Medieval romance narratives are typically associated with the primary foundational motif of the quest. The brave and industrious knightly hero sets forth on a journey, prompted either by the need to successfully perform a task assigned by a superior (who may be another, more senior knight,afeudal lord, or even the king himself), as a response to a challenge devised by an opponent as a concrete realisation of the chivalric ethos of proving one’s mettle, or, as one of the most programmatic agents of causation, in order to rescue and retrieve a purloined object of great value or an individual (typically the heroine) who has been abducted.