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Medieval Hearts #1
For My Lady's Heart
In medieval Europe, vows and laws are as inflexible and confining as a suit of armor. For Ruck, a noble and honest knight, those rules provide an unwavering path. Even as his wife leaves him for the Church, taking his money and his steed, Ruck’s life is one of devotion and mission.
For the beautiful widow, Princess Melanthe, those same laws and traditions conspire to consume her land and her independence. Her husband’s death has left her kingdom an inviting target for neighboring territories. Where Ruck sees a clear path, Melanthe must navigate through twisting alleyways, using shrewd deceit and devious strategy.
Can these two help each other overcome the powers conspiring against them? Will the passion in their hearts escape the constraints of their station? Is devotion enough?
With her classic romance FOR MY LADY’S HEART, author Laura Kinsale has crafted a rich, sensual portrait of life during the Middle Ages. And, now for the first time, readers can choose between two versions of the story. Both are included in this same ebook.
The first is the original published novel filled with authentic Middle English dialogue and deep period detail. The second (included only here in the ebook version) had been painstakingly reworked by the author to include a tighter read and more modern words for dialogue. Whichever you decide to read, you’ll be richly rewarded with a story of love and honor for the ages.
For the beautiful widow, Princess Melanthe, those same laws and traditions conspire to consume her land and her independence. Her husband’s death has left her kingdom an inviting target for neighboring territories. Where Ruck sees a clear path, Melanthe must navigate through twisting alleyways, using shrewd deceit and devious strategy.
Can these two help each other overcome the powers conspiring against them? Will the passion in their hearts escape the constraints of their station? Is devotion enough?
With her classic romance FOR MY LADY’S HEART, author Laura Kinsale has crafted a rich, sensual portrait of life during the Middle Ages. And, now for the first time, readers can choose between two versions of the story. Both are included in this same ebook.
The first is the original published novel filled with authentic Middle English dialogue and deep period detail. The second (included only here in the ebook version) had been painstakingly reworked by the author to include a tighter read and more modern words for dialogue. Whichever you decide to read, you’ll be richly rewarded with a story of love and honor for the ages.
482 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 16, 1993
613 people are currently reading
8103 people want to read
About the author
Laura Kinsale
29 books1,521 followersLaura Kinsale is a New York Times bestselling author and both winner and multiple nominee for the Best Book of the Year award given by the Romance Writers of America.
She become a romance writer after six years as a geologist--a career which consisted of getting out of bed in the middle of the night and driving hundreds of miles alone across west Texas to sit drilling rigs, wear a hard hat, and attempt to boss around oil-covered males considerably larger than herself. This, she decided, was pushing her luck. So she gave all that up to sit in a chair and stare into space for long periods of time, attempting to figure out What-Happens-Next. She and her husband David currently divide their time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Texas.
She become a romance writer after six years as a geologist--a career which consisted of getting out of bed in the middle of the night and driving hundreds of miles alone across west Texas to sit drilling rigs, wear a hard hat, and attempt to boss around oil-covered males considerably larger than herself. This, she decided, was pushing her luck. So she gave all that up to sit in a chair and stare into space for long periods of time, attempting to figure out What-Happens-Next. She and her husband David currently divide their time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Texas.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 434 reviews
June 24, 2023
I’m not a sentimental person; sometimes I wonder if my factory settings are just defective when it comes to romance. I suppose I’m pretty practical romance-wise (I’d pick a gift of a nice sturdy mop over a bouquet of flowers any day), and maybe that’s why romance books in general tend to leave me cold while I, like my soul sibling Murderbot, would prefer to fast-forward through the sex scenes to something with more of a plot. Love is good but reading about it can easily be boring.
But my friend Nastya has excellent taste in books, and For My Lady’s Heart apparently is the cream of the crop, so I took the plunge. And no, it didn’t repeat the Lymond miracle of me falling in love with it, but by the end I actually warmed up to it a bit and realized that I didn’t hate it after all. And for me it’s something.
But it’s like Laura Kinsale set out to make it difficult for plebeian me to like this book. All that peppering of Middle English that alternated between exasperating me and making me laugh. All those luscious descriptions that made my eyes slide off the page at time.
And, of course, the romance.
And there’s something about Middle English words combined with general awkwardness of sex scenes that leads to an unintended hilarious effect with all those firm tarses and yards and privy-most quaints.
This book is set sometime in the 1360s or so, and the mentions of John of Gaunt and the Black Prince and the plague had my attention initially perked up, but then meet cute happened and my attention took a long snooze, but then with the arrival of Italian sociopaths and poisoners it perked up yet again, and long story short, it started to grow on me a bit. Too bad those background cutthroat politics remained in the background, but I suppose that’s how it would be in a romance book regardless of what I would want.
I did appreciate that the world Kinsale created does not pander to modern sensibilities, nicely sticking to the idea that the past is a foreign country. Despite my annoyances with Middle English, I did not want to see the thinly disguised 20th century, and that I did not.
Melanthe, our female protagonist, was delightfully morally grey at the start while our noble male hero Ruck was a bland manly slab of blandness — but by the end these lovebirds rub off on each other a bit, with Melanthe showing more naïveté than I’d expect and Ruck getting a bit more personality, and, believe it or not, I was actually alright with their happily ever after, even if it involves Ruck to go and have his man adventures while Melanthe does her falconry or perhaps learns how to knit.
Anyway, in the end I didn’t hate it and even got a kick out of it, and it’s not the fault of a historical romance novel that I would have preferred a historical novel with romance in the background only.
3 stars brought to you by Covid brain.
—————
Buddy read with Nastya and Justin.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
But my friend Nastya has excellent taste in books, and For My Lady’s Heart apparently is the cream of the crop, so I took the plunge. And no, it didn’t repeat the Lymond miracle of me falling in love with it, but by the end I actually warmed up to it a bit and realized that I didn’t hate it after all. And for me it’s something.
But it’s like Laura Kinsale set out to make it difficult for plebeian me to like this book. All that peppering of Middle English that alternated between exasperating me and making me laugh. All those luscious descriptions that made my eyes slide off the page at time.
