The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle

[2] The author's name is not known, but similarities to Le Morte d'Arthur have led to the suggestion that the poem may have been written by Sir Thomas Malory.

Thomas Garbáty sees the poem as a humorous parody of the Arthurian legend, where Arthur is cowed by both the challenging knight and Ragnelle, "passing the buck" to Gawain.

[7] The story begins when the mystical knight Sir Gromer Somer Joure challenges King Arthur to discover what women desire the most, or face dire consequences.

King Arthur returns to Carlisle with his knights and it is not long before Sir Gawain pries from his uncle the reason for his sudden melancholy.

King Arthur explains to his nephew what happened to him in the forest and Sir Gawain, optimistically upbeat, suggests that they both ride about the country collecting answers to this tricky question.

In the forest he encounters an ugly hag on a fine horse, a loathly lady who claims to know the king's problem and offers to give him the answer to this question that will save his life, on one condition: that she is allowed to marry Sir Gawain.

With this answer King Arthur wins Gromer's challenge, and much to his despair, the wedding of Gawain and Ragnelle goes ahead as planned.

According to the poem, Ragnelle bore Gawain his son Gingalain, who is the hero of his own romance and whose arrival at King Arthur's court and subsequent adventures are related, possibly by Thomas Chestre, in the Middle English version of the story of The Fair Unknown, or Lybeaus Desconus [10] (although in this and most other versions of the story, Gingalain's mother is a fay who raises him ignorant of his father).

For example, Dame Ragnelle behaves appallingly at the Wedding feast, offending the onlookers; however, because she is now married to a knight, she must be considered better than the population regardless of her atrocious manners.

She strategizes with Gawain to marry into a more desired class with a title, at which point she no longer needs to regain her family's land which would have gone straight to the male heir, Gromer, regardless.