Many attempts have been made to tie specific episodes from the Alhambra’s famous secular figural ceiling paintings to specific literary narratives. Despite the Alhambra’s Nasrid patronage, both the visual and literary connections raised are generally from Christian sources, suggesting the cultural hybridity of the fourteenth-century Iberian Peninsula. This paper argues that attempting to pin particular motifs to particular narratives is not only – in at least some cases – futile, but also, more importantly, misses the point of the paintings. The aim of these sophisticated paintings was to connect fiction to reality, and reality to fiction: in particular, to illustrate the chivalry of members of the Order of the Banda or Scarf by portraying them in the visual forms of widely-recognized protagonists of romance. While the paintings suggest secular narratives, in fact they select and display visual motifs for a non-narrative purpose. The Order of the Banda was founded in Christian Castile around 1330, and it was bestowed upon individuals from various nations whom the Castilian king wished to honor. The arms of the Order of the Banda are explicitly painted in all three bays in the Alhambra. However, despite their prominence, no one has yet suggested that this chivalric order may also be referenced in other ways within these paintings. Focusing on iconography, color, and composition, this paper argues that the painted actions, heraldic colors, and repeated inclusion of the coat of arms of the Banda within the paintings are all intended to reference this chivalric order. I argue that the Alhambra’s figural ceiling paintings depict an intentional collage of scenes drawn from romance, but these paintings were not intended to represent any particular romance. These compositions were assembled instead with another purpose in mind: to refer to a chivalric order, its coat-of-arms, heraldic colors, and prescribed courtly activities. The visual structure of the ceilings, their composition and color, are powerful reminders that other kinds of content can be just as important as narrative.