And, of course, the romance.
“She turned. The knight stalked barefooted up through the reeds, soaked, wearing only linen that molded to him so perfectly he might have had on nothing at all. Every muscle showed as he moved, every feature, his ribs and chest, his waist, his thick calves and thighs, even tarse and stones. His shoulders gleamed wetly, big and straight beneath the dripping tails of his rough black locks.”
And there’s something about Middle English words combined with general awkwardness of sex scenes that leads to an unintended hilarious effect with all those firm tarses and yards and privy-most quaints.
“Melanthe drew in a sharp breath as the embrace spun beyond familiar ground. He lifted his head, resting it back against the wall, his eyes closed. But he did not let her go. His hips moved in a pushing stir against hers, without shame, rubbing the firm bulk of his tarse to her belly, even against her privy-most quaint.”
“She touched him beneath the mantle, caressing her hand boldly over his yard*.”
(*I gotta confess I begged Nastya to clarify that Kinsale didn’t actually mean a 90-cm male “member” here, since otherwise this book would be crossing into genuine bloody horror territory. But no worries, just old English euphemism for a penis. Phew…)
This book is set sometime in the 1360s or so, and the mentions of John of Gaunt and the Black Prince and the plague had my attention initially perked up, but then meet cute happened and my attention took a long snooze, but then with the arrival of Italian sociopaths and poisoners it perked up yet again, and long story short, it started to grow on me a bit. Too bad those background cutthroat politics remained in the background, but I suppose that’s how it would be in a romance book regardless of what I would want.
I did appreciate that the world Kinsale created does not pander to modern sensibilities, nicely sticking to the idea that the past is a foreign country. Despite my annoyances with Middle English, I did not want to see the thinly disguised 20th century, and that I did not.
Melanthe, our female protagonist, was delightfully morally grey at the start while our noble male hero Ruck was a bland manly slab of blandness — but by the end these lovebirds rub off on each other a bit, with Melanthe showing more naïveté than I’d expect and Ruck getting a bit more personality, and, believe it or not, I was actually alright with their happily ever after, even if it involves Ruck to go and have his man adventures while Melanthe does her falconry or perhaps learns how to knit.
Anyway, in the end I didn’t hate it and even got a kick out of it, and it’s not the fault of a historical romance novel that I would have preferred a historical novel with romance in the background only.
3 stars brought to you by Covid brain.
—————
Buddy read with Nastya and Justin.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
Read
January 15, 2025Wrote this review originally for a blog, hence the more formal style.
This review might be a little shorter than usual, because all I really have to say about For My Lady’s Heart is “it’s awesome.”
Thanks for reading! See you next week!
Okay, I should probably say a little bit more than that, but this will be a little short because FMLH is a really dense, complex book and so I had to choose to either talk about it literally for ever, or to focus on the few things I thought I could discuss within a reasonable wordcount. FMLH tells the story of the wandering knight Ruck and the enigmatic Princess Melanthe. The book opens with Ruck escorting his probably-mentally-ill wife Isabelle to Avignon, where she intends to pledge herself to a nunnery. There he sees a mysterious woman in green (Melanthe) who later bails him out after Isabelle gives Ruck’s armour, horse, and money to an evil Bishop. The story picks up thirteen years later, when Ruck has remodelled himself into a nameless Green Knight in memory of Melanthe, who he has considered his liege ever since their meeting over a decade ago. Melanthe, meanwhile, has been widowed and is now returning to England – fleeing the murderous politics of whichever bit of Italy she had been living in. Intrigues, plagues, tournaments and murders ensue.
I don’t really have much more to say about the plot, because this is a very intricate book and I don’t have anywhere near the space to do it justice. It’s not that the story is complicated as such, just that there is an awful lot of context behind everything which – in the book – is woven into the flow of the narrative but which in a review would wind up coming out as “and then this because this, which because this, which because this and this and this and stuff stuff stuff.” Kinsale does a remarkable job of evoking a very specific sense of world without resorting to infodumping, and you get the real sense that this book isn’t just set in the generic past but at an actual time in an actual place (specifically, in the North-West of England some time in the 1360s or 1370s). I’m not sure I’ve ever read a novel (except perhaps Wolf Hall) that so well evoked a historical period without making it either unrecognisable to a present-day audience or descending into pastiche. Throughout the book it is very clear that these are not modern people, that their concerns are not modern concerns.
This sometimes means the book must walk a difficult line, because fourteenth century attitudes are pretty damned reprehensible in a lot of ways. Early on, Ruck reflects on his first marriage, and mentions that when he returned from the war and found his wife had undergone a transformative religious experience that meant she no longer wanted to have sex with him, he’d just raped her for about a week until the screaming got on his nerves. Later, when it is revealed that Isabelle was burned at the stake for heresy, Melanthe suggests that she deserved it for failing to do her duty as a wife. This is only remotely palatable because the book is at once so grounded in its period worldview and so aware of that grounding. The narrative voice is careful to neither judge the characters for their attitudes (which, while unacceptable to a modern audience, are entirely appropriate for their day) nor to condone them.
For My Lady’s Heart creates its sense of world better than most mainstream Fantasy novels I’ve read. Even compared to heavyweights like George R. R. Martin the book has a ring of authenticity that you seldom see in genre fiction. It comes from little things – like the fact that Ruck and Melanthe marry by swearing vows to each other in private because, well, you could do that back then – and from big deep-seated things, like the way that God and the soul and Heaven and Hell are treated as absolute facts of life by pretty much everybody (Ruck in particular dwells intensely on the concepts of sin and religious duty). And of course there’s the fact that half the dialogue is in Middle English (albeit slightly modified for a modern audience).
