Ivanhoe
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50 free Ivanhoe trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Ivanhoe is the Walter Scott novel that turned the Middle Ages into a place people wanted to visit. Published anonymously in December 1819 as one of the Waverley novels, it left Scotland for 1190s England and gave the world the Disinherited Knight, the Black Sluggard, a Jewish physician on trial for witchcraft, and a cheerful outlaw called Locksley who has been Robin Hood ever since. These 50 questions follow the story from Rotherwood to the tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the siege and burning of Torquilstone, the witchcraft trial at Templestowe and the final trial by combat. They also cover how the book was made: the stomach pains that forced Scott to dictate the first half, the Buckinghamshire village and old rhyme behind the title, the Saxon name he accidentally invented, the historians and antiquaries he drew on, and the anachronisms critics have picked at ever since. The easy tier asks who wrote it and who the Black Knight really is; the expert tier wants the Templar's horse, the real Grand Master of 1194 and the man who wrote the Sullivan opera's libretto. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation. Play it alone or print it for a book-club night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which star played the moneylender's daughter in MGM's 1952 film of Ivanhoe?
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor thought the story shallow and her part too small, yet the film became MGM's biggest earner of 1952.
Q 02Which everyday job term is credited to Ivanhoe, where it meant a mercenary soldier?
Freelance
Freelance began as 'free lance', a medieval mercenary who fought for whoever paid; the novel has the earliest known use, where a mercenary captain speaks of offering the king 'the service of my Free Lances'.
Q 03Ivanhoe belongs to which series of novels by Walter Scott?
Waverley
Waverley, his first novel, appeared anonymously in 1814, so Ivanhoe, like most of its successors, was billed only as by 'the Author of Waverley' until he owned up in 1827.
Q 04In Ivanhoe, a jester jokes that livestock have Saxon names in the field but names from which language at table?
French
French: the ox becomes beef and the calf veal, he says, because Saxon serfs tend the animals and their Norman masters eat them.
Q 05What is the first name of Ivanhoe, the knightly hero of Walter Scott's novel?
Wilfred
Wilfred is 'of Ivanhoe' because the king gave him that manor; while he was away on crusade, the king's brother handed it to one of his own barons.
Q 06Why has Cedric disinherited his son before the action of Ivanhoe begins?
For courting his father's ward
For courting his father's ward: Cedric had other plans for her, a dynastic match meant to revive the Saxon claim to the English throne.
Q 07In Ivanhoe, whom does Cedric want his ward to marry?
Athelstane
Athelstane, nicknamed the Unready, cares more for his dinner than for a crown or a bride, and in the end he cheerfully gives up his claim to her.
Q 08In Ivanhoe, Cedric tells the Saxon pretender that he is 'descended of' which king's blood?
Harold Godwinson
Harold Godwinson, the king killed at Hastings, is the ancestor Cedric names as they sit in prison; elsewhere the novel calls the same man the heir of Edward the Confessor.
Q 09From which Crusade is Ivanhoe returning when the novel opens?
The Third
The Third Crusade ended in a truce that left Jerusalem in Saladin's hands, which is why the novel's knights drift home with so little to show for it.
Q 10Ivanhoe first appears in the novel disguised as what?
A palmer
A palmer was a pilgrim back from the Holy Land, named for the palm branch such travellers wore; the disguise lets Ivanhoe dine in his own father's hall unrecognised.
Q 11In Ivanhoe, which Jewish moneylender arranges the hero's horse and armour for the tournament?
Isaac of York
Isaac of York guesses that the stranger who saved him is a knight in need, and writes him a note of credit to a kinsman in Leicester, who supplies the gear.
Q 12Where is the great tournament held in Ivanhoe?
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Ashby-de-la-Zouch cashed in on the fame: tourists flocked to its ruined castle, and the owner patched up the ruins and opened a spa called the Ivanhoe Baths.
Q 13What uprooted tree is on Ivanhoe's tournament shield?
Oak
Oak: a young oak pulled up by the roots, with the motto 'Desdichado'. The novel glosses that as 'Disinherited', though the Spanish word really means unfortunate or unhappy.
Q 21In Ivanhoe, to which castle are Cedric and his captured party taken?
