This book has everything I want: a stoic tortured knight, his cunning and equally tortured lady, Medieval politics, courtly intrigue, knightly devotion, courtly love, pining, and loyalty. AND THE LOYALTY. My god, let me tell you all about the loyalty.
Loyalty is one of my assured catnips. Any book that has the hero being quietly loyal and devoted to the heroine that he will do anything, even sacrifice his own life, for her happiness and safety, and I will be rolling in the floor, squealing like a happy cat. And Sir Ruck, the hero of this book, is pretty much slathered in all the good knightly devotion and courtly love tropes. He is like succulent braised pig in terms of satisfying my hunger for loyalty kink.
Sir Ruck is my favorite kind of hero: quietly tortured and utterly loyal and devoted to his lady. He's been through a lot: his house's not truly his due to some legal entanglements and his first common-born wife entered a convent and then "donated" all of his money and horse and armor and arms to the Church. A mysterious benefactress helped him get himself a horse and armor and arms by giving him a pouch of emeralds, and he had pledged himself to her forevermore. Little did he know, thirteen years later, that he would see his benefactress again. The Princess Melanthe is cold and calculating, nothing like the perfect, saintly lady that had sustained him in chastity for thirteen years. He was shattered at first, and yet he grew to love her still, despite her ruthlessness, despite her demons.
The Princess Melanthe had gone through a lot in her life. She was wedded, when she's twelve, to a man old enough to be her father. Her husband had taught her everything she knew about surviving the deadly intrigues of the Italian court, but when he died, Melanthe found herself suffocating there and conspired to be installed in her father's lands in Bowland, England, her childhood home. To achieve this gain, she must tell lies upon lies, break promises upon promises, and woo dukes and knights and princes and nobles. She was always guarded and cold in the continent, for fear that anyone who is dear to her will die, but in England, far away from the vicious court of Italy, she had let her guard down and allow herself to fall in love with a lowly runisch knight.
Both Sir Ruck and the Princess Melanthe are haunted by the demons of their past. Both of them are lonely, alone in the cold hard world. Both of them found love and companionship in each other, when they thought they couldn't. I love that Sir Ruck remains utterly loyal and devoted to Melanthe, even when he doesn't quite know what's in her sleeves. He had pledged himself to her for life, first as her knight, then as her husband, and by god he will upheld that pledge and vow, come rain or hellfire. The Princess Melanthe too, slowly but surely allowed herself to open up to this rough Northern knight, despite her fear for his safety if he got close to her.
The Middle English language employed in the dialogue can be quite disconcerting. I confess, sometimes I don't even know what Sir Ruck is saying, rough-speak as he is. But that's what I love about this novel, it doesn't feel like a pastiche, like some historical novel are. The narrative is very much grounded to the period. Sir Ruck and Princess Melanthe all act like Medieval people in a Medieval world, not modern people in a Medieval world. So there are some of their actions that to us might seem vile, for example Sir Ruck raping his wife for a week straight until he grew tired of her screaming, but they're perfectly reasonable for the characters. As in the Medieval times, religion plays an important role in the story, and the reason why Sir Ruck stayed chaste with Melanthe before they're wed is because he believed he would go to hell for committing the sin of adultery and fornication.
But I love this book and the characters, partly because they are so vivid and full of life. The side characters too are given their own plots and characterizations, not merely some two-dimensional paper-dolls. Sir Ruck and Lady Melanthe's relationship is like catnip to me, but the language can be disorienting, so that's why I gave it a 4.5 star, rounded down to a four star.
0 comments:
Post a Comment