In the epic Nibelingenlied one man tells another, "she is to me as my soul and as my body, and I will do anything to deserve that she become my wife,"" (Anderson and Zinsser, 333). Chivalry and women's role in keeping it alive were important reasons men kept their honor and did their duty towards their beloved. The idea of "honour[ing] and lov[ing] all women- was held high by the chivalrous men of the court. .
It almost seems as if women at the time had so much power over their lovers that the men (mostly young) were pawns in their games of love. These women could use the men to their advantage, making them vie for attention at all times and they possibly even threatened to find a new lover if the current one did not satisfy their needs. Love was fun, it was a game and a way to take people's minds off of the current situation in their country "whether in war or in peacetime. It seems that to most women love was playful, though sometimes they too got caught up in the messy tangle of emotions love could prove to be. .
The practice of courtly love provided women with one other power as well "freedom. Women still were not anywhere near full freedom but each step towards it was a positive one. It was acceptable in literary circles for women to enjoy pleasure of the flesh; sex was something women could partake in and like separate and unattached to their duty of bearing children. Oftentimes from the union between lover and beloved it was best if the woman did not conceive, as the couple did not want to be found out by the woman's husband when a child was born who did not resemble him. Another freedom women had was the ability to have two men in her life. Of course the husband was never supposed to find out about his wife's love of another man, but in nearly all of the poems and lais the beloved was a married woman and the lover a married man. King Equitan, in the famous lai, by Marie de France, of the same name, falls in love with his seneschal's wife, "The King loved the seneschal's wife for a long time, had no desire for any other women; he didn't want to marry, and never allowed the subject to be raised,"" (Adulterous Love: The Story of Equitan, 113).