Critics have considered Le Chevalier au lion as the pinnacle of Chrétien's romance composition, since it contains all the typical elements of a courtly romance. It is preserved in seven complete manuscripts as well as in a number of fragments, and its success in medieval Europe is reflected by its translation into Old West Norse, Danish, English, German, Italian, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish. The French reworking by Pierre Sala in c. 1522 shows that the interest in the romance in France persisted long after the twelfth century. Jane H. M. Taylor situates Sala's version within a broader context and argues that

Taylor's concept of ‘textual management’ could certainly be extended to translations of French romances into other medieval vernaculars and into Old Swedish in particular. As we shall see, this is particularly true when analysing the female characters.

The Old Swedish translation Herr Ivan is emblematic of the Europeanisation of medieval culture: it was not only the text that introduced the Arthurian romance into medieval Sweden, drawing on both Chrétien's romance and its Old West Norse translation Ívens saga, but also the narrative that marked the earliest known incarnation of Swedish national literature. In other words, the new literary tradition that developed after Herr Ivan bears distinctive markers of the continental material introduced by that very text.

The role of the female characters in Chrétien's romances has been discussed extensively from different perspectives and theoretical positions, which is also the case with Le Chevalier au lion. The lady Laudine and the maiden Lunete are at the centre of the romance: Laudine, a victim of violence between men, is the object of Yvain's love and the raison d’être of the principal chivalric quest; Lunete, also a victim, is the instigator whose action leads the narrative in new directions. The complexity of the French text, alongside Chrétien's frequently ironic tone, however, opens up many possible interpretations of the two women's roles in the narrative.