Sir Balin le Savage is also known as the Knight with the Two Swords. Merlin told King Arthur he would have been his best and bravest knight. A knight before the Round Table was formed, Sir Balin is from Northumberland, and is associated with Sir Balan, his brother. Balin lives only for a few weeks following his departure from King Arthur's court. Balin is a poor knight and has been in King Arthur's prison for six months. Just prior to his departure from court, a free man once more, his destiny is sealed by the arrival of a mysterious damsel bearing a sword that only the most virtuous knight in King Arthur's court will be able to draw. Balin draws this sword easily and Sir Thomas Malory's fifteenth-century account of his subsequent, brief adventures ends when Balin and his brother Balan destroy each other in single combat, fulfilling an earlier prophecy about the destiny of the bearer of the damsel's sword. Prior to his tragic end, this ill-fated knight contrives to inflict a "dolorous stroke" with the spear that pierced Christ upon the Cross, thus setting the scene for the post-Vulgate version of the search for the Holy Grail. Sir Balin is a late addition to the medieval Arthurian world. His story, as told by Sir Thomas Malory, is based upon that told in the continuation of the second book of the post-Vulgate cycle of legend, the Suite du Merlin, dating to the mid-thirteenth century.
