Pyrocles: A Villain in The Faerie Queene

Pyrocles is a hot-headed knight who shows up in book 2 of The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser.

He is constantly looking for a fight, seeking out violence, and it gets him into trouble.

First, he fights her Guyon and loses, then he fights Furor and loses again. This time he is beset with an enchantment that makes him feel like he is entirely on fire (not surprising since his name literally means “troubled with fire”).

He represents the theme of having too much desire for action, a clear extreme in book 2, where the theme is temperance. He is a contrast to his brother, Cymochles, who is the exact opposite.

Both Pyrocles and Cymochles are eventually killed by Prince Arthur.

See our complete list of Arthurian characters for more entries like this one.

Arthurian Bibliography

• Norris Lacy, Geoffrey Ashe, Debra Mancoff – The Arthurian Handbook (Second Edition)
• Alan Lupack – The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend
• Ronan Coghlan – The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Arthurian Legends
• Anonymous – Lancelot-Grail, the French Vulgate
• Sir Thomas Malory – Le Morte d’Arthur