The story of “Sohrab and Rostam” in Firdawsi’s Shahnameh and “The Knight’s Tale” of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales both culminate in crimes against nature, filicide in the former and fratricide in the latter. As shame and grief overwhelm the people, the kings Kavus and Theseus admonish their subjects to accept these evil events as the inexorable decree of Fate, even going so far as to tell Rostam and Palamon to abandon their mourning for more productive activities. It is a move most evocative of Boethius, who shows how the feelings of anger, despair, and bewilderment that arise in the face of senseless tragedy may be neutralized by the arms of faith and reason, restoring inner peace. At the hands of Chaucer and Firdawsi, however, the efficacy of this strategy is cast in the gravest of doubts. As David Aers and Jean di Paolo demonstrate, Theseus’s invocation of the “Consolatio” only succeeds in further emphasizing the tragedy of death, while the positive theodicean component of the message falls flat. In the Shahnameh, Time/Fate (zamaneh or ruzegar) is the usual nemesis, yet Firdawsi undercuts this premise in the tale of Sohrab by constantly shifting the issue of causation from one character to another, inculpating Sohrab, Hojir, Kavus, and Rostam in the process. With such ambivalent and disorienting messages, both poets destabilize the implicit role of the monarch as arbiter of justice and the promise of tranquility through acquiescence to God’s will that their stories are meant to exemplify. Scholars like Davis, Gaylord, and S?m?n? have argued that the Shahnameh and the Knight’s Tale are “not about gods but of men”—that is, their fatalistic overtones belie a narrative that is brought to fruition by the choices and deeds of people. Davis, in particular, identifies a latent tension within the personal idiosyncrasies that sabotage the ‘official ethics’ of the poem as they are articulated by Kavus. From this premise, this paper seeks to consider how Firdawsi explores the problem of necessary justice in society, a central component of political and theological systems alike within the intellectual milieux of both poets, through both close reading and the work of literary critics. While it is acknowledged that there are many differences in theme, style, and genre between these two works, the subversive undertow found within them provide some interesting parallels and hint at potential insights to be gained from a comparative approach to the Shahnameh.