The other thing that struck me about For My Lady’s Heart was that it was one of the few books I’ve read as part of this project where I was really able to identify with the hero. In a lot of genre fiction there is a sharp division between the characters you’re supposed to identify with (the heroines in Romance, the male protagonists in about 90% of all other genre fiction) and the characters you’re supposed to fancy (the heroes in Romance, about 70% of the female characters in about 90% of all other genre fiction). A lot of the heroes I’ve encountered so far have read far more as fantasy figures or objects of desire than as characters in their own right. I should probably stress at this point that this is in no way a complaint, because that would be inordinately hypocritical given how badly female characters get treated in most of the other books I read. But it does sometimes present a barrier to identification, because it’s hard to put yourself into somebody’s head if all they think about is how much they want to shag the heroine (I had pretty much exactly this problem with Rhys in The Iron Duke). I didn’t have this problem at all in FMLH. In some ways I’m not sure why, because Ruck spends an awful lot of time thinking about how much he wants to bang Melanthe (although to be fair, I kind of think anybody would because she’s completely awesome), but I think the basic difference is that his desires are fully consistent with his personality. He’s established from the outset as an extremely sexual person who has been forced to live celibate because he believes that if he doesn’t he will literally go to hell, so it seems entirely reasonable that his desire to bonk the princess would weigh on his mind a tad.
I think it helps a lot that Ruck and Melanthe, between them, tick pretty much all of my “will never get tired of reading about this” boxes. I absolutely love characters who cling to their unswerving codes of personal honour in the face of a reality which fails to live up to their standards. I absolutely love characters who are so mired in lies and intrigues and betrayals that they have almost forgotten what truth and loyalty look like. I absolutely love it when you get both types of character in the same story and they wind up killing each other/learning valuable lessons about life and friendship/getting it on. It’s kind of how I imagine Ned Stark/Tyrion Lannister slash fic would be, although strangely nobody seems to have written any. So, yeah, it all just kind of worked for me. Ruck’s fear for his immortal soul and his struggle to keep to his principles in the face of danger and temptation acted as a powerful counterpoint to Melanthe’s fear for her physical safety, and her gradual lowering of her defences despite her instincts. The love story is integrated seamlessly into the world, the characters, and the wider conflict, so that when the two of them do finally get together it feels not only like a romantic payoff, but also like a genuine victory. Their marriage about halfway through the book represents a turning point not only because they – well – start shagging, but also because it is the point at which Melanthe begins to free herself from her past, and Ruck begins to reclaim his.
Reading For My Lady’s Heart was, for me, something of a melancholy experience. The whole book is shot through with a terrible sense of time lost or wasted, of mistakes and regrets and the spectres of the past. Ruck spends the first half of the book haunted by a wife who – unknown to him – has been dead for thirteen years. Melanthe spends it haunted by Gian Navona, the Italian nobleman who has sworn she will marry no other man. They wander an England haunted by the memory of the Black death, and when they arrive at Wolfscar, Ruck’s family home, it is the ghost of a castle. A castle that is finally restored to him by a king who is himself a shadow of what he once was. It felt to me as if the past – history itself, if you like – was like the marshlands which Ruck and Melanthe struggle across in the first half of the book: something vast, empty and impersonal in which one could easily drown and be lost forever. Ruck could easily have ended his days as a nameless knight in an empty castle. Melanthe could have fallen back under the sway of Gian Navona and never been seen again. They come together in the middle of all of this emptiness, and cling to one another with a passion that seems born, in part, out of a fear of drowning.
It is only in the closing chapters that the characters face a real threat in the present (although death by water remains an important theme). The sudden appearance of Gian Navona casts both Ruck and Melanthe adrift. Where in the earlier love scenes the reader floats easily in and out of the heads of both characters, the moment they are separated the text becomes rigorously single-viewpoint. When Ruck confronts Melanthe and Gian on the road, neither she nor the reader has any idea what he is thinking, and I at least found the sensation remarkably alienating. Suddenly we see him as he must always have appeared to his enemies – a terrifying armoured killing machine of whose intentions we cannot be certain. And we experience the same alienation when Ruck starts to receive cryptic messages from Melanthe and – having once trusted her implicitly – is now unsure if she means to save or destroy him. Strangely, the characters remain separated for almost the whole of the end of the book, reuniting only at the end of the penultimate chapter. Even more strangely, the epilogue doesn’t feature Ruck and Melanthe at all, instead focusing on Melanthe’s maidservant Cara and her reunion with her sister.
It’s surprising quite how well this works (or at least, I was surprised by it). Ruck and Melanthe’s story, ultimately, is one of escape. Escape from the past, from memories, from old fears and old enemies. At last they seem almost to escape from the text itself. In the closing pages of the final chapter, they are at last free to move forward, no longer defined by the events of the past thirteen years. And so we are free to leave them, and to turn our attention to other characters and other stories, knowing that whatever awaits Ruck and Melanthe, it will be of their own choosing.
So umm. Yeah. For My Lady’s Heart. It’s awesome.
This review might be a little shorter than usual, because all I really have to say about For My Lady’s Heart is “it’s awesome.”
Thanks for reading! See you next week!
Okay, I should probably say a little bit more than that, but this will be a little short because FMLH is a really dense, complex book and so I had to choose to either talk about it literally for ever, or to focus on the few things I thought I could discuss within a reasonable wordcount. FMLH tells the story of the wandering knight Ruck and the enigmatic Princess Melanthe. The book opens with Ruck escorting his probably-mentally-ill wife Isabelle to Avignon, where she intends to pledge herself to a nunnery. There he sees a mysterious woman in green (Melanthe) who later bails him out after Isabelle gives Ruck’s armour, horse, and money to an evil Bishop. The story picks up thirteen years later, when Ruck has remodelled himself into a nameless Green Knight in memory of Melanthe, who he has considered his liege ever since their meeting over a decade ago. Melanthe, meanwhile, has been widowed and is now returning to England – fleeing the murderous politics of whichever bit of Italy she had been living in. Intrigues, plagues, tournaments and murders ensue.
