The Loose Ends
(NLC, 484-598; CA, II, 1310-1603)
Anthony J. Funari

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After Constance spends twelve years under Arsenius and Helen’s protection, King Alla journeys to Rome on the advice of Olda and Lucius.  The scene runs to nearly 1440 words, which I summarize here:

Having left Edwyn, his son and heir apparent, in charge of the kingdom, Alla makes a pilgrimage to Pope Pelagius, seeking absolution for his mother’s murder.  Before entering Rome, Alla sends Olda ahead to secure suitable accommodations.  Olda meets Arsenius, the senator of the city, and informs him of Alla’s coming.  When he relays the news to Constance and Helen, Constance swoons, which she explains as a mental weakness caused by her years at sea.  Learning that there will be a feast held for Alla’s arrival, Constance instructs Maurice to be by Alla’s side always and to attend to him.  During the feast, Alla notices Maurice’s resemblance to Constance and questions Arsenius about the boy’s background.  When he learns of the youth’s name and how he has come to be with Arsenius, Alla begins to suspect the truth.  After the dinner is concluded, Alla goes to Arsenius’s house and is reunited with his wife.  After spending forty days in Rome, Constance requests that Alla invite the emperor to dine with them.  Maurice is sent to extend the invitation in the name of Constance, whom the emperor presumes is still lost.  Tiberius accepts the invitation, and Constance greets him, holding both Alla and Maurice by the hands.  The emperor is so overcome with joy that he nearly falls off his horse.  After all of Constance’s adventures are recounted, and Maurice is named Tiberius’s successor.  Alla and Constance then journey back to England where, after nine months, Alla dies.  Constance then returns to Rome and comforts her father in his final hours.  Tiberius dies in Constance’s arms, and Maurice assumes the emperorship as “Maurice the Christian Emperor.”

Gower’s revision of the scene, which occurs in approximately 1745 words, is summarized as such:

After having concluded his wars with the Picts, Allee decides to take a pilgrimage to Rome for absolution.  He leaves his lieutenant and heir apparent, Edwyn, in charge of the kingdom.  As he nears Rome, Allee sends Elda ahead to prepare for his arrival.  When Arcenne relays the news of Allee’s coming, Constance swoons.  At the feast, Allee notices Moris, whom Constance has instructed to stand by him, and learns of the boy’s background and the name of his mother, Couste, which Allee recognizes as Saxon for Constance.  After being reunited with his wife, Allee begins to question Constance about her family background.  In response, Constance requests Allee to invite the emperor to dine with them.  As they go out to greet Tiberie, Constance requests that her husband and son stay behind while she meets her father alone.  Tiberie is awed to find his daughter still alive.  After a brief period, Constance and Allee return to England, where Allee dies after an unspecified amount of time.  Constance returns to Rome and cradles her father as he also passes away.  Moris then becomes the emperor.

Although the resolutions of the two versions of Constance’s tale are generally similar, Gower departs from Trevet’s chronicle of the tale in significant ways.  Gower directs the focus of his version more on Constance, is vague regarding the reason for Allee’s seeking absolution, and recasts Edwyn as Allee’s lieutenant rather than his son.

Gower’s revision of the conclusion of Constance’s tale appears to be more concerned with Constance rather than with Moris.  First, there is Gower’s handling of Allee’s suspicions after having heard Arcenne’s account of Moris’s past.  Whereas Trevet presented Alla’s suspicions as being based on Maurice’s name, his resemblance to Constance, and Arsenius’s words, Gower depicts Allee as more surprised by hearing the pseudonym that Constance adopts when arriving in Italy: Couste.  Although Trevet mentioned Constance’s pseudonym, he did not explain that the name Couste was the same as Constance.  Instead, Trevet simply claimed that Couste was the name given to her by the Saxons.  Gower, however, indicates that Couste and Constance are the same name: “For Couste in Saxoun is to sein / Constance upon the word Romein” (CA, II, 1405-06).  Also, in Trevet’s account, Alla was never aware of the name of Maurice’s mother.  For Gower, in contrast, Constance’s name is the most important piece of evidence in Allee’s realization that his wife is Moris’s mother.  Second, another of Gower’s departures from his source is the king’s prying into Constance’s lineage.  After the reunion with Constance, Allee questions her as to “hire astat” (CA, II, 1452) and “what contre that sche was bore” (CA, II, 1453).  His inquiries into Constance’s past are the impetus for her requesting Allee to hold a feast and invite the emperor.  Trevet, on the other hand, did not have Alla so concerned with his wife’s past.  Alla never questioned Constance about her lineage.  Finally, Trevet and Gower handle Constance’s reunion with her father very differently.  In Trevet, as Constance went to greet her father, she did so holding her son and husband by the hands.  In Gower, Constance requests that Allee and Moris stay behind while she goes to greet her father alone.  The main focus for Gower is on Constance’s reunion with her father instead of the emperor’s knowing that he now has an heir.

