The Last Song of Tristan

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Though he was one of the Knights of the Round Table, Tristan's most notable tale involves neither Arthur nor Camelot. Rather, it is the story of his affair with Iseult (a.k.a. Isolde), the wife of his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. Some historians actually believe that the legend of Tristan and Iseult might actually have preceded and been the basis for the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle story.

Basically, the story goes that Tristan is the nephew and champion of King Mark. As part of a truce with King Anguish of Ireland, Mark is betrothed with Iseult, Anguish’s daughter. He sends Tristan across the sea to fetch her. On the way, the couple consumes a love potion and fall for one another. Iseult still marries mark, but she and Tristan carry on a secret affair for several years.

The story has two endings: one where Tristan dies of grief, the other where King Mark sneaks up behind Tristan and runs him through with a spear as he plays a harp for Iseult. I have depicted the latter.

Note: this image uses purchased content. The characters were posed in Poser 6, then imported into Vue 9 where the rest of the scene was created. Final rendering was done in Vue and took about 6 hours on an Intel I5 with 8 GB of RAM. Post production was done using GIMP.