Iseult is the name of several characters in the Arthurian story of Tristan and Iseult

Tristan and Iseult

The legend of Tristan and Iseult is an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult...

. The most prominent is Iseult of Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, wife of Mark of Cornwall

Mark of Cornwall

Mark of Cornwall was a king of Kernow in the early 6th century. He is most famous for his appearance in Arthurian legend as the uncle of Tristan and husband of Iseult, who engage in a secret affair.-The legend:Mark sent Tristan as his proxy to fetch his young bride, the Princess Iseult, from...

 and adulterous lover of Sir 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...

. Her mother, the Queen of Ireland, is also named Iseult. The third is Iseult of the White Hands, the daughter of Hoel

Hoel

Hoel or Howel is a legendary king of Brittany and one of the oldest characters associated with Arthurian legend. He is the son of King Budic of Brittany, and serves as one of King Arthur's vassals and loyal allies...

 of Brittany

Brittany

Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

, sister of Sir Kahedin

Kahedin

Sir Kahedin is brother to Iseult of Brittany and the son of King Hoel of Brittany in Arthurian legend...

, and eventual wife of Tristan.

Iseult of Ireland

The Irish princess, Iseult of Ireland (also Iseult the Fair, La Bella Iseult), is the daughter of King Anguish of Ireland

Anguish of Ireland

King Anguish of Ireland is a mythological character in the stories of King Arthur. He is the father of Iseult, and one of Arthur's early enemies in the chronicles. After Arthur defeats him he acknowledges Arthur's supremacy, but later becomes embroiled in a conflict with King Mark of Cornwall...

 and Queen Iseult the Elder. She is a main character in the Tristan poems of Béroul

Béroul

Béroul was a Norman poet of the 12th century. He wrote Tristan, a Norman language version of the legend of Tristan and Iseult of which a certain number of fragments have been preserved; it is the earliest representation of the so-called "vulgar" version of the legend...

, Thomas of Britain

Thomas of Britain

Thomas of Britain was a french poet of the 12th century. He is known for his Old French poem Tristan, a version of the Tristan and Iseult legend that exists only in eight fragments, amounting to around 3,300 lines of verse, mostly from the latter part of the story...

, and Gottfried von Strassburg

Gottfried von Strassburg

Gottfried von Strassburg is the author of the Middle High German courtly romance Tristan and Isolt, an adaptation of the 12th-century Tristan and Iseult legend. Gottfried's work is regarded, alongside Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and the Nibelungenlied, as one of the great narrative...

 and in the opera Tristan und Isolde

Tristan und Isolde

Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...

by Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

.

Iseult is first seen as a young princess who heals Tristan from wounds he received fighting her uncle, Morholt

Morholt

In Arthurian legend, Morholt is an Irish warrior who demands tribute from King Mark of Cornwall until he is slain by Tristan, Mark's nephew and defender. He appears in almost all versions of the Tristan and Iseult story, beginning with the verse works of Thomas of Britain and Béroul...

. When his identity is revealed, Tristan flees back to his own land. Later, Tristan returns to Ireland to win Iseult's hand in marriage for his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. She is supposed to marry an evil steward who claims that he has killed a dragon, but when Tristan proves that it was actually he who slew the beast, Iseult's parents agree to marry her to Mark. On the journey back to Cornwall, Iseult and Tristan accidentally drink a love potion prepared for her and Mark by Iseult the elder and guarded by Brangaine

Brangaine

Brangaine is the handmaid and confidante of Iseult of Ireland in the story of Tristan and Iseult...

, Iseult's lady-in-waiting

Lady-in-waiting

A lady-in-waiting is a female personal assistant at a royal court, attending on a queen, a princess, or a high-ranking noblewoman. Historically, in Europe a lady-in-waiting was often a noblewoman from a family highly thought of in good society, but was of lower rank than the woman on whom she...

. The two fall hopelessly in love, and begin an affair that ends when Mark banishes Tristan from Cornwall.

In the verse tradition, the lovers do not meet again until Tristan is on his death bed (see below), but in the later 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 works based upon it, Tristan returns from Brittany and they resume their affair. Mark is much less sympathetic in these versions, and the adulterers eventually flee from his wrath. 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...

 gives them refuge in his estate Joyous Garde, and they engage in many further adventures. Additional episodes are integrated into the earlier sections of the narrative as well, including several involving the great Saracen

Saracen

Saracen was a term used by the ancient Romans to refer to a people who lived in desert areas in and around the Roman province of Arabia, and who were distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Middle Ages the term was expanded to include Arabs, and then all who professed the religion of Islam...

 knight 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...

' unrequited love for Iseult, and in some versions, the two even have children. In the prose versions, the lovers' end comes when Mark finds them as Tristan plays the harp for Iseult beneath a tree. The cruel king stabs his nephew in the back, and Tristan, at Iseult's request, fatally crushes his beloved in a tight embrace as his final act.

One of her rumored burial sites is Chapelizod

Chapelizod

Chapelizod is a picturesque Irish village preserved within the city of Dublin, Ireland. It lies in the verdant wooded valley of the River Liffey, on the way to the slopes of the Strawberry Beds, below the Phoenix Park. The village is associated with Iseult of Ireland and the location of Iseault's...

 in Dublin, Ireland.

Iseult of Brittany

After King Mark learns of the secret love affair between Tristan and Iseult, he banishes Tristan to Brittany, never to return to Cornwall. There, Tristan is placed in the care of Hoel of Brittany after receiving a wound. He meets and marries Hoel's daughter, Iseult, because she shares the name of his former lover. They never consummate the marriage because of Tristan's love for Iseult of Ireland.

During one adventure in Brittany, Tristan suffers a poisoned wound that only Iseult of Ireland, the world's most skilled physician, can cure. He sends a ship for her, asking that its crew fly white sails on the return if Iseult is aboard, and black if she is not. Iseult agrees to go, and the ship races home, white sails high. However, Tristan is too weak to look out his window to see the signal, so he asks his wife to check for him. In a moment of jealousy, Iseult of the White Hands tells him the sails are black, and Tristan expires immediately of despair. When the Irish Iseult arrives to find her lover dead, grief overcomes her, and she passes away at his side.

This death sequence does not appear in the Prose Tristan. In fact, while Iseult of the White Hands figures into some of the new episodes, she is never mentioned again after Tristan returns to Cornwall, although her brother Kahedin remains a prominent character.

Modern portrayals

• Iseult of Ireland (as Isolde) was played by Sophia Myles
  Sophia Myles
  -Early life:Myles was born in London. She is the daughter of Jane, who works in educational publishing, and Peter Myles, a retired Anglican vicar in Isleworth, west London. Her maternal grandmother was Russian, and she refers to herself as "half-Welsh, half-Russian". She grew up in Notting Hill,...
  
   in the 2006 film adaptation, Tristan & Isolde
  Tristan & Isolde (film)
  Tristan & Isolde is a 2006 romantic drama film based on the medieval romantic legend of Tristan and Isolde. It was produced by Ridley Scott and Tony Scott, directed by Kevin Reynolds and stars James Franco and Sophia Myles, with an original music score composed by Anne Dudley...
  
  .