Which character's story in Inferno causes Dante to faint?

Francesca da Rimini’s story in Inferno causes Dante to faint. He meets Francesca and her lover Paolo Malatesta in the second circle of Hell, where the lustful are swept eternally through a violent storm.

Francesca explains that she and Paolo fell in love while reading the tale of Lancelot and Guinevere. A single kiss, prompted by their reading, began their affair; Francesca’s husband, Gianciotto Malatesta, later discovered them and killed them both. In Dante’s poem, Francesca speaks with extraordinary tenderness, while Paolo remains beside her, silently weeping.

At the end of Canto V, Dante says that Paolo’s tears move him to pity and that he falls “as a dead body falls.” The fainting dramatizes his emotional response, but it also creates a moral tension: readers may sympathize with the lovers even though Dante has placed them among the lustful.

The answer is sometimes confused with Count Ugolino, whose tragic narrative appears much later in the ninth circle. Pier della Vigna also tells a memorable story, but Dante does not faint after hearing it. Francesca’s episode is one of the poem’s best-known encounters.