Black knight

This article is about the romantic chivalric stereotype. For other uses including the chess piece see Black Knight (disambiguation).

The black knight is a literary stock character, often contrasted with the white knight. The character famously appeared in Arthurian literature and has been adapted and adopted by various authors, in cinema and popular culture. The character is sometimes associated with death.

In postmodern literary criticism it has also been discussed in relation to race issues in fiction.

Historical significance

Black armor in a Russian museum

• Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Prince of Aquitaine. The eldest son of King Edward III, father to King Richard II of England. An exceptional military leader popularly known as the "The Black Prince".
• James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn, a descendant of Robert I of Scotland, lived in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

In music

Composer Edward Elgar composed a cantata titled The Black Knight.

Literary use

• Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory: "There sat a knight all armed in black harness, and his name was the Knight of the Black Laund. Then the damosel, when she saw that knight, she bade him flee down that valley, for his horse was not saddled. Gramercy, said Beaumains, for always ye would have me a coward. With that the Black Knight, when she came nigh him, spake and said, Damosel, have ye brought this knight of King Arthur to be your champion? Nay, fair knight, said she, this is but a kitchen knave that was fed in King Arthur's kitchen for alms. Why cometh he, said the knight, in such array? it is shame that he beareth you company. "
• Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson
• Sir Walter Scott has Richard the Lionhearted posing as a black knight to avoid detection while in England in his novel Ivanhoe.
• J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings created the nine Nazgûl, described as Black Riders or Dark Riders. They are supposed to be noble men who fell to the evil power of the One Ring becoming wraiths bound to the Dark Lord Sauron. In The Silmarillion, the Elf Lord Eol is described as having a special affinity for a black meteoric metal known as Galvorn. As such he makes his armor and weapons entirely out of this black material.
• Raymond Chandler in his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), lets his private eye Philip Marlowe describe and comment on "a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair."
• The Book of the Duchess by Geoffrey Chaucer

Popular culture

• Batman is often referred to as "The Dark Knight," because symbolically he is a modern-day version of a black knight. As an outcast he works anonymously for a greater purpose, and is known to go against authorities should his mission necessitate it.
• Marvel Comics has legacy characters all called Black Knight, who are descended from a Knight of the Round Table. The current one is Dane Whitman, a superhero who carries an enchanted sword, the Ebony Blade. He had served the Avengers at one point, among many other superhero teams.
• Snake Eyes, a character from G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero created by Larry Hama is depicted as a tragic, modern, militarized and righteous black knight.
• The Black Knight
• Black Knight
• Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail
• Sega's Sonic Team transforms King Arthur into "The Black Knight" as a result of corruption from his immortality inducing scabbard of Excalibur given by the Lady of the Lake in the Arthurian influenced Sonic and the Black Knight.
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn feature a character named the Black Knight.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail features a Black Knight who confronts King Arthur and, even having his four limbs severed, refuses to concede defeat.
• The Black Knight Ghost is a recurring villain in the Scooby Doo series.
• The Black Knight is an NPC in the MMORPG World of Warcraft he was introduced as part of the argent tournament in patch 3.2.
• The Kinshra, a fictional organisation in the MMORPG RuneScape, are nicknamed 'black knights' by commoners.
• The Black Knight in Fate/Zero is none other than Lancelot of the Lake.
• The Black Knights in Robin Hood, the 2006-2009 BBC series, are a secret organization formed by the Sheriff of Nottingham for the purpose of overthrowing King Richard.
• The MMORPG "AdventureQuest Worlds" features both an NPC and a boss called The Black Knight, the NPC being the lamenting ghost of the man who wore the armor, and the boss being the man's evil armor continuing its dark deeds.
  • Even before Artix Entertainment released AdventureQuest Worlds, in their original game AdventureQuest there were monsters called both Dark Knights and Black Knights, with the description featuring a play on words (Dark Knight/ dark night).
• The Black Knight has featured in the game White Knight Chronicles as an enemy's incorruptus (an incorruptus is a 7 metre tall armor-like robot), dragon and white knights are featured as playable incorrupti.
• Prince Gares the Black Knight, a character from the video game Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen, son of the Empress Endora and a primary antagonist in the game, is a black knight capable of magically animating numerous "copies" of his signature black armor to attack the player throughout the game, thus making him appear immortal. If his real body is found, however, he can be slain permanently. Later games in the series featured a military group of the Holy Lodis Empire alternatively known as "The Dark Knights" and "The Brigade of the Radiant Cross of the Caliginous Order" (in Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together and Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber respectively) who serve as primary antagonists to the player, the word "caliginous" connotating "dark" in the latter case.
• Cecil Harvey from the Final Fantasy series is a black knight.

Sports

• The Black Knights are the United States Military Academy at West Point's mascots in a number of sports teams.
• The Black Knight is a moniker given to golfer Gary Player in the 1960s by the media for his penchant for black attire on and off the golf course and for his courteous demeanour. The Black Knight logo identifies all the companies of the Gary Player Group.

Finance

While a White Knight is used to describe a company or business "savior", a Black Knight is the term used to describe a "destroyer". It is difficult to identify a Black Knight when they first enter a company or business.

Typically, a Black Knight will enter a business/company as an influential person such as a major investor or a member of the board of directors of a profitable or asset rich business. The Black Knight will undertake dealings to enrich themselves which normally leave the previously profitable company in a weaker financial position.

Typically, the Black Knight will dismantle a profitable or asset rich business. This can be done through several ways including:

i) Siphoned out cash through high personal expenses, salaries and bonuses; ii) Selling off profitable parts of the business to a private company related to the Black Knight; iii) Buying of unprofitable businesses / assets previously owned by the Black Knight; iv) Selling of assets at below market value to persons related to the Black Knight; and v) Buying of assets at inflated prices.

Some people refer to a Black Knight as an investor who acquires a firm opposing the will of its management, as in a hostile takeover. This is only partially true as the ultimate intention of acquirer is unknown. It could be for business reasons and not personal reasons, such as merging the entity with another entity owned by the acquirer to create synergy.

A real Black Knight's intention is to enrich himself usually destroying the company or business in the process.

See also

• Dark Knight (disambiguation)
• Black and white dualism
• Black Company