This is an archetype that appears again and again throughout history, more as a way to extrapolate and emphasize the best that humans can offer as opposed to being born into a tradition of royalty. The saving of society, though, is usually met with grave personal sacrifice, sometimes of wealth, more often of loved ones, or, in the case of Beowulf, the ultimate sacrifice -- giving up one's own life in the service of society (Raffel intro). So, too, fate is interspersed with a very simple concept of armor -- which corresponds to linage, reputation, and the essentials of what makes an individual unique, certainly not just that they were born of royal blood, but that somewhere and somehow they reached down to the very depths of their soul and found the courage, stamina and something "heroic" in which mere mortals can only hope for:
Beowulf donned his armor for battle,
Heeded not danger; the hand-braided byrny,
Broad of shoulder and richly bedecked,
Must stand the ordeal of the watery depths.
Well could that corselet defend the frame
Lest hostile thrust should pierce...
Beowulf and Other Olde English Poems. New York:
Bantam Books, 1983.
Raffel, B. (translator and editor). Beowulf. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Tolkein, J.R. Beowulf the Monsters and the Critics. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1958.