I don’t really have much more to say about the plot, because this is a very intricate book and I don’t have anywhere near the space to do it justice. It’s not that the story is complicated as such, just that there is an awful lot of context behind everything which – in the book – is woven into the flow of the narrative but which in a review would wind up coming out as “and then this because this, which because this, which because this and this and this and stuff stuff stuff.” Kinsale does a remarkable job of evoking a very specific sense of world without resorting to infodumping, and you get the real sense that this book isn’t just set in the generic past but at an actual time in an actual place (specifically, in the North-West of England some time in the 1360s or 1370s). I’m not sure I’ve ever read a novel (except perhaps Wolf Hall) that so well evoked a historical period without making it either unrecognisable to a present-day audience or descending into pastiche. Throughout the book it is very clear that these are not modern people, that their concerns are not modern concerns.
This sometimes means the book must walk a difficult line, because fourteenth century attitudes are pretty damned reprehensible in a lot of ways. Early on, Ruck reflects on his first marriage, and mentions that when he returned from the war and found his wife had undergone a transformative religious experience that meant she no longer wanted to have sex with him, he’d just raped her for about a week until the screaming got on his nerves. Later, when it is revealed that Isabelle was burned at the stake for heresy, Melanthe suggests that she deserved it for failing to do her duty as a wife. This is only remotely palatable because the book is at once so grounded in its period worldview and so aware of that grounding. The narrative voice is careful to neither judge the characters for their attitudes (which, while unacceptable to a modern audience, are entirely appropriate for their day) nor to condone them.
For My Lady’s Heart creates its sense of world better than most mainstream Fantasy novels I’ve read. Even compared to heavyweights like George R. R. Martin the book has a ring of authenticity that you seldom see in genre fiction. It comes from little things – like the fact that Ruck and Melanthe marry by swearing vows to each other in private because, well, you could do that back then – and from big deep-seated things, like the way that God and the soul and Heaven and Hell are treated as absolute facts of life by pretty much everybody (Ruck in particular dwells intensely on the concepts of sin and religious duty). And of course there’s the fact that half the dialogue is in Middle English (albeit slightly modified for a modern audience).
The other thing that struck me about For My Lady’s Heart was that it was one of the few books I’ve read as part of this project where I was really able to identify with the hero. In a lot of genre fiction there is a sharp division between the characters you’re supposed to identify with (the heroines in Romance, the male protagonists in about 90% of all other genre fiction) and the characters you’re supposed to fancy (the heroes in Romance, about 70% of the female characters in about 90% of all other genre fiction). A lot of the heroes I’ve encountered so far have read far more as fantasy figures or objects of desire than as characters in their own right. I should probably stress at this point that this is in no way a complaint, because that would be inordinately hypocritical given how badly female characters get treated in most of the other books I read. But it does sometimes present a barrier to identification, because it’s hard to put yourself into somebody’s head if all they think about is how much they want to shag the heroine (I had pretty much exactly this problem with Rhys in The Iron Duke). I didn’t have this problem at all in FMLH. In some ways I’m not sure why, because Ruck spends an awful lot of time thinking about how much he wants to bang Melanthe (although to be fair, I kind of think anybody would because she’s completely awesome), but I think the basic difference is that his desires are fully consistent with his personality. He’s established from the outset as an extremely sexual person who has been forced to live celibate because he believes that if he doesn’t he will literally go to hell, so it seems entirely reasonable that his desire to bonk the princess would weigh on his mind a tad.
I think it helps a lot that Ruck and Melanthe, between them, tick pretty much all of my “will never get tired of reading about this” boxes. I absolutely love characters who cling to their unswerving codes of personal honour in the face of a reality which fails to live up to their standards. I absolutely love characters who are so mired in lies and intrigues and betrayals that they have almost forgotten what truth and loyalty look like. I absolutely love it when you get both types of character in the same story and they wind up killing each other/learning valuable lessons about life and friendship/getting it on. It’s kind of how I imagine Ned Stark/Tyrion Lannister slash fic would be, although strangely nobody seems to have written any. So, yeah, it all just kind of worked for me. Ruck’s fear for his immortal soul and his struggle to keep to his principles in the face of danger and temptation acted as a powerful counterpoint to Melanthe’s fear for her physical safety, and her gradual lowering of her defences despite her instincts. The love story is integrated seamlessly into the world, the characters, and the wider conflict, so that when the two of them do finally get together it feels not only like a romantic payoff, but also like a genuine victory. Their marriage about halfway through the book represents a turning point not only because they – well – start shagging, but also because it is the point at which Melanthe begins to free herself from her past, and Ruck begins to reclaim his.
Reading For My Lady’s Heart was, for me, something of a melancholy experience. The whole book is shot through with a terrible sense of time lost or wasted, of mistakes and regrets and the spectres of the past. Ruck spends the first half of the book haunted by a wife who – unknown to him – has been dead for thirteen years. Melanthe spends it haunted by Gian Navona, the Italian nobleman who has sworn she will marry no other man. They wander an England haunted by the memory of the Black death, and when they arrive at Wolfscar, Ruck’s family home, it is the ghost of a castle. A castle that is finally restored to him by a king who is himself a shadow of what he once was. It felt to me as if the past – history itself, if you like – was like the marshlands which Ruck and Melanthe struggle across in the first half of the book: something vast, empty and impersonal in which one could easily drown and be lost forever. Ruck could easily have ended his days as a nameless knight in an empty castle. Melanthe could have fallen back under the sway of Gian Navona and never been seen again. They come together in the middle of all of this emptiness, and cling to one another with a passion that seems born, in part, out of a fear of drowning.
It is only in the closing chapters that the characters face a real threat in the present (although death by water remains an important theme). The sudden appearance of Gian Navona casts both Ruck and Melanthe adrift. Where in the earlier love scenes the reader floats easily in and out of the heads of both characters, the moment they are separated the text becomes rigorously single-viewpoint. When Ruck confronts Melanthe and Gian on the road, neither she nor the reader has any idea what he is thinking, and I at least found the sensation remarkably alienating. Suddenly we see him as he must always have appeared to his enemies – a terrifying armoured killing machine of whose intentions we cannot be certain. And we experience the same alienation when Ruck starts to receive cryptic messages from Melanthe and – having once trusted her implicitly – is now unsure if she means to save or destroy him. Strangely, the characters remain separated for almost the whole of the end of the book, reuniting only at the end of the penultimate chapter. Even more strangely, the epilogue doesn’t feature Ruck and Melanthe at all, instead focusing on Melanthe’s maidservant Cara and her reunion with her sister.
