Bertilak (the Green Knight)

In the 14th-century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and in related medieval works (including The Greene Knight and later ballad variants), a supernatural challenger arrives at King Arthur's court to issue a beheading-game. The figure who plays host to Sir Gawain at a remote castle—named Bertilak de Hautdesert in the Gawain poem and called Bredbeddle in some later ballads—is revealed at the end of the narrative to be identical with the Green Knight, the orchestrator of the test.

The entity appears in two narrative guises recorded in the sources: as the Green Knight, he is identified with the poem's striking green persona (the Green Knight figure of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight); as Bertilak he presents as a courtly castle-lord who hunts and receives knightly guests. The provided materials link the Green Knight's notable green aspect with the Bertilak identity but do not supply fuller, consistent physical inventories beyond this correspondence and the lordly/hunter comportment of Bertilak.

According to the cited sources, Bertilak/the Green Knight issues and enforces a supernatural beheading-game challenge, survives the initial beheading episode, and arranges a structured test of chivalry that combines an exchange-bargain with staged temptations. As Bertilak he hosts Gawain, goes hunting during the three days of Gawain's stay, and participates in a formal agreement that what each man acquires during the day will be exchanged. The household—especially Lady Bertilak—acts as part of the designed temptation, and the later unmasking reveals that these interleaved hunts, seduction scenes, and exchanges were elements of the orchestrated trial.