Laudine

Laudine is a character in Chrétien de Troyes's 12th-century romance Yvain, or, The Knight with the Lion and all of its adaptations, which include the Welsh tale of Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain and the German epic Iwein by Hartmann von Aue.

Usually known as the Lady of the Fountain, she becomes the wife of the poem's protagonist, Yvain, one of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, after he kills her husband, but later spurns the knight-errant when he neglects her for heroic adventure, only to take him back in the end.

The lady Laudine's fountain, which magically generated a powerful storm when its water was poured into a nearby basin, was guarded by her husband, Esclados the Red, until his defeat by Yvain.

She provided her husband with a magic ring that protected true lovers from bodily harm and warned him not to be late; but Yvain, caught up in his chivalric quests, failed to come home on the agreed upon day.

After a resultant period of madness (spent as a wild man in the woods), Yvain engaged in a new series of adventures, fighting to aid others (such as the lion that gave him his nickname) rather than gain glory for himself, and eventually proved himself to Laudine, who accepted her husband back into her castle.