There is a substantial amount of European medieval history in my literary DNA. I have read a very large number of King Arthur works, from Mary Stewart to Lavie Tidhar; I even did a subject on the Celtic origins of his mythology. So literary knights are something I’m familiar with. I’ve read my share of actual history involving knights, too, and unsurprisingly Joan of Arc has often come up. So when Joyce Chng offered me this essay, based on her Masters thesis - about the medieval representation of literary lady knights and how that affected representations of Joan of Arc - I was immediately intrigued. It’s quite different from the other essays that have appeared on Speculative Insight so far, its connections to modern fantasy perhaps more tangential. And yet Chng’s point at the start of their essay - that lady knights, or warriors, continue to appear in modern fantasy - absolutely make this an important issue. From the older (Joanna Russ, Tamora Pierce) to the newer (Ellen Kushner, Emily Tesh) (and where does George RR Martin fit) - how women are portrayed in this still-coded-masculine arena is deserving of investigation. Chng’s points are an excellent way to do that.