Winning a tournament is the most frequent knight dedication to a lady of the heart. Besides her, military campaigns, serenades, recitation of verses, and even religious vows were also practiced.
Longing for knightly times, women actually have very vague ideas about who such a lady of the heart is and in what specific actions the loyalty of the knights was expressed. For some reason, there was an error that the wife should be the lady of the heart, however, dynastic marriages rarely assumed the love of the spouses, so any attractive woman could count on the title of a romantic lover, and the more inaccessible she was, the more enthusiastic the fans were. If we consider that the knights were warriors, then initiations were always closely connected with military affairs.
Feats of arms for a beautiful lady
Winning the tournament is one of the most common initiations, which at the same time did not go against the goals of the knight himself. The title of the winner of the tournament was already quite honorable, but if it was dedicated to a beautiful lady, the glory of the winner fell on all those involved. It is interesting that dedication of victory to the lady of the heart was often declared before the tournament, thereby the knight motivated himself not to lose. A kind of psychological technique worked well, because the knight believed that defeat would not only cover him with shame, but also harm the lady of the heart.
In fact, even the defeat turned out to be not so humiliating, because the lady of the heart will certainly be impressed when she finds out what serious wounds her faithful knight received in order to glorify her name.
However, if the victory in the tournament was more related to peculiar competitions, then participation in the war implied more serious costs and dangers. There are cases when the lady of the heart, encouraging her knight, supported his campaign financially. For the landless knights, the youngest sons of the nobles, this was sometimes the only way to get decent equipment.
