In something of a parallel with its development in England, medieval romance in Iceland comes in two sequential categories – translations or adaptations from French or Anglo-Norman and independent narratives – known collectively to modern scholarship as riddarasögur (‘sagas of knights’) but often distinguished as ‘translated’ and ‘independent’ (or ‘Icelandic’) riddarasögur. The translated riddarasögur comprise Old Norse prose versions of French epic and romance, among them Marie's lais (in Strengleikar); Thomas's Tristan (Tristrams saga); and three Arthurian narratives by Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide (Erex saga), Yuain (Ívens saga), and Perceval (Parcevals saga and Valvens páttr); produced in Norway, probably from Anglo-Norman exemplars (Leach 1921), for the court of King Hákon the Old (r. 1217–63). These sagas are, for the most part, preserved in Icelandic manuscripts and generally presumed to have reached Iceland soon after their composition. The independent riddarasögur, which are the focus of this discussion, appear in Iceland around the beginning of the fourteenth century. Frequently dismissed as the inferior, ‘escapist’, dreary, and depressing products of a gloomy period in Iceland's history following the surrender of its autonomy to Norway in 1262–64 and subsequent deterioration in its economic and political status, the riddarasögur have proved the least appealing form of Old Icelandic prose narrative to modern scholarship, which has tended to regard them as something of an embarrassment to the Old Norse literary corpus.