Rime royal is so called because King James I of Scotland employed it in The Kingis Quair. (It does not much resemble the French chant royal.) Chaucer, however, was its most skillful practitioner, using it for the entirety of Troilus and Criseyde, as well as The Clerk's Tale and elsewhere; he managed to adapt it for all kinds of purposes, from dialogue to narrative, and description to passionate love lyrics. Rime Royal consists of seven lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ababbcc. It is close to the stanzas of the ballade, with which it may have some connection, and also to what Chaucer used in his Monk's Tale. The Spenserian stanza may well be a further development of it.
 
 

                            It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
                            But all is turned thorough my gentleness
                            Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
                            And I have leave to go of her goodness,
                            And she also, to use newfangleness.
                            But since that I so kindly am served
                            I would fain know what she hath deserved.
                                                                            --Thomas Wyatt

                                  To kyng Alla was toold al this meschance,
                                 And eek the tyme, and where, and in what wise
                                 That in a ship was founden dame Custance,
                                 As heer-biforn that ye han herd devyse.
                                 The kynges herte of pitee gan agryse,
                                 Whan he saugh so benigne a creature
                                 Falle in disese and in mysaventure.
                                                                            --Geoffrey Chaucer
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