Tristan and Iseult are never in grave danger; the narrator declares that he and God are on their side. Mark, as a husband and king, is not idealized like other Arthurian kings; his ties to the story are personal. Marie de France's Breton lai Chevrefoil (sometimes known as The Lay of the Honeysuckle) tells part of the Tristan and Iseult tale. The lai begins with an explanation of Mark's fury at the affair of Tristan and Isoude, which leads Mark to banish Tristan from Cornwall. Tristan spends a year pining for Isoude in South Wales until his sorrow drives him to secretly return to Cornwall. Hiding in the woods and sheltering with villagers at night, Tristan hears that Mark plans to hold a Pentecost feast with Isoude. Tristan knows that the queen will ride through the forest to get there. He determines her most-likely path, and places on the trail a stripped hazel stick with a carving of his name on it. Isoude recognizes the sign and, stopping her party to rest, she and her maid Brangwaine leave to find Tristan. During the illicit meeting, Isoude helps Tristan with a plan to win back Mark's favor. Marie ends the poem with a revelation that the lai Tristan composed was called "Goatleaf" in English ("Chèvrefeuille" in French), and the lai he composed was the one the reader just finished. In the Prose Tristan, Mark is the son of king Felix and his character deteriorates from a sympathetic cuckold to a villain; he rapes his niece and murders her when she produces his son, Meraugis. Mark also murders his brother, Prince Boudwin, and later kills Boudwin's vengeful teenage son Alisander (Alisuander, Alexander) the Orphan. In earlier variants of the story, Tristan dies in Brittany far from Mark; in the Prose Tristan, however, Tristan is mortally wounded by Mark while he plays the harp under a tree for Iseult. This version of Mark was popular in other medieval works, including the Romance of Palamedes and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. In these texts, Mark usually rules Cornwall from Tintagel Castle, is often an enemy of Arthur's jester knight Dinadan, and (as in the Post-Vulgate Cycle) even destroys Camelot after the death of Arthur. Malory's version says that Alisander's son eventually avenges his father and grandfather, presumably by killing Mark. Horse ears Mark has become associated with a Celtic variant of the story of