Black knight

For other uses, see Black Knight.

The black knight is a literary stock character who masks his identity and that of his liege by not displaying heraldry. Black knights are usually portrayed as villainous figures who use this anonymity for misdeeds. They are often contrasted with the knight-errant (white knight). The character appeared in Arthurian literature and has been adapted and adopted by various authors, in cinema and popular culture. The character is sometimes associated with death or darkness.

Black knight

Literature

• Arthurian legend: Several characters known as the Black Knight.
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott: Richard the Lionhearted poses as an unknown black knight to avoid detection while in England, fighting alongside Ivanhoe in a tournament and helping the assault on Front-de-Boeuf's castle.
• The Book of the Duchess by Geoffrey Chaucer^[1]
• Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans) by Friedrich Schiller (1801). The Black Knight appears as a wraith to warn Johanna (Joan of Arc) to cease her campaign to liberate France. Schiller himself offered the interpretation that it represented the ghost of Sir John Talbot.
• The GrailQuest series of adventure gamebooks by J. H. Brennan features a character known as the Black Knight in the first three books. In the first two, however, the character turns out to be King Pellinore. In the third book, the real Black Knight is the final enemy the reader must defeat in order to complete the adventure.
• Kato, the antagonist in Astrid Lindgren's Mio, My Son.

Film

• Monty Python and the Holy Grail features the Black Knight, who fights King Arthur while taunting him. Despite Arthur cutting all his limbs off, the Black Knight continues to taunt him without suffering any pain.^[2]
• Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion features a group of rebels who mask their identities under the name "The Black Knights". Their goal is to free Japan from the rule of the Holy Britannian Empire
• In Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, the Black Knight Ghost was one of the monsters brought to life by the Evil Masked Figure, this suit of armor once belonged to Dr. Jacobo's former business partner, Jeremiah Wickles.

Television

• The premiere episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, entitled "What a Knight for a Knight," features the Black Knight as its villain. A similar villain of the same name would appear later in an episode of The Scooby-Doo Show, entitled "Scared a Lot in Camelot."
• The Japanese tokusatsu series Seijuu Sentai Gingaman (the 22nd installment of the long-running Super Sentai series) features a hero named the Black Knight. The mantle of the Black Knight was originally held by the character BullBlack; after BullBlack's death, his powers were later transferred to the character Hyuga (the brother of Ryoma/GingaRed), who became the second Black Knight.
• In the Phineas and Ferb episode "A Hard Day's Knight", Ferb's grandpa Reginald tells the tale of the Black Knight of Worcestershire (or "Worcester-sheer" by others).

Video games

• In World of Warcraft, the Black Knight is a dungeon boss "Trial of the Champion". The game also features a sword of the same name.
• In Fortnite Battle Royale, the tier 70 Battle Pass outfit of Season 2 is the Black Knight.
• In Final Fantasy Tactics, the title belongs to the character Gaffgarion, while in the later released version Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, the job "Dark Knight" is a class the player's characters can choose later in the game.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, the Dark Knight job is a class that the player character can choose after starting the Heavensward story. In this game, the Dark Knights are antiheroic vigilantes who protect the downtrodden of Ishgard from its corrupt theocracy. They wield two-handed greatswords to purposefully prevent themselves from carrying shields, thus ensuring that they cannot bear heraldry.
• The Black Knight is one of the primary antagonists of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.
• In the Dark Souls franchise, Black Knights are hostile mobs whose armor was singed black (presumably from flame explosion or fighting fire-using demons) as they lost their liege, Lord Gwyn, who sacrificed himself to rekindle the First Flame.
• In RuneScape, the Black Knights are central antagonists in a number of quest lines and were the most powerful hostile NPCs in the game when it was first released.
• The pinball franchise Black Knight utilizes this character as its antagonist.
• Black Knight is the name of the Knight's final promotion in Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor when the Dark path is chosen. They are an evil counterpart to the Champion, equivalent in every aspect.
• In Shovel Knight, the Black Knight is one of the main antagonists, first facing off Shovel Knight in the beginning of the first level.
• A Black Knight makes an appearance in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a 14th-century simulation role-playing game, after being defeated in the Rattay Tournament. Another Black Knight is also featured in the game, acting as a primary antagonist and a member of the mercenary army of King Sigismund of Luxembourg.
• In Shrek Super Slam, the Black Knight features as a playable character, wielding a two-handed axe and speaking only in grunts.
• In Sonic and the Black Knight, the character appears as a major antagonist in the game's plot.
• In Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, the villain of the fourth chapter identifies herself as the Black Knight. She is later unmasked as Bentley's missing girlfriend, Penelope, who had betrayed him because she's convinced he's wasting his talent on Sly, and had built the armor to use as a disguise to hide her treachery from the Cooper Gang. In response, Bentley denounced Penelope as a sociopath, and destroyed her Black Knight armor in rage for deceiving him.
• In Dungeon Keeper 2, one of the creatures that can be attracted to the player's dungeon is a black knight.

See also

• Dark Knight (disambiguation)