I think I first saw it in Charlton Heston’s El Cid when I was a kid. Rodrigo of Vivar fought on, doing his duty to his liege even though his liege distrusted him and cast him out. Even at the end, when the shamed King fell to his knees beside Rodrigo’s death bed to seek forgiveness for the years of distrust, Rodrigo, with the last of his strength, rose and pulled the King to his feet. “My King kneels before no man.”
The next time was the instance that gave the thing its name, simply and powerfully. In George Romero’s Knightriders, Sir William the King (portrayed by Ed Harris) confronts the fact that his private quest, a knight errant on an iron horse, had grown into a troupe of fellow knights as a traveling tournament. One evening, when the Queen confronts him about his recklessness in the face of the troupe’s impending disintegration in the face of insurance and overhead and realities of modern life, Sir William responds in frustration, “I am not trying to be a hero; I’m fighting the dragon!”
A few years later I found it again in Lermontov’s The Sail:
А он, мятежный, просит бури, Rebellious, [he] seeks out the storm,
Как будто в бурях есть покой! As if in storms there is peace.
And, of course, there is Cyrano, whose dragons were many.
