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Iseult was the daughter of King Anguish of Ireland who was the intended
bride of King Mark of Cornwall, but as a result of drinking a love-potion,
hopelessly enamoured of Tristan. When she heard of Tristan's death,
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| A 19th Century artist
conception of Iseult. |
she died of a broken heart. Her name is not Irish,
but derived from Ancient British Adsiltia (she who is gazed on). Attempts
to associate her with Chapelizod, Dublin, are due to a false derivation
of that place name.
Tristan and Iseult are second only to Lancelot and Guinevere as the great
lovers of the Arthurian legends. The story of their tragic love has
been the subject of numerous medieval and modern retellings. The medieval
versions of the story are sometimes divided into two branches, called the
courtly and the common versions. The former is represented by the Tristan
of the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas, which was written in the latter part of
the twelfth century. His version in turn influenced Gottfried von Strassburg,
whose Tristan, written in the first decade of the thirteenth century, is
one of the great romances of the Middle Ages, and the Old Norse Tristrams
saga (1226).
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