The Ambivalent Motif of Troy in the Dynastic Debate of Late Medieval England

This paper focuses on the uses of the Troy story for dynastic debate in late medieval England, with special attention to the transition from the Ricardian to the Lancastrian period. As the new dynasty sought to gather around itself the symbols of chivalric legitimacy –including the manuscripts and sometimes even the very "auctors" of the matter of Troy– the value of the classical inheritance was subverted and displaced. The paper first briefly describes the Troy world of the 1380s and 90s before moving on to a set of early fifteenth-century writers whose application of the Trojan motif to the new kings is variously voluntary or compelled, commissioned or cajoled into being –but is in all cases resistant to the theme of Lancastrian valor.