Married knights disappear from the Morte Darthur soon after their weddings, while the story follows unwed heroes, like Gawain or Launcelot, throughout the whole book. This general pattern might lead one to conclude that Malory sees marriage as an unnecessary part of chivalric society and even an impediment to knightly honor. Such is the view of Maureen Fries, who extrapolates from the “Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney” to the Morte in its entirety: “But if, in his whole book, Malory is saying anything about marriage and knighthood in general, and Gareth's marriage in particular, it is that wedlock restrains knightly development, and has kept Gawain's brother in that perpetual state of chivalric juvenescence which makes his unexpected death at the hands of his more accomplished (and deliberately unmarried) friend and mentor, Lancelot, all the more poignant.” At first glance, Malory's chivalric exemplar, Launcelot, offers support for Fries' view. In the “The Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot,” for example, Launcelot responds to being criticized as a “knight wyveles” with the assertion that marriage would detract from his knightly achievement: “But for to be a weddyd man, I thynke hit nat, for than I muste couche with hir and leve armys and turnamentis, batellys and adventures” (Works 270.29–32). As I have discussed in the Introduction, the irony inherent in the young Launcelot's claims should warn critics against simply equating the character's voice and the author's view.