Game of Fate

Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde recounts a love story, and as such the focus is on the two characters Troilus and Criseyde. Yet these two have very little agency in their own story. Cupid, Fortune, and Pandarus are the driving forces behind the events in the poem. This essay will focus on these three characters/figures and investigate their individual and combined roles. It will be suggested that Pandarus acts as the embodiment of both Cupid and Fortune. In addition, this will be examined in connection with the question of individual agency versus fate – whether we make our own choices, and how those influence our lives and the lives of others.