Chivalry Continued

In a prior post, I comment on Sherlock's wonderful sense of chivalry (as depicted by Jonny Lee Miller).

Here are some additional non-Elementary examples:

In Season 6 of Coach (all seasons are finally available but not through Netflix!), Hayden's team is on a winning streak, mostly due to lucky breaks. He isn't thrilled. Christine, his wife, comes home to find him watching a previous game that he coached. She assumes that it is a game that he won (he does like to win!), but he says, "No."

"We played great. They played better. That's what football is supposed to be about," he tells her.

In Last Man Standing, Mike Baxter is immensely proud of his daughter, Eve, for running a Sno-No-Mo business. He encourages her to compete with an older male neighbor who wants the same business. However, when Eve stoops to publishing lies about her competition (claiming he killed a cat with his snowblower), Mike puts a stop to her behavior:

Mike: The free market is the greatest thing that ever happened to this planet, but it only works if there's some moral compass to it. You start lying and cheating about it, it defeats the whole purpose. Go take them down right now.

Eve: Great, perfect. Just when you get an edge, the man hits you with regulations!

Mike (muttering): Boy, I love that kid.

This is chivalry at its best. It's NOT about not competing. It's also NOT about being a sore loser or complainer. It's about respecting the opponent without giving up.

A darker version of this behavior occurs in Black Butler, Volume VII, when Ciel comments that he doesn't blame his enemy (not Sebastian in this case) for protecting "his own." Ciel still burns the man's home down, takes away his livelihood, and orders his personal devil to remove the man and his evil acts from existence. But hey, all's fair in love and war.

Granted, it's a tad psychopathic. But it still resides within the chivalric code because there is no malice behind it. Righteous anger, yes. You fight. I fight. I win. Game over.