It’s surprising quite how well this works (or at least, I was surprised by it). Ruck and Melanthe’s story, ultimately, is one of escape. Escape from the past, from memories, from old fears and old enemies. At last they seem almost to escape from the text itself. In the closing pages of the final chapter, they are at last free to move forward, no longer defined by the events of the past thirteen years. And so we are free to leave them, and to turn our attention to other characters and other stories, knowing that whatever awaits Ruck and Melanthe, it will be of their own choosing.
So umm. Yeah. For My Lady’s Heart. It’s awesome.
March 21, 2025
A “well bless his heart”-level stupid knight accidentally donates his very mentally unwell wife to a convent and gets ruined/saved by a mean lady with a bird. So much unhinged, absolutely deranged plot happens in this book that I can’t distill it down to a review so here are some highlights:
* the knight hasn’t had sex in 13 years and feels guilty every time he thinks about his penis existing
* the mean lady was married off at 12 to a weirdly nice man?
* there is a giant band of maternal minstrels
* everyone is cold all the time
* the knight eventually stops feeling guilty about his penis (sort of)
* oh I almost forgot about the mean lady’s teenage not-really lover who has a complex relationship with his dad
The book is written in a stylized version of old English and make no mistake: you will hate it for like three chapters but then it’s fine. Do you like hawks? Poisonings? People falling into wells? Hath I the story for thou, forsooth.
* the knight hasn’t had sex in 13 years and feels guilty every time he thinks about his penis existing
* the mean lady was married off at 12 to a weirdly nice man?
* there is a giant band of maternal minstrels
* everyone is cold all the time
* the knight eventually stops feeling guilty about his penis (sort of)
* oh I almost forgot about the mean lady’s teenage not-really lover who has a complex relationship with his dad
The book is written in a stylized version of old English and make no mistake: you will hate it for like three chapters but then it’s fine. Do you like hawks? Poisonings? People falling into wells? Hath I the story for thou, forsooth.
February 1, 2023
2023 Re-read:
25 trillion stars. This is the best historical romance I've ever read! Well, this one and its sequel. I'm ecstatic, I am destroyed. I laughed, I was on the edge of my seat and my heart is melted.
Original review:
This book is incredible. This series is incredible. This is a historical romance of top quality.
Their world is so foreign, just how it is supposed to be. So many restrictions, the main hero is a deeply religious man who struggles with his desires and his religion.
All admitted that there was no sin if the intention was purely to engender children, but a few maintained that any pleasure at all in the marriage bed could not be without sinful fault. Others judged that the conjugal debt was a pious duty between spouses to prevent incontinence, and the marriage act only a deadly sin if there was excessive quest for pleasure—with many fine computations of what might constitute excessive pleasure. Ruck found his tired spirits lifting. He was clearly incontinent, or like to be if he thought on his wife at any length at all, and the very notion of begetting a child on her sent him into a hot ardor of perfectly sinless passion. Not excessive ardor—but iwysse, if he waited too long, he judged his soul would be in certain danger. He pushed away from the wall, finding a new vigor in the gloom...
I know it doesn’t sound very romantic but it is.
But yeah, this is not your ahistorical romance with a woman somehow marrying her dead sister’s widower (which would be incest) or heroes being atheists in 1370. So much research is done for historical settings. People speak Chaucer's english and are terrified of plague. You’ll read here about jousting, castles with moats, inquisition, garderobes, knight’s armour and of course a dragon.
And to all the readers who thought Allegreto changes too quickly into a whiny angsty guy in the sequel: in this book he is a delightfully whiny teenage boy. Very sensitive and broken by his father. And I adored him. His finale here was tragic and melancholic, so thank Zeus for his sequel!
I'm rambling now, I know. It's just so very good.
She turned it all the way, staring down into the glass. Her brows rose in outrage. "Why—I am not comely! I am not!" She slapped the mirror facedown. "I knew it was all dishonest dwele, these songs and praises to my beauty. Wysse, when is a rich woman plain?" Ruck smiled at her. "Art nought comelych? Is my fortune to be blind, then." "Pah!" She reached out, catching him off balance with a hard shove at his shoulder. He fell back off his heels, sitting down with a grunt on the bare stone. "Any woman would look comely to thee, monk-man, after ten and three years of chastity!"
25 trillion stars. This is the best historical romance I've ever read! Well, this one and its sequel. I'm ecstatic, I am destroyed. I laughed, I was on the edge of my seat and my heart is melted.
Original review:
This book is incredible. This series is incredible. This is a historical romance of top quality.
Their world is so foreign, just how it is supposed to be. So many restrictions, the main hero is a deeply religious man who struggles with his desires and his religion.
All admitted that there was no sin if the intention was purely to engender children, but a few maintained that any pleasure at all in the marriage bed could not be without sinful fault. Others judged that the conjugal debt was a pious duty between spouses to prevent incontinence, and the marriage act only a deadly sin if there was excessive quest for pleasure—with many fine computations of what might constitute excessive pleasure. Ruck found his tired spirits lifting. He was clearly incontinent, or like to be if he thought on his wife at any length at all, and the very notion of begetting a child on her sent him into a hot ardor of perfectly sinless passion. Not excessive ardor—but iwysse, if he waited too long, he judged his soul would be in certain danger. He pushed away from the wall, finding a new vigor in the gloom...
I know it doesn’t sound very romantic but it is.
But yeah, this is not your ahistorical romance with a woman somehow marrying her dead sister’s widower (which would be incest) or heroes being atheists in 1370. So much research is done for historical settings. People speak Chaucer's english and are terrified of plague. You’ll read here about jousting, castles with moats, inquisition, garderobes, knight’s armour and of course a dragon.
