Percival

In British legend, one of King Arthur's knights, particularly associated with the quest for the Holy Grail. Based on the Welsh hero Peredur, he first appeared in Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval, ou le conte du Graal (c. 1190).

Brought up in a Welsh forest by his widowed mother, a chance meeting with some knights prompts his departure for Arthur's court. Later he is knighted, falls in love with Blanchefleur, and encounters the wounded Fisher King. His failure to ask about the lance and Holy Grail which he sees during dinner with the Fisher King lead to destruction and suffering.

His story, incomplete in Chrétien de Troyes's work, inspired various elaborations by later writers. In Manessier's continuation of Chrétien's poem, in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (which inspired Wagner's opera), and in the Didot Perceval he achieves the Grail quest, while in another prose romance, Perlesvaus, he delivers the Grail Castle from a hostile king.