Tristan and Iseult
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40 free Tristan and Iseult trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Tristan and Iseult, or Tristan and Isolde as the opera and many modern retellings spell it, is one of the great love stories of the Middle Ages. A Cornish knight is sent to Ireland to bring back a bride for his uncle, King Mark, and a love potion drunk by mistake on the voyage home binds the knight and the princess together for good. The story was first written down as poetry. This quiz follows it through the twelfth-century verse romances of Béroul and his contemporaries, the German and English poems that grew out of them, the sprawling prose versions that brought Tristan to King Arthur's court, and the Victorian poets who took it up again. It also covers Wagner's opera and the story's life on screen. It is written for readers of the poems, students of Arthurian legend, opera lovers and anyone who enjoys a good tragic romance. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the versions are named wherever they disagree.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which color sail does the dying Tristan's jealous wife falsely claim to see in the medieval poems?
Black
Black meant Iseult was not aboard, but the ship really flew white, the signal that she was coming to heal him. Tristan dies of despair before she lands.
Q 02In Béroul's Tristan poem, a dwarf reveals that King Mark has the ears of which animal?
A horse
A horse is a pun on the king's own name, since marc is a Celtic word for the animal. The tale echoes the Greek story of King Midas and his donkey ears.
Q 03At Pedro II's invitation, which city did Wagner consider for the premiere of Tristan und Isolde?
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro would have heard it sung in Italian, the language of Brazil's Imperial Opera, and Wagner even talked of settling there. Nothing came of the plan.
Q 04Which scrambled form of his own name does the wounded Tristan use in Ireland in Wagner's opera?
Tantris
Tantris simply swaps the two syllables of his name. In the opera, Isolde recalls nursing a wounded stranger of that name and then discovering who he really was.
Q 05In most tellings, who provides the love potion meant for Iseult and King Mark's wedding night?
Her mother
Her mother, the Queen of Ireland, is also named Iseult. She meant the drink to guarantee a loving marriage, but the wrong pair shares it at sea.
Q 06In the Prose Tristan, what is Tristan playing for Iseult when King Mark fatally wounds him?
A harp
A harp is the hero's instrument, and the romances rank him among the greatest musicians of his day. In the older poems he dies in Brittany instead, far from Mark.
Q 07Which legendary sunken kingdom off Cornwall is Tristan's homeland in the later romances?
Lyonesse
Lyonesse is said to have stretched from Land's End to the Isles of Scilly before the sea swallowed it in a single night. Tristan's father, Meliodas, is its king in the prose romances.
Q 08What does Tristan place between himself and Iseult as they lie together, fooling King Mark?
His sword
His sword lying between them looks like proof of innocence. Mark stumbles on their wilderness hideaway and leaves half persuaded that they are not lovers after all.
Q 09Two 12th-century French poems, kept at Berne and Oxford, send Tristan back to King Mark's court disguised as what?
A madman
A madman is his disguise in both poems, and each is known as a Folie Tristan, a title that means Tristan's madness.
Q 10The fatal mix-up over a ship's sails in the Tristan legend may echo the myth of which Greek hero?
Theseus
Theseus forgot to hoist the agreed sail on his way home from Crete, and his father Aegeus, believing him dead, threw himself to his death.
Q 11Which emotion has Tristan's name long been tied to, through similar Latin and Old French words?
Sadness
Sadness suits a hero orphaned at birth, and in the great German romance the baby is named for the grim circumstances of his arrival.
Q 12Which handmaid guards the love potion and then takes Iseult's place on her wedding night?
Brangaine
Brangaine secretly takes her mistress's place to protect Iseult's honor. Iseult later panics that the secret will come out and nearly has her killed.
Q 13Which Irish champion, sent to collect tribute from Cornwall, does young Tristan kill in a duel?
Morholt
Morholt is the brother of the Irish queen in the early poems, which makes him the uncle of Tristan's future love. They fight on the remote Saint Samson's Isle.
Q 21Which enchantress supplies the lance King Mark uses to kill Tristan in the long version of the Prose Tristan?
Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay wanted revenge because Tristan had slain her lover, so she enchanted the lance and sent it to the jealous king.
