poem deals with Arthur's nephew and best knight Gawain, who has been challenged to a duel by Guiromelant, a knight who claims Gawain had slain his lord. Gawain offers a contrast and complement to Perceval's naiveté as a courtly knight having to function in un-courtly settings. An important episode is Gawain's liberation of a castle whose inhabitants include his long-lost mother, his grandmother Ygerne, and his sister Clarissant, whose existence was unknown to him. This tale also breaks off unfinished, interrupted when a messenger arrives at Arthur's court to request his presence at Gawain's upcoming fight against Guiromelant. Continuations and prologues Over the following 50 years multiple different poets attempted to continue the story begun by Chrétien. First Continuation The First Continuation added 9,500 to 19,600 lines (depending on the manuscripts, with three known distinct versions) to the romance. It was once attributed to Wauchier de Denain, and is sometimes called the Pseudo-Wauchier Continuation for that reason. It exists in a short, a mixed, and a long version; the short was the earliest and the most loosely linked to Chrétien's work, while the mixed is considered to be the latest, drawing on both earlier versions. Roger Sherman Loomis believed that the short version, which was added to an existing Perceval manuscript ten or twenty years later, represents a version of the story that was originally independent of Chrétien's. The First Continuation picks up the narrative of Gawain's adventures where Chrétien left off and focused on the adventures of Gawain and several other knights of the Arthurian universe. All versions include six "branches" (major episodes), more or less connected, which may have been inspired by independent tales pre-existing the composition of this continuation: "Guiromelant" which ends the episode begun in Chrétien's book as Gawain his mother and grandmother are reunited with Arthur, and Gawain's sister Clarissant marries Guiromelant; "Brun de Branlant" which tells of a war of King Arthur against a rebellious vassal; "Caradoc" which tells the story of Caradoc Briefbras, an illegitimate son of the enchanter Eliavrés and King Caradoc's wife (and Arthur's niece) Ysaive; "Castle Orgueilleux" which tells of a tournament between the people of this castle and those of King Arthur; "Gawain at the castle of the Grail"; and "Guerrehet", the first known story of Gareth. As this continuation does not return to the adventures of Perceval and as Gawain does not pass the test of the Castle