Yes!!! I think you say it best: the same qualities that are praised in one (con)text - such as eloquence and courtesy - are rendered problematic in another. This particularly strikes me as true when comparing the Dutch and French traditions.
(Also, (con)text. Teeheehee. That’s good.)
I personally interpret Walewein ende Keye as hinging on Gawain’s ability to spin a situation to his advantage and maintain a tight grip on his PR. I think this is why it starts with a bauble-- it’s a momentary failing of his status, after which he spends an entire romance not only regaining what little cred he lost but far surpassing it and ending up in a stronger position than where he started. In Walewein ende Keye and the Strategies of Honour, Ad Putter writes:
Kay is a dunce who plays the game of honor crudely and transparently: he knows what he wants (honor for himself, dishonor for Walewein) and shows what he wants at every stage. In that sense, Kay is the honest man. Walewein wants the opposite (honor for himself, dishonor for Kay), but plays the game of honor as it should be played, that is, strategically and covertly [...]. It is perhaps time that we recognize Walewein as what he is: the consummate tradesman in the economy of honour.
(Really interesting stuff excised for space, I recommend the article a lot!)
This is not to say that the text doesn’t endorse him; it absolutely does, and this behaviour is not condemned. I personally don’t take Arthur’s credence to Kay’s claim in the beginning to mean that Gawain is a bad politician, rather the opposite. In my mind, the narrative punishes Arthur for this trespass in multiple ways. The first happens in the very beginning, when Gawain announces he will leave court to prove his false boast real: “There was not a single knight present who was not saddened by the event: for indeed so was the king himself, who beseeched him to stay.” Arthur is begging Gawain to stay at court, but Gawain refuses, and this makes Arthur look pretty bad since he’s technically Gawain’s boss and also king. Arthur’s ultimate punishment comes in the fact that Gawain literally brings an invading army’s worth of enemy knights to Camelot and then, when Arthur is preparing for a siege, donates them all to Guinevere instead of him, while Arthur is standing right there. Gawain’s loyalty in W&K is to Guinevere as opposed to Arthur, for reasons which surely also encapsulate prioritization of symbolic female power in Dutch texts as well as their established friendship, but in my eyes also incorporate just kind of a fuck-you to Arthur. Gawain’s actions throughout the text are very deliberate manipulations of the narrative, which to me seems like PR play.
This sort of manipulative edge to Gawain crops up throughout the Dutch texts in my eyes. In Torec, he talks tons of other knights into purposefully losing a tournament to benefit the protagonist, which is a lovely thing to do and I’m not saying it makes him shady, but I do think it makes him manipulative (also, he does it to shame Kay, which in context is understandable but also... Gawain why are you like this). In contrast, I think there is one particular event in the Dutch canon which is both manipulative and shady, and although the narrative doesn’t seem to portray it in a critical lens I am personally unable to take it simply as a matter of genre: this is his castle massacre in the Roman van Walewein (the evil custom the text refers to is that they send out a guy to “tax” people for crossing a bridge). I know intellectually that the author wants me to think this is totally fine, but I cannot separate myself from modern morality enough to do so, which is honestly what makes it fun cause I love villain-protagonists. The manipulative edge of this for me comes from the fact that he throws the keys in the river to cover his tracks, which implies he knows that this was kind of a shady thing to do, did it anyway, and then took precautions to make sure he would never face consequences for it. That’s terrifying!
But by and large the Dutch texts seem to me to endorse Gawain’s more manipulative edge, and as someone who would self-describe as manipulative but trying so so so hard to use that to be kind to people and make them feel good about themselves, rather than being an asshole with it, I think that’s really neat. The French texts read to me as far more critical. This is where the adherence to custom comes in. In my interpretation, the biggest Gawain-follows-the-rules-in-letter-rather-than-spirit red flag comes in The Knight with Two Swords, where Gawain’s talents are traded away to a villainous knight named Brien due to a fluke of vague chivalric traditions (read: Arthur being dumb). There’s a really fascinating article on this which discusses it in the following terms (translation mine but the whole article is super good):
In possession of an Arthurian favour, Brien claims from the king ownership of his nephew Gawain, like an object, or more precisely like a robot. Gawain must do all that Brien wants, without leaving him, without protesting; he will become a mechanical being commanded by a master. [..] They even exchange their destriers and their armour coverings; Gawain cannot be unaware of a treachery taking place, but nonetheless he does not protest.
He follows the shape of chivalry when he shouldn’t, and doesn’t quite get at the core of it. This is also apparent in Gliglois in another field: romance. While he goes through all of the pretty words of being in love with Beauté, he fails to win her love because the shape of love, the words, mean nothing when there’s no actions of love behind them. That trait that is prized in other traditions like the Dutch and the Welsh-- his ability to carefully control the effect of his own persona-- are, in my opinion, cast in a more critical light in many French romances. I don’t think he’s presented as a villain in many of these (that happens in the prose novels, like you said), but he is a flawed side character. There is one major exception where he is straight-up villainous but I’m ignoring it because it’s a gross text and I personally don’t like reading rapist-Gawain takes.
I think it’s super cool that the Gawain-as-devil-on-Yvain’s-shoulder portrayal doesn’t appear in the Welsh. It casts into relief the differences in how various literary traditions view, on large, his approach to courtesy. I know I harped on this a bit yesterday, but I love Joan Grimbert’s analysis and I just want to conclude with this passage from her book Yvain dans le miroir (translation mine):
In assimilating [Gawain's] role as counselor and his roles of "preacher" and "treacherous lecher" (the Red text substitutes "treacherous trickster"), he exposes the duplicity of his own discourse, as well as discourse in general. It is thus that Gawain, the tempter, aware of his own incredible prestige, which immediately exempts him from all criticism on the part of his entourage, amuses himself by playing his own critic. This harangue is surely the fulcrum of the text, because it provokes the crisis which sets in effect the bases of the joy of the married couple, all the while exposing both implicitly and explicitly the nature of the misunderstanding at the origin of the crisis.
He’s playing games. He’s hijacking his cousin’s love life and he’s playing word games with it, because he’s so confident he can talk circles around everyone. I love this man. Someone punch him please.
I especially like focusing on the critical elements of his character in French texts because in so many cases the author clearly loves him anyway, and it’s really one of those moments where you go ohhhhh people have always loved writing morally grey, complicated characters <3 even in a genre which nowadays has a rep as being very stilted and cardboard cutout (which is obviously incorrect but ya know that is the stereotype), I’m always finding little bits of nuance and I think it’s really neat.
(Also thank you so much for your lovely reply, I adore getting to discuss this stuff.)
