Meliodas
figure in Arthurian legend

Meliodas or Meliadus is a figure in Arthurian legend in the 12th-century Prose Tristan and subsequent accounts. In Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, he is the second king of Lyonesse, son of Felec of Cornwall and vassal of King Mark. Meliodas' first wife, Elizabeth, who bore the hero Tristan, was Mark's sister, and his second wife was a daughter or sister of Hoel of Brittany. He is the eponymous protagonist of the romance Meliadus. The Italian variant Tristano Riccardiano calls him Felix (Felissi).
Meliadus
The French romance Meliadus is a part of the greater work known as Palamedes, a series of tales based on the Prose Tristan and the Lancelot-Grail cycle but going back to the heroes of the previous generation. Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur is still alive, and so are the fathers of Erec and Tristan. The title refers to the Saracen knight Palamedes, whose father Esclabor also plays a role. Certain manuscripts identify Palamedes as one of the central figures, but he seldom appears and Meliadas and his companion Guiron le Courtois are the most important characters. The Compilation of Rustichello da Pisa or Rusticien de Pise, is a later re-working of the legend focusing on Meliadus as the central character.
“Meliodas” enters the record as figure in Arthurian legend. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Meliodas, figure and Arthurian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3854230. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Meliodas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.