Why does Gower direct the focus of the conclusion more on Constance than on Moris?  One explanation is the different purposes of each writer for the story.  While Trevet was more interested in presenting a historically oriented account of Constance’s tale, Gower’s intention is to write a morality tale.  This explanation is also supported by the final lines of each work: whereas Trevet chronicled the date of Alla’s, Tiberius’s, Constance’s, and Olda’s deaths and the location of their graves, Gower ends with an admonition against lying. Gower’s is a moral tale, not a history.

Gower’s conclusion diverges in another small, yet interesting, way from his source: Allee’s motivation for his pilgrimage to Rome.  In Trevet, Alla journeyed to Rome on the advice of both Lucius and Olda to seek absolution from the pope for having murdered his mother.  In contrast, Gower does not ascribe any direct reason for Allee’s pilgrimage.  Gower provides only a vague reference to Allee’s desire for a spiritual restoration: “And thoghte he wolde be relieved / Of Soule hele upon the feith / Which he hath take” (CA, II, 1312-14).  Later, during Allee’s interview with Pope Pelage, Gower again is obscure in citing what is plaguing Allee’s conscience, claiming that Allee told the pope “al that he cowthe agrope, / What grieveth in his conscience” (CA, II, 1356-57).  This omission on Gower’s part raises the possibility that there might be other sins that Allee is hoping to have absolved.  What other reasons could Allee have to make such a long and hazardous trek from Northumberland to Rome?  The answer to this question rests in the context in which Gower presents Allee’s decision.  While Trevet had Alla’s war with the Picts conclude prior to his murdering of Domild, Gower indicates that the war ends just before Allee decides to go to Rome.  Although this change may seem trivial, the different chronology of the tale suggests the possibility that Allee is seeking absolution for sins committed during the war: his killing of the Picts.  If Gower only provides the reader with Allee’s need for spiritual renewal and the juxtaposition of the war’s conclusion and his decision to make a pilgrimage to Rome, Allee’s motivation seems to be in some way related to the recent war.  Gower’s changes place in doubt the assumption that Allee is making his pilgrimage because of his mother’s murder.

Why does Gower alter the reason for Allee’s journey to Rome?  One explanation is that Gower does not present Allee’s murdering of Domilde as a sin.  There is an extreme brutality in the way Trevet depicted Domild’s death that is absent from Gower’s tale.  In Trevet, Alla confronted and dismembered his mother in the privacy of her bedchamber, while Allee’s execution of his mother is more public, with his men casting Domilde into a fire.  There is a sense in which Allee’s killing of Domilde is justified for Gower, indicated by the public sanction given: “Wherof these othre . . . / Sein that the juggement is good” (CA, II, 1294-96).  Also, the state of mind that Alla was in when he committed the murder is different from Allee’s.  Trevet described Alla as “homme hors de sen” [“a man out of his mind”] (NLC, 424), while, in contrast, Allee seems to be in complete possession of his faculties.  Allee’s killing Domilde is not based on uncontrolled rage, but rather warranted by the “tresoun of hire false tunge” (CA, II, 1299).  There is no reason for Allee to desire forgiveness for an obviously justified execution.

