contrast the monarch’s splendor, and thus identifies with the structure that
makes of that splendor a necessity, and keeps ruler and subject apart. Even
as Dunbar recedes spectacularly from view, he confirms all the more
persuasively his dependence on the royal look that makes him, a look
whose glory is the subject’s own image of the ideal. In so doing, he opens
the avenues of identification between subject and monarch that both
uphold royal power and represent it as the sovereign’s“love”for his subjects.
In the petitionary poem, subject and sovereign affirm a mutual love.
Guillaume Crétin’s words to his own ruler are true in more ways than
one:“Vous m’aymez mieulx, ce croy, paovre que riche.”^91
86 Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland