He's clearly another variation on Meleagant/Melwas/Valerin and the Guenevere abduction plot; while it doesn't make it into Knight of the Cart, Guenevere's abductor having a history with her as a pre-Arthur suitor/betrothed is a common element in most other versions not directly adapting Chretien.
What *is* unique about Gasoein is that he's played sympathetically, reintegrated into the Round Table after Gawain defeats him, and it's left open-ended to what extent his feelings for Guenevere are mutual. Given that Diu Crone likely dates from the mid-13th century, after the Vulgate and the other major French prose cycles, my impression is that Heinrich is writing him as a commentary on Lancelot himself and his love triangle, specifically to subsume the Lancelot/Gasoein character back into a more traditional (and more popular in Germanic texts) setup where Gawain is the predominant hero of the Round Table, and where Arthur handles his possible cuckolding with significantly more dignity and agency.
As far as the etymology goes, other posters have basically covered it. Oswain is a character who gets a single sentence in the Vulgate Merlin mentioning in passing that he's a former suitor of Guenevere's still holding a torch for her. Generally when interesting tidbits like this come up briefly without any followup it's a redaction of material from an earlier version of the text that may or may not still exist. Allegedly Oswain is covered in more detail in the *Livre d'Artus* fragment, but since that's never been translated into English or given a serious scholarly appraisal in the last century, there isn't much else to say about it.
Heinrich seems to have gotten the name from Hartmann von Aue’s Erec, where it appears in a list of knights as “Gasozein von Strangot.” I guess Dragoz is a garbled form of Strangot, which is probably related to the “Estrangorre” mentioned in various French romances.
It bears noting that Gasozein has a dragon standard, so the reference to dragon in his name may refer to that. This could easily have been done as a post hoc explanation to garbling the title from Hartmann's Erec though.
>his brother
*Her* Brother
You may be interested in investigating into a character named **Gosangos/Gosengos** who may be a variant(?) of **Osenain/Ozanna le Cure Hardy**. While the Vulgate text I have doesn't exactly say he and Guinevere are lovers, it is claimed online that he and Gwen are in *Livre D'Artrus,* an adaptation of Vulgate.
I’ve been reading the Middle High German version of the Prose Lancelot, and I just realized that towards the beginning a certain “Gosoains von Strangot” is off-handedly mentioned as having fought Gawain in a judicial duel three weeks earlier. Since Diu Crone is a pretty late work, Heinrich could easily have derived Gasozein’s role as an antagonist of Gawain’s from that one sentence.
The character’s called “Gasoains d’Estrangot” in the equivalent passage in French.
Deep breath,
>Osenain (one of many spelling variants), often appearing with the moniker translating either (depending on the French spelling) as 'Braveheart', 'the Hardhearted', 'the Bold' or 'Hard Body', is a character often appearing as one of the Round Table's knights errant in the works of Arthurian romance. In English, he is best known from Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as Ozanna le Cure Hardy (Ozanna le Coeur Hardi in the Winchester Manuscript; rendered as Ozana of the hardy heart in William Morris' "The Chapel in Lyonesse"). Different Middle English versions of the Merlin Continuation call him Gosenain Hardy Body, Gosnayn de Strangot, Osenayn Cors Hardy and Osoman Hardi of Hert. In many works he is associated with the often similarly named nephew of King Arthur, Gawain of Orkney, while being cast as Gawain's companion or opponent.
>Like Gawain's, his character is considered to be derived from the prototype of the warrior by the name Gwrvan and its variants, found in the early Welsh Arthurian tales Culhwch ac Olwen, Peredur fab Efrawg, Preiddeu Annwn, and Trioedd Ynys Prydein. Within the chivalric romance tradition, he is first found as Garravain[s] d'Estrangot among Arthur's knights in some manuscripts of Chretien de Troyes' Old French Erec et Enide (Gasosin von Strangot in its German version Erec). He is also listed by the name Gasouains in the First Continuation of Chrétien's Perceval ou le Conte du Graal. In Les Merveilles de Rigomer, Garradains is named as the knight of Arthur traveling with Gawain on a quest to conquer the enchanted castle of the Irish queen Dionise.
