According to Young's Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments, sixteenth and seventeenth century tournaments were displays of the fine arts as well as of martial skill. The horse and the rider were protected by armor that was forged and etched in fanciful patterns, and the list field frequently had set designs worthy of a theatre. To top all of this off, the tournament itself had many of the marks of a dramatic production. Often, there was a theme to the tournament, such as an assault on a Tower of Love. The knights used pseudonyms, and, instead of their ancestral coats of arms, used impreses. An imprese would be carried in on a shield, like a coat of arms, but it would be symbolic of the knight's pseudonym and his role in the tournament's theme, for example, a Shepherd Knight might have sheep, a shepherd's staff, and similar items on his imprese. The knight would appear on the list field accompanied by a herald, who would recite a poem drawing on the pseudonym and the imprese. This poem would take various forms, including the sonnet.

To that end, I have decided to write a tournament entry sonnet for the Champion of Storvik, since he would carry Storvik's coat of arms as an imprese rather than his own coat of arms on his shield in such an elaborate tournament. I have drawn from the stock of heraldic allegories that were common in heraldic handbooks like Legh's Accedence of Armory as well as on certain facts about Storvik itself.