And to all the readers who thought Allegreto changes too quickly into a whiny angsty guy in the sequel: in this book he is a delightfully whiny teenage boy. Very sensitive and broken by his father. And I adored him. His finale here was tragic and melancholic, so thank Zeus for his sequel!
I'm rambling now, I know. It's just so very good.
She turned it all the way, staring down into the glass. Her brows rose in outrage. "Why—I am not comely! I am not!" She slapped the mirror facedown. "I knew it was all dishonest dwele, these songs and praises to my beauty. Wysse, when is a rich woman plain?" Ruck smiled at her. "Art nought comelych? Is my fortune to be blind, then." "Pah!" She reached out, catching him off balance with a hard shove at his shoulder. He fell back off his heels, sitting down with a grunt on the bare stone. "Any woman would look comely to thee, monk-man, after ten and three years of chastity!"
January 3, 2016
This story is just stunning!!! I never thought a romantic historical fiction could be written to rival Flowers From the Storm by Laura Kinsale, but if anyone could do it then it would be Kinsale. And she did. For My Lady's Heart is stellar on so many levels. We have probably the most wonderful hero ever written, a tortured heroine for a change, incredible seamless use of medieval dialogue and terminology, and imagery so vivid the reader is transported. She manages to challenge as well as entertain the reader.
We have mystery, adventure, humor and a survival story as well. There are so many fascinating characters to love and hate and fear. There are English, French and Italians and even majestic animals that play critical roles.
Kinsale creates a wonderful dance of attraction and repulsion between the hero and heroine and very slowly builds their connection beautifully over time. She never uses any gratuitous intimacy. I laughed, was brought to tears and was riveted at many points. In fact, her writing transcends any genre. I would probably have to say at this point I have not read a better author.
We have mystery, adventure, humor and a survival story as well. There are so many fascinating characters to love and hate and fear. There are English, French and Italians and even majestic animals that play critical roles.
Kinsale creates a wonderful dance of attraction and repulsion between the hero and heroine and very slowly builds their connection beautifully over time. She never uses any gratuitous intimacy. I laughed, was brought to tears and was riveted at many points. In fact, her writing transcends any genre. I would probably have to say at this point I have not read a better author.
January 16, 2021
2nd read, Jan 2021: THIS BOOK. THIS BOOK. I could rewrite the whole of previous review again except in all-caps. It stands up to a reread and then some. If you like romance, read it. If you like historical fiction, read it. If you like words on a page, read it.
One note of warning: It was first published in 1993 and it does have some of the trappings of Old School Romance, including (at the very beginning) off-page past marital rape. This is very much out of keeping with the rest of the book but it’s definitely there and worth mentioning. If you would like a full list of CWs, check out my friend Leigh’s review.
1st read, Jan 2020: This book. This book. I have basically been about nothing else for five days. It's a banquet of a novel and no mistake.
Set in the 1370s, at the height of Edward III's court of chivalry, it tells of a nameless knight sworn into the service of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This knight has vowed not to reveal his true identity until his deeds in battle and tournament have earned him the right to claim his patronage; he's known as the Green Knight for the armour that he wears. He was once married but his wife has entered a nunnery and now, aged 30, he's been laboring under a vow of celibacy for 13 years. It's not for want of temptation, but he has managed it by focusing his will on a great lady, who he holds as a pure above all others. She was once kind to him, and cold, and beautiful, and so he pretends that he serves her, and in this way he holds onto his ridiculously high ideals. He goes by the name of Ruck, and is honestly straight out of Chretien de Troyes.
Princess Melanthe of Monteverde is the lady on his pedestal. Originally from Bowland in Lancashire she was married into an Italian principality at a young age and has grown up with a very different view of the world. She is steeped in the deception, sin, murder and intrigue that she has had to learn in order to survive. Now widowed, with an enormous inheritance, she is extremely vulnerable to the schemes of powerful men and is willing to stop at nothing to secure her safety. Her strategy is to freeze all feeling and sympathy out of her life; to be cruel and ruthless with everyone to protect herself from the inevitability of betrayal. Whereas to Ruck the rules of chivalry are the fine golden threads that hold the world together, to Melanthe they are a web of lies and a trap from which she must escape. She is categorically *not* the ideal lady of his imagination: early on in the book we see her helping to push the corpse of a murdered spy into a garderobe.
When Melanthe and Ruck are thrust together in Lancaster's court, it's a clash of worldviews of epic proportions. They simply cannot understand one another; their actions are alien and their motivations suspect. Ruck's simple moral compass is broken by the realisation that the woman he's dreamt of for over a decade doesn't exist, while Melanthe is challenged to consider the possibility of a truly honest and chivalric man.
Because this is a Laura Kinsale novel A LOT HAPPENS, so I won't say more than that, except that part of the joy of the novel is the range of characters who emerge as interesting, viable actors in their own rights. Chief among these for me was Allegreto, the illegitimate son of a rival Italian prince, placed in Melanthe's retinue to spy on her and ensure that she returns to Italy to marry his father. Allegreto is a character in the Dunnett mode, a young man who has been socialised to violence and heartlessness through a combination of fear and longing, but who retains a sliver of an instinct for decency. He gets his own book in the sequel, Shadowheart, and I CAN NOT WAIT.
Perhaps this doesn't sound like the stuff of brilliant, thematically rich historical fiction - I don't feel like I'm selling it well - but it is. What makes For My Lady's Heart so powerful for me is threefold: Kinsale's ability to tell a romance story through a truly medieval lens; her use of Middle English in the descriptive writing and dialogue; and the incredibly clarity of her descriptive writing. Let's start with the latter first. For My Lady's Heart is very attentive to the context of the story, and some of the best writing of the novel is not in the encounters between Ruck and Melanthe (although those are brilliant) but in the scene-setting. They're in the description of a tourney; of a gyrfalcon in flight; of the first sighting of a castle in the woods after two days on horseback. She paints light, colour, movement and smell like a conjurer, and so invokes a different time. She then uses Middle English idiom and words throughout, to further generate an otherness and alienation that requires you to be *all in* for the reading experience. Which, in turn, cues you up to navigate and accept the very different model of love and passion that is on offer. This is not an ahistorical romance story superimposed into the 14th century, because Ruck and Melanthe are constrained in their ability to interact like romance characters. This is not because of their personal emotional struggles, but because of the social and cultural norms of their period. Courtly love is very different to romantic love; and the realities of upper class marriage and family are different again. Their understanding of their feelings is refracted through their religious beliefs, their sense of social obligation and their duty as members of England's ruling class. As a former medieval historian I was massively impressed by the way Kinsale managed to negotiate a powerful love story in what felt like a historically reasonable way, drawing not only on historical 'facts' of dress and etiquette but on contemporary ideas about self and love from the art, literature and culture of the period.