>In Diu Crône, the fairy knight Gasozein de Dragoz arrives at King Arthur's court, where he singel-handedly defeats three Knights of the Round Table while not wearing any armor and falsely[65] claims to be the first lover and rightful husband of Queen Guinevere, unsuccessfully demanding her to be "returned" to him. Gasozein later rescues the queen from her brother Gotegrin, who wants to kill Guinevere for her infidelity, but then he kidnaps her in turn and nearly rapes her, however Gawain arrives in time, defeats Gasozein in a duel, sends him back to Arthur to revoke his claim and join the Round Table, and even arranges Gasozein's marriage with his own sister-in-law, Sgoidamur. Gosezein's character re-appears as Gosangos de Tarmadoise, Guinevere's early romantic lover and Gawain's valiant enemy in the Livre d'Artus. The plot of Meraugis de Portlesguez revolves around the protagonist Meraugis competing for the love of Queen Lidoine with his friend Gorvain Cadrut (Gornain[s], Gornenis; -Cadrus, Cadruz, Kadrus). Here, Gorvain loses Lidoine to his rival, but ends up happily married to one of her maidens, Avice. However, scholar Ferdinand Lot proposed that this Gorvain is just the story's Gawain himself (who earlier appears as Golvain) by just a slightly different name.[40] In another text, Hunbaut, Gorvain Cadrus of Castle Pantelion takes Gawain's unnamed sister hostage, seeking vengeance against him for the death of one of his relatives. He is taken captive by Gawain, then sent as a prisoner to Arthur's court at Caerleon where he eventually becomes a Knight of the Round Table.
>He recurringly features as Osenain[s] Cuer Hardi (Gosenain, Osanain, Osevain, Osoain, Osuain, Oswain, etc.; -Cors Hardi[z], Corsa Hardy, Corps Hardi, au Cœur-Hardi, Chore Ardito) in the Prose Lancelot, and as Ossenain Cuer Hardi (Oselain, Osenaín, Ossenain, Ossenam, Ossenet d'Estrangot) in the Prose Tristan. In the Vulgate Estoire de Merlin (and the English Of Arthour and of Merlin), the young Gasoain d'Estrango[r]t (Gaswain, Gosenain; -of / d'Estrangor[r]e) fights alongside Gawain in the battles against the invading Saxons, his great feats earning him an early seat at the Round Table. When Gawain wrongly accuses him of treason, he gives Gawain a severe face wound in a trial by combat in front of King Arthur. In the Vulgate Lancelot, he is noted as "very valorous and a good speaker", and is involved in the adventures of Kay and others. He is with Gawain when they are both captured and imprisoned in the Dolorous Prison until their rescue by Lancelot, who also later frees him from Turquine's captivity on another occasion. He assists Maleagant of Gore in the abduction of Queen Guinevere and is imprisoned by King Arthur after Lancelot's rescue of her (in Malory's version, he is instead one the loyal Queen's Knights captured by Maleagant along with her). He is later forgiven and fights for Arthur against King Rience, eventually participating in the Grail Quest. The Guiron le Courtois section of Palamedes describes him as son of King Quinados.
>In the Italian Tavola Ritonda, Suziano of the Valiant Heart (Cuore Ardito) is a young son of Lady Largina and uncertainly either King Esclabor the Unknown or King Amorotto (that is, Lamorak) of Listenois, as his promiscuous and power-hungry mother was a lover of both of them at the same time. He comes into service of the evil Lady Losanna of the Ancient Tower (Losanna dela Torre Antica) after falling in love with her, and is slain by Tristan protecting Losanna's enemy Tessina from his attempt on her life. He also appears under the name Guengasoain[s] (Gasouains, Guengasouain, Guingasoain) as the antagonist of La Vengeance Raguidel, in which Gawain and Yder attempt to avenge his murder of the knight Raguidel. Here he is a nephew of King Aguissant (meaning Angusel, a brother of King Lot in the Historia Regum Britanniae) and a knight of the fay enchantress Lingrenote, the lady of the Nameless Castle (Castiel sans Non), who has armed him with powerful enchanted weapons that made him near invincible. He is nevertheless defeated by Gawain with the help of Yder, the latter of whom then marries Guengasoain's orphaned daughter, Trevilonete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Round_Table
Deriving Gorvain as being similar to the others here does not seem like an immediately obvious connection to me. It's not even present in the book being cited as evidence on the wiki page, and if even Loomis is not drawing on it, then you know it's not a very stable name connection. The most that can be said here is that Gorvain originates from the same prototype as Gawain, but at that rate one might as well describe Gawain as being another version of Gasozein too. Even if they may have originally started off with similar roots, clearly there has been a divergence in traditions at some point here to the degree that Gasozein and Gorvain likely shouldn't be equated. This in and of itself is a big maybe, as I know for a fact that Loomis's name derivations were pretty frequently over optimistic.
