Knights Trivia
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60 free Knights trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This knights trivia quiz covers the mounted warriors of medieval Europe from their Carolingian beginnings to the honorary knighthoods handed out today. The easy questions are the ones every castle-visiting kid knows: the age a boy became a page, what a squire hoped to become, the horse a knight rode into battle, the sport of charging with lances and the sword tap on the shoulder. From there it moves through training, tournaments, heraldry, mail and plate armour, the great helm and the chivalric code. The harder end is for medievalists and pub-quiz specialists: the Old English word that simply meant 'boy', the pope who refused Christian burial to tournament casualties, the king killed jousting in 1559, the weight of a real suit of plate, William Marshal's trebuchet childhood, Ulrich von Liechtenstein's tour dressed as Venus, the falcon paid as rent for Malta, the Friday the 13th arrests of the Templars and why Sir Elton John is Sir Elton and not Sir John. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on knighthood, chivalry, jousting, armour and the military orders before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Knights Templar, medieval history and King Arthur quizzes next.
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Q 01'Knight' sounds noble, but its Old English ancestor, cniht, first named which humbler figure?
A servant
A servant: cniht meant a boy or attendant, and its German cousin Knecht still means a servant. Only around 1100 did the English word come to mean a lord's armed follower, and later a title of honour.
Q 02Under which ruler are the first knights generally said to have appeared, in the 8th century?
Charlemagne
Charlemagne's Frankish armies leaned on mounted warriors, and he rewarded the best with grants of land called benefices. Land in exchange for fighting on call stayed the knight's bargain for centuries.
Q 03Which piece of riding gear did historian Lynn White Jr. claim in 1962 had created the feudal knight?
The stirrup
The stirrup, White argued, let a lancer ride home a charge without being thrown, and so made the armoured knight possible. Historians have fought over the idea ever since, in what is known as the Great Stirrup Controversy.
Q 04What was the medieval Latin word for a knight?
Miles
Miles meant an ordinary soldier, usually on foot, to the Romans, and it gives us the word military. Medieval scribes reused it for the mounted knight at the top of the fighting order.
Q 05Which Spanish word for a gentleman began, like the French chevalier, by meaning a horseman?
Caballero
Caballero, like chevalier and chivalry, goes back to caballus, Latin slang for a nag or pack-horse that pushed aside the classical equus. A stable word ended up naming the gentleman.
Q 06From about the age of seven, a noble boy began his training for knighthood under which title?
Page
Page was the first rung: from about seven a boy waited on his lord and lady in hall, followed the hunt and learned the rudiments of arms. Every great household doubled as a school for future knights.
Q 07The word squire comes from the Latin scutarius, the man who carried a knight's what?
Shield
Shield-bearer is the literal sense: scutarius, from scutum, reached English through Old French as esquire and then squire. Esquire later drifted into a courtesy title for gentlemen who never saw a battlefield.
Q 08How many days of military service a year did a knight typically owe for his fief?
40
40 days was the customary limit, fine for a summer campaign but hopeless for a long siege or a crusade. Kings increasingly took a cash payment instead and hired soldiers who would stay.
Q 09A medieval knight who led his own company to war under a square flag was called a knight what?
Banneret
Banneret: he flew a square banner, while an ordinary knight carried a pointed or forked pennon. Later the rank became an honour, conferred on the battlefield for distinguished service.
Q 10The dubbing ceremony that made a man a knight is known by what name?
The accolade
The accolade survives: the kneeling subject is still touched on each shoulder with the flat of a sword. Only in the 19th century did the word stretch to mean any award or praise.
Q 11The colée, a rough French forerunner of the dubbing tap, was a hard blow to which part of the body?
The neck
The neck took a real blow from the hand or fist, by some accounts so that the new knight would never forget the day. In time the cuff softened into a light touch of the sword blade.
Q 12What did a would-be knight typically do the night before his knighting?
Keep a vigil after a ritual bath
Keep a vigil after a ritual bath: the candidate washed, then prayed in the chapel through the night. He was dubbed the next day, often as part of a wider celebration such as a royal wedding.
Q 13The Bayeux Tapestry shows William of Normandy giving arms to which future king?
Harold
Q 21To stamp out tournaments, the Church denied what to any knight killed in one?
A Christian burial
A Christian burial was what the Second Lateran Council of 1139 refused to any knight killed in a tournament. Its complaint was the needless deaths, yet a dying knight could still confess and take communion.
Q 22Which English king lifted his father's ban on tournaments but made knights buy a licence to hold one?
