Glitzy Celebrity Knights of the Middle Ages

William the Marshall at work.

Glitzy, celebrity knights -- it sounds like a Monty Python skit. In fact, as Nigel Saul argues in History Today, the cult of celebrity, which we think of as uniquely modern, likely began with the chivalric tradition. In particular, Saul singles out William the Marshall, a twelfth-century knight who excelled in medieval tournaments and who may have been the first celebrity. William had "that certain glitziness which underlies and informs a relationship between the celebrity and an admiring audience":

Each year he and his friends would make their way round the tourneying grounds of France, practising their fighting skills, gaining in experience and winning names for themselves as they went. The Marshal’s exceptional gifts brought him to the notice of Henry II’s son, Henry, the Young King (1155-83), whose service he entered and with whom he achieved great things.... The Marshal made a point of playing to win. Wherever he went he was ruthless on the field, mastering tactics (such as grabbing his opponent’s horse’s reins) that eluded others. On the death of the Young King in 1183 he gained a place in the service of Henry’s brother Richard -- Richard the Lionheart (r. 1189-99) -- and on the latter’s accession scooped up yet more rewards. In 1189 he was awarded the hand in marriage of Isabel de Clare, heiress of the earldom of Pembroke, one of the richest inheritances in the kingdom. A great landed magnate, he was now on the road that would take him to the regency of England on the accession of the young Henry III in 1216.

The key fact is that everyone loved William: He was "someone whose appeal to the public transcends the sum of his or her deeds and achievements and turns as much on their personality and personal story." "Celebrity," Saul writes, "was found in that taste for showmanship, that touch of populism which gave the person who attained it a lasting place in the hearts of an adoring public.... It was in the Middle Ages... that the public adoration of famous men first bordered on what today we would recognise as ‘celebrity.’"