This is definitely a book that I would recommend to all readers of historical fiction, whether romance readers or nay. I'm only confirmed in my belief that Laura Kinsale is the classiest of classy writers; I'm absolutely bewitched.
One note of warning: It was first published in 1993 and it does have some of the trappings of Old School Romance, including (at the very beginning) off-page past marital rape. This is very much out of keeping with the rest of the book but it’s definitely there and worth mentioning. If you would like a full list of CWs, check out my friend Leigh’s review.
1st read, Jan 2020: This book. This book. I have basically been about nothing else for five days. It's a banquet of a novel and no mistake.
Set in the 1370s, at the height of Edward III's court of chivalry, it tells of a nameless knight sworn into the service of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This knight has vowed not to reveal his true identity until his deeds in battle and tournament have earned him the right to claim his patronage; he's known as the Green Knight for the armour that he wears. He was once married but his wife has entered a nunnery and now, aged 30, he's been laboring under a vow of celibacy for 13 years. It's not for want of temptation, but he has managed it by focusing his will on a great lady, who he holds as a pure above all others. She was once kind to him, and cold, and beautiful, and so he pretends that he serves her, and in this way he holds onto his ridiculously high ideals. He goes by the name of Ruck, and is honestly straight out of Chretien de Troyes.
Princess Melanthe of Monteverde is the lady on his pedestal. Originally from Bowland in Lancashire she was married into an Italian principality at a young age and has grown up with a very different view of the world. She is steeped in the deception, sin, murder and intrigue that she has had to learn in order to survive. Now widowed, with an enormous inheritance, she is extremely vulnerable to the schemes of powerful men and is willing to stop at nothing to secure her safety. Her strategy is to freeze all feeling and sympathy out of her life; to be cruel and ruthless with everyone to protect herself from the inevitability of betrayal. Whereas to Ruck the rules of chivalry are the fine golden threads that hold the world together, to Melanthe they are a web of lies and a trap from which she must escape. She is categorically *not* the ideal lady of his imagination: early on in the book we see her helping to push the corpse of a murdered spy into a garderobe.
When Melanthe and Ruck are thrust together in Lancaster's court, it's a clash of worldviews of epic proportions. They simply cannot understand one another; their actions are alien and their motivations suspect. Ruck's simple moral compass is broken by the realisation that the woman he's dreamt of for over a decade doesn't exist, while Melanthe is challenged to consider the possibility of a truly honest and chivalric man.
Because this is a Laura Kinsale novel A LOT HAPPENS, so I won't say more than that, except that part of the joy of the novel is the range of characters who emerge as interesting, viable actors in their own rights. Chief among these for me was Allegreto, the illegitimate son of a rival Italian prince, placed in Melanthe's retinue to spy on her and ensure that she returns to Italy to marry his father. Allegreto is a character in the Dunnett mode, a young man who has been socialised to violence and heartlessness through a combination of fear and longing, but who retains a sliver of an instinct for decency. He gets his own book in the sequel, Shadowheart, and I CAN NOT WAIT.
Perhaps this doesn't sound like the stuff of brilliant, thematically rich historical fiction - I don't feel like I'm selling it well - but it is. What makes For My Lady's Heart so powerful for me is threefold: Kinsale's ability to tell a romance story through a truly medieval lens; her use of Middle English in the descriptive writing and dialogue; and the incredibly clarity of her descriptive writing. Let's start with the latter first. For My Lady's Heart is very attentive to the context of the story, and some of the best writing of the novel is not in the encounters between Ruck and Melanthe (although those are brilliant) but in the scene-setting. They're in the description of a tourney; of a gyrfalcon in flight; of the first sighting of a castle in the woods after two days on horseback. She paints light, colour, movement and smell like a conjurer, and so invokes a different time. She then uses Middle English idiom and words throughout, to further generate an otherness and alienation that requires you to be *all in* for the reading experience. Which, in turn, cues you up to navigate and accept the very different model of love and passion that is on offer. This is not an ahistorical romance story superimposed into the 14th century, because Ruck and Melanthe are constrained in their ability to interact like romance characters. This is not because of their personal emotional struggles, but because of the social and cultural norms of their period. Courtly love is very different to romantic love; and the realities of upper class marriage and family are different again. Their understanding of their feelings is refracted through their religious beliefs, their sense of social obligation and their duty as members of England's ruling class. As a former medieval historian I was massively impressed by the way Kinsale managed to negotiate a powerful love story in what felt like a historically reasonable way, drawing not only on historical 'facts' of dress and etiquette but on contemporary ideas about self and love from the art, literature and culture of the period.
This is definitely a book that I would recommend to all readers of historical fiction, whether romance readers or nay. I'm only confirmed in my belief that Laura Kinsale is the classiest of classy writers; I'm absolutely bewitched.
April 19, 2024
Review from 2013
Medieval romances aren’t a great favourite of mine. I will admit that I haven’t read a large number of them, but most of those I have read have been too anachronistic for my taste. Of course, there is going to be a degree of anachronism in any historical romance – after all, we usually read about the titled and the wealthy and not about the miserable poor eking out a harsh existence in the slums – but for me, romances set in medieval time have to gloss over the more unpleasant aspects of their time to an even greater extent than those set in the nineteenth century. The other thing I’ve found frustrating is the language; in having characters who are supposed to live in the fifteenth century speaking as though they come from this one. It’s easier – I imagine – to ape the language used by Jane Austen as it is much closer to the English we use today, whereas a book written in language appropriate to the Middle Ages would probably not gain a huge audience.
