Gaunter
Gaunter is a minor knight in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur who encounters Sir Launcelot while Launcelot rides in Sir Kay's armour as a disguise.
Gaunter is a minor knight in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur who encounters Sir Launcelot while Launcelot rides in Sir Kay's armour as a disguise. Seeing what he assumes is Kay, Gaunter boasts: "I will ride after him and assay him for all his pride, and ye may behold how that I speed" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book VI, Chapter XII). He arms himself, mounts "a great horse," and rides after Launcelot, only to be promptly unhorsed. When Gaunter falls, his brothers observe: "Yonder knight is not Sir Kay, for he is bigger than he" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book VI, Chapter XII).
The three citations form a compact comic episode. Gaunter exists primarily to demonstrate the gap between appearance and reality in the Kay-Launcelot disguise sequence: his confidence in his ability to defeat "Sir Kay" sets up the revelation that the knight in Kay's armour is something far more formidable.
Appears in: Beings, Entities in Le Morte d'Arthur, British Tradition