Amant
Minor Arthurian knight murdered by King Mark, whose death exposes Mark's treachery.
Sir Amant is a minor knight in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, attested with 2 citations in Book X. His brief but significant role connects him to King Mark's treachery and the Tristram cycle. He appears first refusing to betray a confidence -- "Sir Amant, I will not discover your name" -- before helping to bury Bersules (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Chapter VII). His death follows when "it was sprung to the king, and the queen, and to all the lords, that it was King Mark that had slain Sir Amant, and Sir Bersules afore hand" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Chapter XV).
The two attestations frame a compact narrative of loyalty and murder. In the first, Amant acts with discretion, protecting identities in a dangerous court (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Chapter VII). In the second, he is already dead -- slain by King Mark along with Bersules, and the revelation of this fact to Arthur's court serves as further evidence of Mark's villainy (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Chapter XV). Amant functions as one of Mark's disposable victims, a figure whose faithfulness is rewarded with violence.
Appears in: Beings, Entities in Le Morte d'Arthur, British Tradition