Sir Dinadan is a Knight of the Round Table

Round Table (Camelot)

The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his Knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of...

 in Arthurian legend. He is the son of Sir Brunor Senior, the 'Good Knight without Fear,' and brother of Sirs Breunor le Noir

Sir Breunor

Sir Breunor le Noir, , nicknamed La Cote Mal Taillée by Sir Kay after his arrival in his murdered father's armor at King Arthur's court, is a character mentioned in Arthurian legend. He receives his knighthood after saving Guinevere from an escaped lion...

 and Daniel

Daniel von Blumenthal

Daniel von dem blühenden Tal is an Arthurian romance composed around 1220 by the Middle High German poet Der Stricker, who claimed he had received the story from a French troubadour...

. A close friend of Tristan

Tristan

Tristan is one of the main characters of the Tristan and Iseult story, a Cornish hero and one of the Knights of the Round Table featuring in the Matter of Britain...

, Dinadan is known for his good humor and joking nature. Unlike most other knights in Arthurian romance, Dinadan prefers to avoid fights and considers courtly love

Courtly love

Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....

 a waste of time, though he is a brave fighter when he needs to be. In one notable exploit, he writes a slanderous ballad about King Mark and sends a troubador to play it at Mark's court. In another, he loses a joust

Jousting

Jousting is a martial game or hastilude between two knights mounted on horses and using lances, often as part of a tournament.Jousting emerged in the High Middle Ages based on the military use of the lance by heavy cavalry. The first camels tournament was staged in 1066, but jousting itself did not...

 when Lancelot

Lancelot

Sir Lancelot du Lac is one of the Knights of the Round Table in the Arthurian legend. He is the most trusted of King Arthur's knights and plays a part in many of Arthur's victories...

 catches him off guard by wearing a dress over his armor; Lancelot then puts the dress on his unconscious opponent.

He is more sociable than most of the knights, and is often a useful companion because of it. In Le Morte d'Arthur

Le Morte d'Arthur

Le Morte d'Arthur is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table...

, he is one of the few knights to be able to recognize his fellows from their faces in addition to their shields; in one instance Tristan does not recognize his own King until Dinadan tells him who it is.

Like Palamedes

Palamedes (Arthurian legend)

Palamedes is a Knight of the Round Table in the Arthurian legend. He is a Saracen pagan who converts to Christianity later in his life, and his unrequited love for Iseult brings him into frequent conflict with Tristan...

 and Lamorak

Lamorak

Lamorak is a Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend. He is the son of King Pellinore and the brother of Tor, Aglovale, Percival, the Grail maiden Dindrane and sometimes others....

, Dinadan was an invention of the Prose Tristan

Prose Tristan

The Prose Tristan is an adaptation of the Tristan and Iseult story into a long prose romance, and the first to tie the subject entirely into the arc of the Arthurian legend...

, and appeared in later retellings including the Post-Vulgate Cycle

Post-Vulgate Cycle

The Post-Vulgate Cycle is one of the major Old French prose cycles of Arthurian literature. It is essentially a rehandling of the earlier Vulgate Cycle , with much left out and much added, including characters and scenes from the Prose Tristan.The Post-Vulgate, written probably between 1230 and...

 and Sir Thomas Malory

Thomas Malory

Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur. The antiquary John Leland as well as John Bale believed him to be Welsh, but most modern scholars, beginning with G. L...

's Le Morte d'Arthur.

Dinadan is nearly always portrayed as the wittiest of all of Arthur's Knights. In Le Morte d'Arthur (Book 10, chapter 56), he is visiting the court of Cornwall seeking his friend Sir Tristan, and has supper with Queen La Beale Isoud. Here he reveals that he has (by his own desire) no lady-love or paramour in whose name to do great deeds. La Beale Isoud chides him for this, saying that it is a shame for him not to have such a lady. But Dinadan replies; "God defend Me. For the joy of love is too brief; and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth overlong".
In both the stage version and film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe Musical "Camelot

Camelot

Camelot is a castle and court associated with the legendary King Arthur. Absent in the early Arthurian material, Camelot first appeared in 12th-century French romances and eventually came to be described as the fantastic capital of Arthur's realm and a symbol of the Arthurian world...

", Dinadan has what is arguably the funniest line in the show. Everyone takes an immediate dislike to Lancelot when he first arrives at Camelot, except Arthur. After Lancelot's initial introduction to the Court, when Lady Sybil says of him; "He's so poisonously good", Dinadan quips sarcastically; "He probably WALKED across the channel".