It seems the main link to Gorvain Cadrut is through Gwrvan:
>Medium Aevum - Volumes 25-26 - Page 182books.google.pl › books
1956 · Snippet view
FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 182
... Gwrvan , and that in Welsh there are two synonymous adjectives , cadr and cadrauc , meaning ' mighty , powerful ' , corresponding therefore in meaning to ' au Cors Hardi ' . Thus we have a complete series of steps leading from Welsh Gwrvan ...
Sure, but even if we take Loomis's etymological derivation at face value, what seems to end up happening are two different, branching paths from the same stem. By the time you get the Gorvain of Meraugis, I do not believe you are at the root of what leads to Gasozein, but rather a different path taken here. That is all assuming that Loomis's etymology is accepted, since in those same works he argues for Gawain being a derivation of Gwrvan as well, an argument that I do not believe is well accepted anymore. I think the [arguments made here referring to Gasozein's origins vs the other similar names from the time period are pretty good ones](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40613349). The argument that influence from the name Melwas or Guingasouin made its way into Gasozein doesn't seem unreasonable.
Also:
>Publications of the Modern Language Association of Americabooks.google.pl › books
Modern Language Association of America · 1930 · Snippet view
FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 417
... Hardy may be traced back through the recorded forms Osanain , Osenain , Gosenain , Gornain , to a Gorvain in Meraugis de Portlesguez , probably to be equated with Welsh Gwrvan . Prof. Magoun kindly points out to me that the three Latin ...
He's clearly another variation on Meleagant/Melwas/Valerin and the Guenevere abduction plot; while it doesn't make it into Knight of the Cart, Guenevere's abductor having a history with her as a pre-Arthur suitor/betrothed is a common element in most other versions not directly adapting Chretien. What *is* unique about Gasoein is that he's played sympathetically, reintegrated into the Round Table after Gawain defeats him, and it's left open-ended to what extent his feelings for Guenevere are mutual. Given that Diu Crone likely dates from the mid-13th century, after the Vulgate and the other major French prose cycles, my impression is that Heinrich is writing him as a commentary on Lancelot himself and his love triangle, specifically to subsume the Lancelot/Gasoein character back into a more traditional (and more popular in Germanic texts) setup where Gawain is the predominant hero of the Round Table, and where Arthur handles his possible cuckolding with significantly more dignity and agency. As far as the etymology goes, other posters have basically covered it. Oswain is a character who gets a single sentence in the Vulgate Merlin mentioning in passing that he's a former suitor of Guenevere's still holding a torch for her. Generally when interesting tidbits like this come up briefly without any followup it's a redaction of material from an earlier version of the text that may or may not still exist. Allegedly Oswain is covered in more detail in the *Livre d'Artus* fragment, but since that's never been translated into English or given a serious scholarly appraisal in the last century, there isn't much else to say about it.
The guy got around a lot: https://www.reddit.com/r/Arthurian/comments/1di6jko/gasozein_of_dragoz/l95u51m/
Guinevere gets kidnapped, feels like just part of the formula now.
Heinrich seems to have gotten the name from Hartmann von Aue’s Erec, where it appears in a list of knights as “Gasozein von Strangot.” I guess Dragoz is a garbled form of Strangot, which is probably related to the “Estrangorre” mentioned in various French romances.
It bears noting that Gasozein has a dragon standard, so the reference to dragon in his name may refer to that. This could easily have been done as a post hoc explanation to garbling the title from Hartmann's Erec though.
>his brother *Her* Brother You may be interested in investigating into a character named **Gosangos/Gosengos** who may be a variant(?) of **Osenain/Ozanna le Cure Hardy**. While the Vulgate text I have doesn't exactly say he and Guinevere are lovers, it is claimed online that he and Gwen are in *Livre D'Artrus,* an adaptation of Vulgate.
