So, there was this young knight dude, and he was wandering around one day when he saw this super-hot damsel, and he said to himself, “I gots to get me some o’ that.”
So he raped her, ‘cause that’s how he rolled.
Then this damsel, who was not happy about bein’ raped, complained to King Arthur about it. King Arthur was all like, “Dude, you can’t just rape people. That’s not cool. Now I’m gonna have to put you to death or somethin’.”
Then the queen was all like, “You know what, honey, I’ve got this.”
She turned to the young knight dude, and she said, “Here’s what’s gonna happen. I’ll let you live, but there’s a catch. You’ve got to go on this quest for me. I’ll give you a year to figure out what all women want most. When the year is up, you have to come back here and tell me the answer. If all the ladies here agree with you, you’ll get off with a warning not to rape people in the future. I figure that if you can learn something about the ladies while you’re out on this quest, you’ll respect women enough to only engage in sex with mutual consent. However, if the ladies don’t unanimously agree with your answer, then you’re gonna die. Simple as that. Take it, or leave it.”
The young knight chose to take his chances with this quest thing. After all, that’s what knights are supposed to do, and there was absolutely no knight better at doin’ what he’s supposed to do than this one. (Except for the whole rape thing – that was not what he was supposed to do, but he understood that now.) So, the young knight dude got up on his horse and rode away.
Now, the young knight dude went along asking every woman he met what women wanted most. Some of them said they wanted jewelry, some said they wanted clothes, and some said they wanted hot boyfriends, and a lot of other things he didn’t care about.
This was no help! They weren’t coming up with just one answer. It was almost as if these women had their own minds and weren’t part of a homogenous collective. The ladies at King Arthur’s court were never gonna agree to any of these answers, especially since most of them appeared to be designed specifically to propagate misogynistic stereotypes, while the women of King Arthur’s court were forward-thinking individuals who valued the sisterhood of feminist principals.
When the time came for the young knight dude to return to the court and face the music, he was in deep despair over his failure to properly de-individualize women (despite the queen’s feminist intentions) by finding out what every, single woman wanted most.
As he made his way back to court, the young knight dude happened to see a bunch of naked women dancing around a fire. He decided he’d better go for a closer look. You know, just in case they could tell him what he needed to know.
And also to rape them.
But as he got closer, the naked women vanished, and, instead of hot naked chicks, he found an ugly, old lady. He figured she was worth a shot, so he explained his situation, and asked her what women wanted most.
The ugly old lady was all like, “Yeah, I know what women want most ‘cause I’m all old and stuff, so I know what’s up. I’ll tell you the answer, but you have to take me with you to the castle and promise to do me a favor later.”
The young knight said to himself, “How bad could it be,” so he promised to do her a favor.
The ugly old, lady told him the answer, and they rode off together.
The queen asked the young knight dude if he had figured out what women want most, and the knight said, “What women want most is to boss around their significant others.”
The queen and the ladies of the court got together and took a vote, and they decided that the young knight was right: they did all want to boss around their significant others.
The queen said to the knight, “Okay, we like the answer you gave. We were kind of hoping you wouldn’t come up with something good, so we could have you killed…but we have to admit that you’ve got a point. That means you get to live.”
Then the ugly, old lady came out of nowhere and was like, “Hey, I told him that answer, and he has to do me a favor!”
The young knight, though a rapist, was honest, so he introduced the ugly, old lady to the queen.
The queen asked, “So what kind of favor do you want from this knight?”
“I want him to marry me,” said the ugly, old lady.
Everybody was like, “WTF, old lady,” and the knight was like, “Marriage is not the same thing as a favor.”
The knight offered money and land and stuff, instead, but the ugly, old lady refused to take anything but his roamin’ hands and rushin’ fingers in marriage. The knight had two options: He could break his promise and no one would ever trust him again (as much as you can trust a rapist), or he could marry the old lady (I mean, who else is gonna marry a rapist?).
The knight decided that his honor (as a rapist) was more important than his happiness, so he decided to go through with it.
The rest of the court realized that, while it’s hard to root for a rapist, it was also kind of sad that this hot, young dude had to marry (and, presumably, sleep with) this ugly, old lady. Unsurprisingly, nobody was particularly happy on the wedding day. Except for the ugly, old lady, of course.
After the ceremony, the knight went off somewhere to pout, but at nighttime, he had to go to his room and face his new wife – a woman who looked old enough to be his great-great-grandmother. She asked him why he looked so sad, and why he was being so shy. “Are all of Arthur’s knights this hesitant to jump into the sack?”
“No,” he said. “I’m sad because you’re old, and I’m young. You’re ugly, and I’m smokin’ hot. You’re a commoner, and I’m a knight. I am totally better than you, but I’m totally stuck with you.”
The old lady said, “Hey, dude, you’re the rapist here, not me. Well, I guess I kind of am, but that’s not the point. I’m old, so I have a lot of experience. Yes, I mean that in a sexy way, but also, I’m wise and stuff. How else do you think I saved your life? You weren’t complaining about my age then. Also, I’m ugly, but none of your friends will ever hit on me, which is a plus. You won’t have to worry about me sleeping around, ‘cause nobody wants to sleep with me. Finally, being a knight hasn’t really made you a great guy, since you go around raping people. But I was nice enough to save your life, so I’m obviously the better person here.”
“You know what, you’re right,” the knight said. “I’m really sorry I’ve been acting like such a dick.”
The old lady said, “Now that you’re seeing reason, I have a proposition. I can be really young and hot if you want me to be, but you have to make a choice. Either, I can be hot and sleep with all your friends (and they’ll want to when I’m hot), or I can stay ugly and I won’t have the opportunity to cheat on you. Which is it?”
The knight, who by now knew what lesson he was supposed to have learned, said, “You know what, honey, you’re the boss. You decide.”
The old lady said, “So, let me get this straight. You are making me the boss in this family?”
“Right,” he said.
“Right answer,” the old lady said, and she changed into a total hottie. “Because you learned your lesson, and you’re letting me have my way, instead of having your way, like you did with that damsel (burn!), you get a wife who’s hot and not gonna sleep around.”
When the knight heard this, he shouted “Win!” And they all lived happily ever after. ‘Cause there is no one more deserving of a happy ending than a rapist and his crazy stalker.
Work Consulted
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Ed. Larry Benson, et al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin: 1986. 116-122. Print.
English Grad Students Explaining Stuff 