Torquilstone
Torquilstone was a Saxon lord's seat until a Norman baron stormed it and killed him and his sons; years on, the dead lord's daughter is still inside, waiting for revenge.
Q 22In Ivanhoe, which Norman baron holds the castle where Cedric's party is imprisoned?
Reginald Front-de-Bœuf
Reginald Front-de-Bœuf threatens to roast a prisoner over a charcoal grate unless he pays a thousand pounds of silver; fittingly, he ends by burning to death in his own castle.
Q 23In Ivanhoe, which Saxon crone, also known as Urfried, sets the castle ablaze?
Ulrica
Q 14Who presides over the great tournament in Ivanhoe?
Prince John
Prince John presides while scheming for his brother's crown, until a note from France reaches him at the lists: 'Take heed to yourself for the Devil is unchained!'
Q 15In Ivanhoe, whom does the Disinherited Knight choose as Queen of Beauty and of Love?
Rowena
Rowena receives the coronet from the tip of his lance, a pointed choice: he had just been pressed to honour the daughter of a Norman courtier instead.
Q 16Why is Ivanhoe's Black Knight nicknamed the Black Sluggard?
He hangs back
He hangs back from the fighting, fending off attackers without pursuing anyone, until his leader is surrounded; then he fells two champions in moments and slips away.
Q 17Who is the Black Knight finally revealed to be in Ivanhoe?
King Richard
King Richard gives his name first to a beaten enemy at the storming of the castle, whom he spares, and to his outlaw allies only after they save him from his brother's assassins.
Q 18In Ivanhoe, which skilled healer tends the hero's wounds after the tournament?
Rebecca
Rebecca treats him with a healing balsam, then talks her reluctant father into carrying the wounded knight home with them.
Q 19Which famous Robin Hood archery feat appears for the first time in Ivanhoe?
Splitting a rival's arrow
He also splits a willow reed with an arrow at the end of the tournament.
Q 20Under what name does Robin Hood go for most of Ivanhoe?
Locksley
Locksley, or Loxley, had been named as the outlaw's birthplace since at least the late 1500s; once the novel made it his name, 'Robin of Locksley' stuck for good.
Ulrica is the daughter of the castle's murdered Saxon lord; she fires it, taunts its dying master and perishes on a turret singing a wild pagan war-song.
Q 24In Ivanhoe, who enters the besieged castle disguised as a priest and changes places with Cedric?
Wamba
Wamba the jester bluffs his way in on two words of Latin, 'Pax vobiscum'; Cedric walks out in the priest's robe, leaving his fool behind as a hostage.
Q 25In Ivanhoe, what is the job of Cedric's faithful servant Gurth?
Swineherd
Swineherd Gurth wears a brass collar soldered round his neck that names him Cedric's born thrall; after the castle falls his master frees him with a gift of land, and Gurth shouts for a file.
Q 26In Ivanhoe, why does a Saxon lord presumed dead turn up alive at his own wake?
Monks wanted the funeral money
Monks wanted the funeral money, so when he woke in his coffin they drugged him and locked him up; the author later confessed he revived him only because his printer begged him to.
Q 27In Ivanhoe, which Templar Grand Master puts the Jewish heroine on trial for witchcraft?
Lucas de Beaumanoir
Lucas de Beaumanoir arrives unannounced to purge a lax preceptory, finds a Jewish woman lodged there and concludes that only sorcery could explain his best knight's obsession.
Q 28How does the Templar champion die in the trial by combat that ends Ivanhoe?
He collapses, barely touched
He collapses, barely touched by his exhausted opponent's lance: 'a victim to the violence of his own contending passions', says the narrator, and the Grand Master calls it the judgment of God.
Q 29At the end of Ivanhoe, where do the Jewish heroine and her father go to make a new life?
Granada
Granada, she says, because an uncle stands high with its king, Boabdil; a slip of some three centuries, since the real Boabdil lost the city in 1492.
Q 30Which of Robin Hood's band shelters the Black Knight for a night in Ivanhoe, trading songs over supper?
Friar Tuck
Friar Tuck poses as an ascetic living on dried peas and water, then, warming to his guest, pulls a huge venison pasty and a skin of wine from a hidden cupboard.