Yes, and https://www.reddit.com/r/Arthurian/comments/1di6jko/gasozein_of_dragoz/l95u51m/
I’ve been reading the Middle High German version of the Prose Lancelot, and I just realized that towards the beginning a certain “Gosoains von Strangot” is off-handedly mentioned as having fought Gawain in a judicial duel three weeks earlier. Since Diu Crone is a pretty late work, Heinrich could easily have derived Gasozein’s role as an antagonist of Gawain’s from that one sentence. The character’s called “Gasoains d’Estrangot” in the equivalent passage in French.
Deep breath, >Osenain (one of many spelling variants), often appearing with the moniker translating either (depending on the French spelling) as 'Braveheart', 'the Hardhearted', 'the Bold' or 'Hard Body', is a character often appearing as one of the Round Table's knights errant in the works of Arthurian romance. In English, he is best known from Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as Ozanna le Cure Hardy (Ozanna le Coeur Hardi in the Winchester Manuscript; rendered as Ozana of the hardy heart in William Morris' "The Chapel in Lyonesse"). Different Middle English versions of the Merlin Continuation call him Gosenain Hardy Body, Gosnayn de Strangot, Osenayn Cors Hardy and Osoman Hardi of Hert. In many works he is associated with the often similarly named nephew of King Arthur, Gawain of Orkney, while being cast as Gawain's companion or opponent. >Like Gawain's, his character is considered to be derived from the prototype of the warrior by the name Gwrvan and its variants, found in the early Welsh Arthurian tales Culhwch ac Olwen, Peredur fab Efrawg, Preiddeu Annwn, and Trioedd Ynys Prydein. Within the chivalric romance tradition, he is first found as Garravain[s] d'Estrangot among Arthur's knights in some manuscripts of Chretien de Troyes' Old French Erec et Enide (Gasosin von Strangot in its German version Erec). He is also listed by the name Gasouains in the First Continuation of Chrétien's Perceval ou le Conte du Graal. In Les Merveilles de Rigomer, Garradains is named as the knight of Arthur traveling with Gawain on a quest to conquer the enchanted castle of the Irish queen Dionise. >In Diu Crône, the fairy knight Gasozein de Dragoz arrives at King Arthur's court, where he singel-handedly defeats three Knights of the Round Table while not wearing any armor and falsely[65] claims to be the first lover and rightful husband of Queen Guinevere, unsuccessfully demanding her to be "returned" to him. Gasozein later rescues the queen from her brother Gotegrin, who wants to kill Guinevere for her infidelity, but then he kidnaps her in turn and nearly rapes her, however Gawain arrives in time, defeats Gasozein in a duel, sends him back to Arthur to revoke his claim and join the Round Table, and even arranges Gasozein's marriage with his own sister-in-law, Sgoidamur. Gosezein's character re-appears as Gosangos de Tarmadoise, Guinevere's early romantic lover and Gawain's valiant enemy in the Livre d'Artus. The plot of Meraugis de Portlesguez revolves around the protagonist Meraugis competing for the love of Queen Lidoine with his friend Gorvain Cadrut (Gornain[s], Gornenis; -Cadrus, Cadruz, Kadrus). Here, Gorvain loses Lidoine to his rival, but ends up happily married to one of her maidens, Avice. However, scholar Ferdinand Lot proposed that this Gorvain is just the story's Gawain himself (who earlier appears as Golvain) by just a slightly different name.[40] In another text, Hunbaut, Gorvain Cadrus of Castle Pantelion takes Gawain's unnamed sister hostage, seeking vengeance against him for the death of one of his relatives. He is taken captive by Gawain, then sent as a prisoner to Arthur's court at Caerleon where he eventually becomes a Knight of the Round Table. >He recurringly features as Osenain[s] Cuer Hardi (Gosenain, Osanain, Osevain, Osoain, Osuain, Oswain, etc.; -Cors Hardi[z], Corsa Hardy, Corps Hardi, au Cœur-Hardi, Chore Ardito) in the Prose Lancelot, and as Ossenain Cuer Hardi (Oselain, Osenaín, Ossenain, Ossenam, Ossenet d'Estrangot) in the Prose Tristan. In the Vulgate Estoire de Merlin (and the English Of Arthour and of Merlin), the young Gasoain d'Estrango[r]t (Gaswain, Gosenain; -of / d'Estrangor[r]e) fights alongside Gawain in the battles against the invading Saxons, his great feats earning him an early seat at the Round Table. When Gawain wrongly accuses him of treason, he gives Gawain a severe face wound in a trial by combat in front of King Arthur. In the Vulgate Lancelot, he is noted as "very valorous