Superficially, this insanity seems glorious, a colossal sort of football, and Sir Dynadin's voice of common sense seems ludicrous. Riding with Tristram, Dynadin curses the day he fell into the company of this battle-happy fool who can never pass a knight without trying him or circle a castle where knights insist on challenging all who pass by. When Isode flirtatiously asks Dynadin how he can ever become a great knight if he won't fight for the love of some lady, Sir Dynadin's answer is comically blunt: "'God deffende me!' seyde sir Dynadan, 'for the joy of love is to shorte, and the sorow thereof and what cometh thereof is duras over longe.'" And when Isode goes further, teasingly asking if he will fight for her against three cruel knights, Dynadin replies: "I shall sey you ye be as fayre a lady as evir I sawe ony, and much fayrer than is my lady quene Gwenyver, but wyte You well, at one worde, I woll nat fyght for you wyth three knyghtes, jesu me defende!" He is comic because he won't play by the rules; but as the rest of the Morte d'Arthur makes clear, he is right.
The Tristram section does directly develop one important strand of the Arthur story. The Lamerok-Gawain feud is intensified, and allegiances on each side are made firm through tournaments and encounters in the challenge game. When Gawain and his brothers learn that Pellanor was not the murderer of their father — they only "denied" he was — they have already gone too far to back down. Appearance has become reality; the disguise has become the man.
