Tear Jerker / A Knight's Tale

• In-Universe example; William's friends all suffer some amount of this when he is about to be taken away for impersonating a knight.
  William: Roland, you would see me run?
  Roland: Yes.
  William: And you, Chaucer
  Chaucer: Yes, with all the pieces of my heart, William.
  William: Wat, you and I, we aren't runners.
  Wat: Yes, today we are.
  William: Kate?
  Kate: Run William.
  • Will answers this by roaring 'No! I will not run!', before following up with a teary-eyed, broken "I'm a knight." He's wanted to be one since he was a boy and simply cannot bear to give it up.
  • Following this, William is shown at his lowest in the pillory, being mocked and ridiculed and scorned by the very people who cheered for him. Among those jeering him is a young boy come to slap William soundly, who ironically waved to the former knight not days ago.
    • In a deleted scene, after he's been arrested and is awaiting the pillory and Adhemar comes in and mocks him and beats him up, he sits down in his cell and breaks down crying.
• When they all help Will compose a love letter. "I miss you like the sun misses the flower".
  • At the end Will says to sign it "With all the love that I possess, William" before Chaucer corrects him that it should be "Ulric" the smile falls from Williams face as he realizes that he has to maintain the lie even to the woman he loves.
• Anything involving William's father is genuinely moving, which is rather odd given the rest of the film's Camp tone.
  • Particularly the flashback to when William's father leaves him with Sir Ecter. Though it's simultaneously a CMOH that his father is trying to let William have a chance to follow his dreams, the look on his face as they say goodbye is utterly heart-wrenching. It's not helped by the fact that in the flashback, his father says he was apprenticed to Sir Ecter for seven years and the flashback was prompted by William admitting he'd not been back to England for twelve years...
  • William's reaction when he sees his father again. His expression when he realises his father truly has gone blind is enough to make anyone tear up but then the moment when William's father realises he's talking to his son will be guaranteed to have you reaching for the tissues.
• Sir Ecter presents a retroactive tearjerker. In a flashback we see he was a good man, willing to take William on as a squire because he's "got spirit," promising to show him "a wide world full of adventure." He will nonetheless die poor and nearly forgotten, succumbing to dysentery, a painful and humiliating fate he didn't deserve.