Two Arthurian knights you never read about in grade school:
The African one, black as pitch but naught unsightly, and graced with all that men would praise in a knight, who fights Lancelot to a standstill, from the medieval Romance of Morien.
The female one, a beautiful creature … raise[d] as a boy, conducting [her]self like a man, and of all the knights … most skillful with shield and lance, who manages to outsmart Merlin, from the medieval Romance of Silence.