Q 22Which Saracen Knight of the Round Table is Tristan's rival for Iseult's love in the Prose Tristan?
Palamedes
Palamedes loses to Tristan at a tournament in Ireland and is forbidden to court Iseult again. The two knights fight a string of inconclusive duels before they are reconciled.
Q 23In some versions, what grows from Tristan's grave into Iseult's, however often King Mark cuts it?
A briar
A briar grows so thickly that it forms a bower over the two graves, and Mark has it cut three times in vain. Later versions make it a vine twined with a rose.
Q 14Which part of a slain dragon does Tristan show to expose a steward's false claim to Iseult?
Its tongue
Its tongue was already in Tristan's keeping when the steward turned up with the severed head, so the trophy proved nothing and the liar lost his bride.
Q 15What clue reveals in Ireland that the disguised Tristan is the man who killed the queen's brother?
A gap in his blade
A gap in his blade matches the metal fragment taken from the dead man's skull, like a missing puzzle piece. In several versions he is caught out while sitting in a bath.
Q 16In Béroul's poem, where does King Mark send Iseult after sparing her from burning at the stake?
A leper colony
A leper colony is her punishment only briefly: Tristan escapes his guards by leaping from a clifftop chapel, rescues her, and the lovers flee into the forest.
Q 17How does the love potion in Béroul's Tristan poem differ from the one in the courtly versions?
It wears off
It wears off after three years in Béroul, yet the lovers carry on regardless. In the courtly branch its effects last for the rest of their lives.
Q 18In the Folie Tristan d'Oxford, which animal knows the disguised Tristan before Iseult believes him?
A hound
A hound named Husdent greets him joyfully, and a ring Iseult once gave him settles the matter. Until then she had refused to believe the stranger was Tristan.
Q 19Which Cornish castle is King Mark's court in the Folie Tristan and other medieval Tristan romances?
Tintagel
Tintagel is called an enchanted castle in the Folie Tristan d'Oxford. Geoffrey of Monmouth had already made it the place where King Arthur was conceived.
Q 20Which knight lends Tristan and Iseult his castle, Joyous Gard, as a refuge in the prose romances?
Lancelot
Lancelot had captured the castle himself, back when it was still called Dolorous Gard. He and Tristan fight a great duel that neither wins and come out of it firm friends.
Q 24Which plant gives Marie de France's Tristan lai Chevrefoil its title and its symbol of the lovers?
Honeysuckle
Honeysuckle twines so tightly around a hazel in the poem that neither plant can live once they are parted, which is how Marie pictures the two lovers.
Q 25Which German poet's Tristan, left unfinished at his death, was the main source for Wagner's opera?
Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried von Strassburg's poem breaks off with the last part of the story untold, and two later poets, Ulrich von Türheim and Heinrich von Freiberg, supplied endings.
Q 26Which novelist edited the Middle English poem Sir Tristrem and wrote his own ending for it?
Walter Scott
Walter Scott wrote the closing stanzas himself for his 1804 edition, since the poem's only copy breaks off before the end. That copy is in the Auchinleck manuscript in the National Library of Scotland.
Q 27Which English author cut the vast French Prose Tristan down into his own Book of Sir Tristram?
Thomas Malory
Thomas Malory folded it into Le Morte d'Arthur. Scholars still debate whether he meant the Tristram story to stand alone, a question raised when the Winchester Manuscript surfaced in 1934.
Q 28Which Victorian Poet Laureate has King Mark kill Tristram from behind in The Last Tournament?
Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson has Mark split Tristram's skull just as the knight fastens a ruby necklace on Isolt. The poem is one of the Idylls of the King.
Q 29Which Victorian poet published the narrative poem Tristram and Iseult in 1852?
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold first met the story in a French review while staying at Thun, and it gripped him before he had even looked at Le Morte d'Arthur.
Q 30Which Victorian poet considered his 1882 epic on Tristram the crowning achievement of his career?
Algernon Swinburne
Algernon Swinburne gave the poem a prelude and nine cantos. William Morris was less impressed, saying such work seemed founded on literature, not on nature.