Lady Dulcinea

Since Don Quijote is role playing a knight-errant, his love for Dulcinea is part of the role play. He created her as part of his role play. Since Don Quijote takes interest to stories about love and ladies, he himself needs a love. His character focuses upon serving Lady Dulcinea and she is the reason for his knightly duties. In some of the chivalrous novels he had read the knights had their princesses that the knights honored and wed. In order to be the ideal knight that he dreams of he needs a princess. When it comes down to all the actions that he does he relates to Dulcinea. She is what makes his knight-errant character make sense and worthy. He could have used other ideals or objects for his reasoning. Such as the love for God and Christianity. He also could use his service to a particular monarch. Instead of telling defeated enemies to go pledge their allegiance to Dulcinea del Toboso he could have told them to go pledge the allegiance to the Church or to King so and so. But being a knight, Don Quijote must have a purpose for his doings. Perhaps he chooses to focus on love as opposed to the Church or Monarchy because it is more appealing to him in his readings. So when the character of Don Quijote was being created, it was based upon what the man behind the character has found most appealing in his readings of chivalrous knights.