The fact that courtly love one of the major themes in Chrétiens stories, I found that his treatment of love, marriage, faithfulness, and morality are complex and thought provoking. He seems to fool his audience about what is evident at a first glance and what requires more consideration. If it is true that he seems to reward the lovers whose love flows from the heart, still he never lets these relationships flow naturally. There is lying, killing, and cheating. But even more, there is the use of something that, though not mentioned explicitly, is hinted as sinful. Thessala’s knowledge of necromancy and magic potions had never been confessed until the young woman was desperate. A moment as this is the perfect opportunity for what is understood as evil in its source to permeate the young woman’s decisions. However, this decision will not be without consequences as she will be beaten and burnt with melted lead. But evil only brings on evil as the three doctors are thrown out to the yard getting all their bones broken (Who knows what the rest of their story might be. Did they live at all?) At the same time Ali, in defense of his marriage and dignity, becomes harshly ridiculed and punished. Agreeing to what is forbidden, as is the use of magic and potions, brings terrible consequences to all those involved.

In these stories of courtly love that arose as a means by which the true feelings of lovers who were married off by convenience could be expressed. C.S. Lewis defines in The Allegory of Love courtly love is a "love of a highly specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love" (2). When reading Chrétien tales, the concepts of love and marriage seem to be questioned. They seem to be the means of escape for a love in a complex system of power, politics and marriage.

Though Chrétien does acknowledge certain values of the time: appearance and form among them, still, he puts forth the problem of all the damage that is caused on both sides when marriage is forced through political agreements and true affections must be subdued for this supposedly greater cause. Adulterers are spared. Love seems to win always. However, he doesn’t leave the field immaculately clean. Every single character involved in these twisted agreements and relationships is touched (or beaten) by physical pain, ridicule, suffering and despair.

Even the concepts of right and wrong are complicated. In Cligés only Alexander and Soredamors are free from the complications of arranged marriage, as they are both in love and a good match politically speaking. In the face of a political conflict that only naturally could have arisen with Alis, their happy love and political reign is severely troubled. Though they reach an agreement, one can only wonder how it is possible that Alis can be forced into renouncing love and living in celibacy as a political agreement. Ali is depicted as absolutely incapable of carrying out any political leadership; however, as Joseph Duggan says, “the reader may find it difficult to condemn Alis’s actions” (111). Values as true love and freedom are subjugated by political agreements and appearances.

At the same time, it is also natural that those who are truly in love should be together and fulfill their love. Cligés and Fenice fall in disgrace because of their seclusion, and though they are “redeemed” by Ali’s death and their eventual marriage, their acts have consequences on future marriages within nobility. By writing such an ending to the story Chrétien can only make his audience uncomfortable. He forces them to ponder how love and marriage have been unnaturally divided causing harm to those directly implied as to those that have by chance had some relation to the situation itself as is the case of the three doctors and Bertrand whose leg is cut off for merely finding Cligés and Fenice naked in the garden by accident.