Just as there were tourneys and tournaments in Narnia, surely there were jousts, which were part of King Lune’s future plans for Corin as relayed by Mr. Tumnus.  I quoted the passage in last week’s Worldbuilding Wednesday, then realized Tumnus didn’t mention a tourney, only tilting and jousting. But these skills were honed and practiced at tourneys, or more likely behourds, which was a tourney meant just for knights-in-training and squires.

Jousting was undoubtedly the most exciting event at a tourney. Fully armored knights, dressed in their finest tourney silks and armed with shields and lances, charged at each other down a long, straight course. At first the charge was freeform; later on combatants were separated by a tilt, which could be a fence, rope, or delineation of fabric of equal length so they didn’t wander off course. Lances hit helms or shields, and BOOM! anything could happen. Knights could be knocked off, shields and lances splintered, horses fallen and injured, and competitors maimed for life. King Henry VIII of England was famously unhorsed in a 1536 joust in an impact so violent his fully armored mount (likely a Percheron-type breed, ouch) fell on him too, crushing his legs and knocking him unconscious. The accident was catastrophic for the king. It caused painful ulcers on his legs and slowly declining health for the once-vigorous monarch, as well as personality changes that influenced later history for the worse.

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In the later years of royal tourneys knights were elaborately outfitted for their duels

Tourneys, tournaments, and jousts are mentioned several times in the Chronicles. The first time is in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in which Caspian mentions a tourney the Duke of Galma arranged for his visit. The second occurs in The Horse and His Boy, when Mr. Tumnus tells Cor (who he thinks is Corin) of the time he will be allowed to attend a tourney: ” [ … ] you are promised your first suit of armour and your first war horse on your next birthday. And then your Highness will begin to learn how to tilt and joust. And in a few years, if all goes well, King Peter has promised your royal father that he himself will make you Knight at Cair Paravel.”

Then, in the last book, Tirian regales Jill and Eustace with tales of Narnia’s more peaceful times: “He talked of whole centuries in which all Narnia was so happy that notable dances and feasts, or at most tournaments, were the only things that could be remembered, and every day and week had been better than the last.”

Daffy Duck takes a turn in the saddle

Those who grew up in Western culture are familiar with Medieval jousts and tourneys. There’s even been a chain of restaurants dedicated to the concept, where diners wear cardboard crowns at banquet tables, pulling apart roast chickens with their hands as knights battle in the dirt arena below them. Then there’s media depictions, from colorful movie spectacles like Ivanhoe and Robin Hood to Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The setting still has legs judging by the popularity of the late Heath Ledger’s A Knight’s Tale movie and HBO’s House of the Dragon, in which an unfortunate contestant has his face bashed to hamburger by a rival knight. Scholars of chivalry and romance literature know them too, the idea of a lovesick knight receiving a bauble from his ladylove which marks him as her champion.

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