Faerie Queen
Why must King Arthur be the one to conquer Orgoglio and rescue the Red Cross Knight?
Even during Edmund Spencer's time, the name of King Arthur was the embodiment of British royal values and British traditions of true national faith, law, and justice. Arthur was considered a much-respected British folk hero and the king of better days, long in England's past -- better days that Elizabeth's reign of prosperity would hopefully bring into being again, as she created her own myth of being a fairy queen, the queen who brought Enlightened Protestantism rather than Catholicism to England. Arthur, in the poem, has been given a vision of the queen, and he is in search of her when he steps in to rescue the Red Cross Knight of the Faerie Queen.
Thus Red Cross, fighting for truth and England's Holiness, is armed with faith in Christ, an image of a bloody cross, and the thought of: "That greatest Gloriana to him gaue, / That greatest Glorious Queene of Faerie lond," the Red Cross Knight sets forth to slay the dragon in his fairy queen's name. He is accompanied by a loyal and beautiful woman who represents England's past as well as its up and coming glory, for Una is "descent from Royall lynage came/of ancient Kings and Queenes, that had of yore/Their scepters stretcht from East to Westerne shore." It is she who meets with Arthur and brings him to the rescue of her Knight.
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