A knight and his court should stand for the good values of chivalry and virtue. However, that is not something I saw in the reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Arthur seemed childish when he was shown as impatient for waiting for his food and impatient for a fight. Then when he finally got his fight, he simply told Gawain to chop off the head to get it over quickly with, he just wanted to return back to his feast. Obviously, these events display King Arthur as childish and he is certainly not close to a hero. If the king of a court does not have good morals himself, then can his court and his people have good morals if they do not have a morally correct leader?
I think Sir Gawain certainly does show potential for being a true hero even if he is under King Arthur and followed his order to chop of the Green Knight’s head. Gawain stood up and offered to take King Arthur’s place in exchanging blows which shows a willingness to place himself in a potentially dangerous situation in order to protect those which he finds important. Him following orders only shows that he will do anything for his king and queen which is what he is supposed to do. However, one would question whether it would have been the more heroic thing to not follow the King Arthur’s order in order to maintain honor. Or in those times was it worse for your honor to not follow the order of your king?