agony, repeatedly), five decapitations take place, two entire shoulders are hewn away, three hands are cut off, three arms are severed at various lengths, one knight is thrown into a blazing fire and two knights are catapulted to sudden death. One woman is painfully bound in iron bands by a knight; one is kept for years in a tub of boiling water by God, one is narrowly missed by a hurled lance. Women are frequently abducted and we hear at one point of forty rapes…

How did the knights ever earn their reputation for being gentlemen? According to Lancelot, "Lancelot had the custom of never killing a knight who begged for mercy, unless he had sworn beforehand to do so, or unless he could not avoid it."

As for their vaunted treatment of the ladies, one knight woos a princess by pledging to rape the most beautiful woman he can find on her behalf; his rival promises to send her the heads of the knights he defeats in tournaments. Knights do protect ladies, but only to keep them from being abducted by other knights. According to Lancelot, "The customs of the Kingdom of Logres are such that if a lady or a maiden travels by herself, she fears no one. But if she travels in the company of a knight and another knight can win her in battle, the winner can take a lady or maiden in any way he desires without incurring shame or blame." Presumably that is not what most people today mean by the word chivalry.