Richard I
Richard I allowed tournaments only under royal licence and charged knights a fee to take part. Kings were wary because so many armed knights gathered in one place could easily turn from sport to disorder or revolt.
Q 23A pas d'armes involved a knight doing what?
Harold receives arms from William after campaigning beside him in Brittany, a scene often read as a knighting, then swears an oath on holy relics. About two years later the pair fought for England's crown at Hastings.
Q 14What was the name of the prized war horse ridden by knights in battle and jousts?
Destrier
Destrier was the top of a knight's stable, a war horse kept for battle and the joust. For everyday travel he rode a gentler palfrey, and his baggage went on a sumpter, or pack horse.
Q 15A squire who proved himself in battle was said to have won his what, the gilded badge of a knight?
Spurs
Spurs of gilt marked a knight by the early 1200s, so winning them meant earning knighthood by a brave deed. At English ceremonies the royal cook warned he would hack them off any knight who broke the code.
Q 16Despite their towering screen image, bone studies suggest most medieval English war horses were about the size of what?
A pony
A pony is the closer picture: an Exeter-led study of English horse bones found most stood under 14.2 hands, about 4 ft 10 in. Size was not everything: huge sums went on breeding them, and armies needed mounts for long-range raids too.
Q 17Jousting sounds violent, but the Latin verb behind it, iuxtare, simply meant what?
To come together
To come together, or meet, is all iuxtare meant: it grew from iuxta, 'close beside', the root of juxtapose. In early use a joust was any arranged single combat, not only the charge with lances.
Q 18The death of which French king in a 1559 tournament accident helped end jousting in France?
Henry II
Henry II was struck in the eye by a splinter from the shattered lance of Gabriel de Montgomery, captain of his Scottish Guard, and died ten days later. The joust had been staged to celebrate a peace treaty with Spain.
Q 19In jousting, what was the 'tilt' that probably gave tilting its name?
A barrier between the two riders
A barrier between the two riders, first a hung cloth and later a wooden fence. Tilt was a Middle English word for a cloth covering or awning, the likely reason the fence and then the sport took the name.
Q 20What usually happened to a knight defeated in a tournament melee?
He gave his horse and armour to the winner
He gave his horse and armour to the winner, a costly loss when a knight's gear was worth a small fortune. Skilled fighters could make a career of the tournament circuit.
Holding a bridge and challenging passers-by
Holding a bridge and challenging passers-by was the whole game: any knight who wanted to cross had to joust first. In 1434 Suero de Quiñones and his companions held a bridge on the Camino de Santiago, vowing to break 300 lances.
Q 24What was a captured knight customarily held for, unlike common foot soldiers who were often slaughtered?
Ransom
Ransom made a captured knight worth a fortune alive and nothing dead, so men of rank were kept in reasonable comfort until the money arrived. Common foot soldiers carried no such price and were often killed instead.
Q 25Which weapon remained the symbol of a knight's status even as better armour made it less effective in battle?
The sword
The sword was blessed by a priest and used to dub its owner, so it stood for his rank long after improved armour began to shrug off its cuts. Against a heavily armoured opponent a mace or war hammer did far more damage.
Q 26The long tapering tail of the Norman kite shield is thought to have protected which part of a mounted knight?
His left knee
His left knee and leg sat behind the shield's long point as he rode, a side that a round shield left exposed. Made famous by the Normans, the kite later shrank into the flat-topped shield familiar from heraldry.
Q 27Until the mid-14th century, what was a knight's main form of body defence?
Mail armour
Mail armour, a shirt of thousands of riveted iron rings, was flexible and turned sword cuts but was weak against a lance point or an arrow. From the 14th century steel plates were added piece by piece until they covered the body.
Q 28The aketon, a quilted jacket worn under a knight's ring armour, probably takes its name from the Arabic for which stuffing?
Cotton
Cotton is al-qutn in Arabic, a word thought to have passed through Spanish and French to become aketon. The quilted padding cushioned blows that ring armour spread but could not stop, and kept the metal from chafing.
Q 29The interlinked-ring armour worn by early knights is commonly credited to which people?
The Celts
The oldest surviving pieces, from the 3rd century BC, were found in Slovakia and Romania.
Q 30Films wrongly show armoured knights needing which device to get into the saddle?
A crane
A crane was never needed: battle plate weighed 20 to 25 kg, less than a modern infantryman carries, with the load spread over the whole body. A man in full armour could mount his horse without help.