The King of Friesland's helicopter

Shortly after Gilles Villeneuve's death at the Zolder circuit, Keke Rosberg, who was racing for the Williams team at the time, recounted that one of the things that most impressed him about that terrible weekend was when everyone left the track, leaving only Villeneuve's helicopter. On the Wednesday before the races, it would hover over the paddock to announce his arrival: it was a ritual. The accident occurred during practice on May 8, 1982. How many times have the images been repeated, first on television and later on social media? Villeneuve arrives at the corner at full speed and finds Jochen Mass's March idling, they collide wheel to wheel, the Ferrari flies into the air, Villeneuve's harness and the straps holding his helmet on snap, he is thrown from the air and lies inert on the shoulder of the track. It's like the image of the all-out battle that obsessively recurs in the imagination of readers of Arthurian novels: the knight strikes his rival with a great lance, breaking his arm. The other wants to have it tied up so he can continue fighting, but he's lost too much blood. He has a spasm and dies: to get him off his horse, they have to drag him back in the saddle.

The knight has a spasm and dies: to get him off the horse they have to pull him back with the saddle

The charm of Tirant lo blanc is that, alongside the fight with the King of Frisa, the King of Apolonia, and two of his fellow counts, the images that are repeated on all the newsreels and YouTube channels, the decisive blow, and the moment of death of one, and another, and another, Joanot Martorell introduces an extraordinary off-screen scene. Tirant leaves for Scotland to recover from his wounds and await the moment when he can fight the knight Vilafermosa, who has challenged him. He arrives at the port of Dobla and finds the servants of the four knights he has killed waiting for a ship to return to the continent. The steward, an old man, weeps inconsolably. When you read a chivalric novel, you don't think about what lies behind the spectacular images of combat and death. Sometimes you are told of the solemn burial and the mourning, which are a continuation of the spectacle. But this scene says much more: you imagine the mechanics of Ronnie Peterson, Gilles Villeneuve, Ayrton Senna, at the airport, dressed in the colors of John Player, Agip, Rothmans, waiting for the flight that will take them back to Norfolk, Maranello, Grove, like the servants of the King of Frisia, the King of Apollonia and the two counts, who are waiting for the ship in the port of Dobla.

In Frisa, Kirieleison de Muntalbà, who comes from a family of giants, promises to kill the knight Tirant. In Las Vegas, in a season of deaths, accidents, and misfortunes, Keke Rosberg wins the Formula 1 World Championship. But what are giants and the World Championship compared to the grief of an old steward in an English port?