The fuller version of his name given in Erec suggests that he was born or at least spent his formative years in Troyes, which is located some one hundred miles along the Seine to the south-east of Paris and was one of the leading cities in the region of Champagne. The language in which he composed his works, which is tinted with dialectal traits from the Champagne area, lends further credence to this supposition.

At Troyes, Chrétien most assuredly was associated with the court of Marie de Champagne, one of the daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine by her first marriage, to King Louis VII of France. Marie’s marriage in 1159 to Henri the Liberal, Count of Champagne, furnishes us with one of the very few dates that can be determined with any degree of certainty in Chrétien’s biography. In the opening lines of The Knight of the Cart, Chrétien informs us that he is undertaking the composition of his romance at the behest of ‘my lady of Champagne’, and critics today agree unanimously that this can only be the great literary patroness Marie. Since she only became ‘my lady of Champagne’ with her marriage, Chrétien could not have begun a romance for her before 1159.

Another relatively certain date in Chrétien’s biography is furnished by the dedication of The Story of the Grail to Philip of Flanders. It appears that, sometime after the death of Henri the Liberal in 1181, Chrétien found a new patron in Philip of Alsace, a cousin to Marie de Champagne, who became Count of Flanders in 1168 and to whom Chrétien dedicated his never-to-be-completed grail romance. This work surely was begun before Philip’s death in 1191 at Acre in the Holy Land, and most likely prior to his departure for the Third Crusade in September of 1190. Chrétien may have abandoned the poem after learning of Philip’s death, or his own death may well have occurred around this time.

Apart from the dates 1159 and 1191, nothing else concerning Chrétien’s biography can be fixed with certainty. Allusions in Erec to Macrobius and the Liberal Arts, to Alexander, Solomon, Helen of Troy and others, coupled with similar allusions in other romances, suggest that he received the standard preparation of a clerc in the flourishing church schools in Troyes, and therefore must have entered minor orders. The style of his love monologues, particularly in Cligés, shows familiarity with the dialectal method of the schools, in which opposites are juxtaposed and analysed, as well as with the rhetorical traditions of Classical and medieval Latin literature. It is possible, however, that he derived his style and knowledge of Classical themes uniquely from works available to him in the vernacular, without having undergone any special training in Latin, since all of the Classical stories to which he alludes had been turned into Old French by 1165. The elaborate descriptions of clothing and ceremonies in several of his romances can likewise be traced to contemporary works composed in French, particularly to Wace’s Roman de Brut and the anonymous Eneas and Floire et Blancheflor.

Circumstantial evidence also strongly suggests that Chrétien spent some of his early career in England and may well have composed his first romance there. References to English cities and topography, especially in Cligés but indeed in all of his works, show that the Britain of King Arthur was the England of King Henry II Plantagenet. Moreover, there is a close link between Troyes and England in the person of Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury (1126–71) and bishop of Winchester (1129–71). This prelate was the uncle of Henri the Liberal of Champagne, at whose court we have seen Chrétien to have been engaged. Henry of Blois had important contacts with Geoffrey of Monmouth and William of Malmesbury, two medieval Latin writers who, more than any others, popularized the legends of King Arthur that Chrétien was to introduce to the aristocratic public.

An even closer tie to Henry II’s England has been proposed in the case of Erec and Enide, in which the coronation of Erec at Nantes on Christmas Day may be a reflection of contemporary politics. In 1169 Henry held a Christmas court at Nantes in order to force the engagement of his third son, Geoffrey, to Constance, the daughter of Conan IV of Brittany. This court had significant political ramifications for it assured through marital politics the submission of the major Breton barons, a submission Henry had not been able to attain by successive military campaigns in 1167, 1168 and 1169. The guest list at the coronation of Erec includes barons from all corners of Henry II’s domains but, significantly, none from those of his rival Louis VII of France. Two other details from this coronation scene lend credence to such an identification: the thrones on which Arthur and Erec are seated are described as having leopards sculpted upon their arms, and the donor of these thrones is identified as Bruianz des Illes. Leopards were the heraldic animals on Henry’s royal arms, and Bruianz des liles has been positively identified as Henry’s best friend, Brian of Wallingford, named in contemporary documents as Brian Fitz Count, Brian de ínsula, or Brian de l’lsle. It thus seems plausible that Erec was composed at the behest of Henry II to help legitimize Geoffrey’s claim to the throne of Brittany by underscoring the ‘historical’ link between Geoffrey and Arthur. This would place its composition shortly after 1169 while memories of the Nantes court were still fresh. Such a dating corresponds well with what we know about the composition of Chrétien’s other romances, which most critics now place in the 1170s and 1180s.

Since Chrétien gave the fuller version of his name in the prologue to Erec and Enide we must assume he was away from the region of Troyes at the time of its composition, and it now seems reasonable to speculate that he was in England at the court of Henry II, where he would have had ample opportunity to learn of the new ‘Matter of Britain’ that was then attaining popularity there. Erec, a brilliant psychological study, appears to have been the earliest romance composed in the vernacular tongue to incorporate Arthurian themes. This poem posed a question familiar to courtly circles: how can a knight, once married, sustain the valour and glory that first won him a bride? That is, can a knight serve both his honour (armes) and his love (amors)? Erec, caught up in marital bliss, neglects the pursuit of his glory until reminded of his duties by Enide, who has overheard some knights gossiping maliciously. Accompanied by her, he sets out on a series of adventures in the course of which both he and his bride are tested. The mixture of psychological insight and extraordinary adventures was to become a trademark of Chrétien’s style and of the Arthurian romances written in imitation of his work. And Chrétien would reconsider the question of armes and amors from a different perspective in The Knight with the Lion.

Chrétien’s second major work, Cligés, is in part set at Arthur’s court, but is principally an adventure romance based on Græco-Byzantine material, which was exceedingly popular in the second half of the twelfth century. This romance, which exalts the pure love of Fenice for Cligés, has been seen by many as a foil to the adulterous passion of Isolde for Tristan.