The 19th century Italian writer Arturo Graf gives this version of the legend in his 1889 book Il Diavolo : There was once a duchess of Normandy who was tormented with a desire to have children and yet could have none.
It begins in the time of the legendary Aubert and his son Robert le Diable, during the reign of Pepin, father of Charlemagne, the early part up to 1189 being a prose version of Wace’s Roman de Rou.
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His adaptation of a French operetta by Émile Jonas called The Two Harlequins opened the new Gaiety Theatre, London in 1868, together with his distant cousin, W. S. Gilbert's, Robert the Devil and another piece.
The tournament where the hero fights in disguise and claims to have been busy is a fairy tale commonplace (such as in The Golden Crab or The Magician's Horse, or in Little Johnny Sheep-Dung and The Hairy Man, where it is actual battle), and from there passed into such romances as Robert the Devil, Sir Gowther, and Lanzelet.