A third important difference between the two versions of the tale concerns Edwyn, a character mentioned in only one line by both Gower and Trevet.  While Trevet identified Edwyn as Alla’s son, Gower recasts Edwyn as Allee’s lieutenant and heir apparent.  Although this slight change regarding a very minor character may be easily dismissed, Gower’s divergence from Trevet has significant implications.  I first would like to examine how Edwyn’s being Alla’s son affected Trevet’s version of the tale.  When Trevet introduced Alla, there was no mention of any prior marriage, nor is his age given.  The reader was left to assume that the king, who was still a bachelor, would have been a young man, possibly between twenty and twenty-five years old.  With the appearance of Edwyn, however, Alla was consequently much older.  To argue that Edwyn might be the offspring of subsequent marriage after Constance was sent away is untenable.  That is, since Alla and Constance had been separated for nearly twelve years, Edwyn, if he was the product of a later marriage, could have been no older than that.  It would then seem absurd for Alla to have placed Edwyn as his surrogate during his pilgrimage to Rome.  This indication of Alla’s greater age then made his death nine months after his return more credible.  Also, Edwyn’s being Alla’s son explains why Maurice did not return to England with his parents.  If it were assumed that Alla’s throne was based on primogeniture, then Edwyn would have been ahead of Maurice to inherit Alla’s throne.  Maurice would then have been free to be named Tiberius’s heir.  Also, Constance’s introduction of Maurice to his grandfather took on the added importance of securing for her son a future position, which may explain why she held his hand as she met Tiberius.

In Gower’s version, Edwyn being recast as Allee’s lieutenant alters the king’s past and complicates Moris’s assuming the emperorship.  Gower explicitly depicts Allee as a younger man than Trevet’s Alla.  Gower directly answers the question of whether Allee had been married prior to his union with Constance by referring to her as “his ferste wif” (CA, II, 1307).  Also, Gower provides a clear indication of Allee’s age in his reference to “his yonge unlusti lif” (CA, II, 1308).  Allee can be then estimated as being in his twenties.  In addition, Allee’s death at such a young age is less realistic—a flaw that Gower attempts to remedy by citing death’s power against which Allee “with al his retenance” (CA, II, 1576) could not defend.  Also, Edwyn becomes Allee’s heir apparent only after Moris is presumed to be lost.  Since Allee is reunited with his only son, does Moris then have a greater claim to the throne than Edwyn?  What is the fate of Allee’s kingdom?  If the same assumption is made that Allee’s monarchy is based on primogeniture, then Moris is heir to both the throne of Northumberland and Rome.  Gower mentions only how, on the royal couple’s return to Northumberland, Allee’s subjects rejoice to see Constance, who “was the confort of his lond” (CA, II, 1562).  Gower leaves the reader to presume that Moris abandons any claims he may have had in Northumberland in favor of the emperorship.

The best explanation for Gower’s alteration regarding Edwyn is that Allee’s love for Constance appears greater than in Trevet’s version.  In not presenting Allee as having been married before, Gower suggests a stronger connection between the two.  His relationship with Constance is not merely one of several marriages for Allee.  Also, Gower depicts Allee as being more grieved over his loss of Constance than Trevet’s Alla was.  After having avenged his mother’s treason, Allee forgoes any possible marriage until he learns of Constance’s fate.  Allee’s renouncing any marriages is even more significant now considering his youth.

Other alterations that Gower makes in the conclusion do not affect his version as profoundly.  For example, Trevet actually noted the date on which Constance was reunited with her father: the vigil of the feast of St. John the Baptist.  The reason for Gower’s omission of this detail is that, whereas Trevet was concerned with producing a historical account of Constance’s story, Gower is more interested in writing the narrative as a moral tale.  This is the same explanation for Gower’s leaving out the location of the major characters’ graves.  Also, Gower adds to the tale the detail that Constance is on a “Mule whyt” (CA, II, 1506) when she meets Tiberie.  Possibly this augmentation strengthens Gower’s depiction of Constance as a Christ-like figure.  Finally, while Trevet had Maurice named as Arsenius’s heir, Gower neglects to keep this detail.  This omission indicates that Gower is less interested in Moris than Trevet was.  These are minor details, though.  The significant alterations Gower makes in his version are that the tale focuses more on Constance, Allee has a noble reason for journeying to Rome, and Edwyn becomes Allee’s lieutenant instead of his son.

Originally Posted: April 4, 2006