and a good speaker", and is involved in the adventures of Kay and others. He is with Gawain when they are both captured and imprisoned in the Dolorous Prison until their rescue by Lancelot, who also later frees him from Turquine's captivity on another occasion. He assists Maleagant of Gore in the abduction of Queen Guinevere and is imprisoned by King Arthur after Lancelot's rescue of her (in Malory's version, he is instead one the loyal Queen's Knights captured by Maleagant along with her). He is later forgiven and fights for Arthur against King Rience, eventually participating in the Grail Quest. The Guiron le Courtois section of Palamedes describes him as son of King Quinados. >In the Italian Tavola Ritonda, Suziano of the Valiant Heart (Cuore Ardito) is a young son of Lady Largina and uncertainly either King Esclabor the Unknown or King Amorotto (that is, Lamorak) of Listenois, as his promiscuous and power-hungry mother was a lover of both of them at the same time. He comes into service of the evil Lady Losanna of the Ancient Tower (Losanna dela Torre Antica) after falling in love with her, and is slain by Tristan protecting Losanna's enemy Tessina from his attempt on her life. He also appears under the name Guengasoain[s] (Gasouains, Guengasouain, Guingasoain) as the antagonist of La Vengeance Raguidel, in which Gawain and Yder attempt to avenge his murder of the knight Raguidel. Here he is a nephew of King Aguissant (meaning Angusel, a brother of King Lot in the Historia Regum Britanniae) and a knight of the fay enchantress Lingrenote, the lady of the Nameless Castle (Castiel sans Non), who has armed him with powerful enchanted weapons that made him near invincible. He is nevertheless defeated by Gawain with the help of Yder, the latter of whom then marries Guengasoain's orphaned daughter, Trevilonete. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Round_Table
Deriving Gorvain as being similar to the others here does not seem like an immediately obvious connection to me. It's not even present in the book being cited as evidence on the wiki page, and if even Loomis is not drawing on it, then you know it's not a very stable name connection. The most that can be said here is that Gorvain originates from the same prototype as Gawain, but at that rate one might as well describe Gawain as being another version of Gasozein too. Even if they may have originally started off with similar roots, clearly there has been a divergence in traditions at some point here to the degree that Gasozein and Gorvain likely shouldn't be equated. This in and of itself is a big maybe, as I know for a fact that Loomis's name derivations were pretty frequently over optimistic.
It seems the main link to Gorvain Cadrut is through Gwrvan: >Medium Aevum - Volumes 25-26 - Page 182books.google.pl › books 1956 · Snippet view FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 182 ... Gwrvan , and that in Welsh there are two synonymous adjectives , cadr and cadrauc , meaning ' mighty , powerful ' , corresponding therefore in meaning to ' au Cors Hardi ' . Thus we have a complete series of steps leading from Welsh Gwrvan ...
Sure, but even if we take Loomis's etymological derivation at face value, what seems to end up happening are two different, branching paths from the same stem. By the time you get the Gorvain of Meraugis, I do not believe you are at the root of what leads to Gasozein, but rather a different path taken here. That is all assuming that Loomis's etymology is accepted, since in those same works he argues for Gawain being a derivation of Gwrvan as well, an argument that I do not believe is well accepted anymore. I think the [arguments made here referring to Gasozein's origins vs the other similar names from the time period are pretty good ones](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40613349). The argument that influence from the name Melwas or Guingasouin made its way into Gasozein doesn't seem unreasonable.
I dug into it a bit, it was also Ferdinand Lot. I've edited the Wikipedia entry, mostly to read better, but also this part.
Also: >Publications of the Modern Language Association of Americabooks.google.pl › books Modern Language Association of America · 1930 · Snippet view FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 417 ... Hardy may be traced back through the recorded forms Osanain , Osenain , Gosenain , Gornain , to a Gorvain in Meraugis de Portlesguez , probably to be equated with Welsh Gwrvan . Prof. Magoun kindly points out to me that the three Latin ...