Marriage alliance can be a means of Western renewal, as we have seen. Its effectiveness is limited not only by the presence of multiple sites of renewal, but also by the alternative of positing Constantinople as a utopia. However, the issue of alliance between the Western nobility and Byzantium is sometimes relegated to a more minor role, and instead renewal is enacted through the transformation of society as a development of and participation in utopia. I will examine this problem through a discussion of the Franco-italian chanson de geste Macario, a remaniement of a story derived from the French epic tradition, and robert de Clari's eyewitness chronicle of the Fourth Crusade, the Conquête de Constantinople.

These texts are at first sight very different, but they possess several narrative elements in common: these include the motif of alliance between the West and Byzantium, sealed in the recent past; treachery perpetrated by the evil noble or steward, whether he is based at the Frankish court (Macario) or in Constantinople (Clari); and the exile of the calumniated wife (Macario) or dispossessed heir (Clari). I would like to suggest that these texts may fruitfully be analysed together. As Kay has remarked, many chansons de geste contain the motif of the traitor who seduces the hero's wife. The theme of the calumniated wife, a variant of the traitor motif, is also present in Doon de la Roche, Parise la duchesse and Berte aus grans piés, while in the last two, as well as in Macario, it is linked with an exile motif.