But what Laura Kinsale does in For My Lady’s Heart is probably the closest thing I’ve ever come across to finding something that bridges the gap between my personal desire for at least some degree of authenticity in the language used in the story and the necessary compromise towards making it palatable for a contemporary audience.
I’ve read quite a few things about this book which led me to think that the language was difficult to understand – but that really isn’t the case at all, and if you’ve been put off by similar comments, then don’t be. I know the language isn’t authentic - if it was, I’d have been listening to seventeen hours of Chaucerian Middle English and having to rewind frequently to make sure I’d got the gist of what I’d just heard. But Ms Kinsale has so cleverly interwoven the archaic forms and expressions used by her characters into the text, that they feel completely natural to the modern reader/listener as well as doing more than just paying lip-service to the fifteenth century setting of the novel.
On top of that, however, there’s no denying that her master-stroke lies (once again) in her choice of narrator for this audio. In the hands (or vocal cords!) of Nicholas Boulton, what might, in lesser ones, have come across as quaint “Ye Olde Worlde” expressions, instead sound completely naturalistic and authentic. Spoken passages which might look somewhat clumsy when written down flow beautifully and seamlessly - and I would strongly recommend anyone who found that the language on the page didn’t work for them to listen to the book instead. It’s a revelation and could completely change your view of it.
One device I particularly liked was the way the author differentiated between French (and Italian) and English. When the characters spoke French or Italian, they spoke in what one might term “normal” speech, whereas when they switched to English, the idiom took on its more old-fashioned form.
The story centers around the knight, Sir Ruadrik of Wolfscar and the haughty Princess Melanthe of Monteverde, whom he is escorting from France to her estates in the north of England.
Thirteen years previously, Melanthe had saved Ruck’s life on the day that he had lost his wife (who believed herself to be a religious visionary) and all his money and possessions to the church. As a result, he pledged himself to her and has spent the intervening years making a name for himself as a valiant knight and warrior, eventually reaching the notice of the Duke of Lancaster, one of the sons of King Edward III.
The story is filled with intrigue, greed and murderous conspiracies as the widowed Princess Melanthe walks a tightrope to freedom. She was married to an elderly Italian prince, and since his death, has been closely watched by rival families, the Nevona and the Riata, both of whom want the wealth of the Monteverde. Gian Nevona wants to marry her to acquire her possessions and the Riata want to prevent it. Gian is so obsessed with making her his that he has ensured Melanthe has never taken a lover since her husband died. Any man to whom she showed the slightest favor was instantly killed and he has destroyed everything she loved simply because she loved it. Melanthe is surrounded by spies and assassins, living every day knowing it could be her last, knowing that one false move on her part could lead to death and destruction.
I thought initially that in this haughty princess, Ms. Kinsale had created another heroine who is hard to like, and who, no matter how much I loved the book (and I did love it), I would never feel was completely deserving of the hero. But my opinion changed as the book progressed. On first acquaintance, Melanthe is arrogant and cold, and the tone of voice Mr. Boulton has chosen to use is correspondingly clipped. But it soon becomes apparent that she wears her coldness like a shield. To protect those she cares for, she hides her emotions beneath an icy exterior, not daring to show any preferences for fear of the consequences.
It’s not until she and Ruck are separated from the rest of their party that she finally allows her façade to crack and to notice that her fierce “Green Knight” is a very attractive man. While Ruck has adored her from afar in the courtly tradition, Melanthe finds herself unexpectedly in love and lust for the first time.
Feeling herself to be free at last from the weight of her past, Melanthe is disturbed by these new emotions, but nonetheless keen to act on them. I rather liked that it was she who had to make the first move in the relationship, but that rings true, as the code of Courtly Love put all the power into the hands of the woman.
Ruck is the epitome of the chivalric knight of old; honorable, brave and dedicated to his lady. His life has been arduous – he lost his family when he was very young and though he is of a noble house, the plague that wiped out his family and most of the local populous also destroyed the evidence of his heritage. He has vowed not to reveal his name and origins until he has proved himself worthy of his name. I thought the depth and resonance Mr. Boulton gave to his voice expertly conveyed Ruck’s imposing physicality, while his softer tones clearly showed the intense kindness and compassion that underlay his outwardly gruff manner.
He falls in love with Melanthe when he is seventeen and swears life-long allegiance to her. But he does not know the real woman; he has fallen for an ideal, and when he does finally come face to face with her, she does not know him and is rather carelessly cruel in her treatment of him. Yet she is still his lady – and he is still bound to serve her, even though he quickly realizes that his idol has feet of clay.
I really enjoyed the way their relationship progressed and seeing the gradual power-shift once Melanthe believes herself to be safe from pursuit. She becomes more flirtatious and openly amorous; and Ruck opens up and allows her to see the man beneath the armor, both of which put their relationship onto more of an even footing, even then they still have to navigate through degrees of uncertainty and awkwardness as they try to work out where they stand with each other.
“We wenden us the moment ye are ready, my lady,”
“Dost thou know why I love thee?” she asked.
“In faith, I cannought believe that you do, far the less why.”
She curled her forefinger in his hair and tugged. “By hap one day I shall tell thee.”
Once again, Nicholas Boulton delivers a stellar performance on all counts. His command of the language is obvious and he not only reads the quotes from Chaucer most convincingly, but the archaic English words and expressions roll off his tongue effortlessly, bringing the characters and story to life in a way which exceeded even my – admittedly high – expectations.
Incidentally, this is the first time in these books that he’s used a regional accent for a principal character, and here he convinces absolutely as “a rude and runisch northeron” (man of the north) with a voice that frequently put me in mind of Sean Bean and Richard Armitage rolled into one! Although I confess, I’m probably not going to be able to listen to either of those gentlemen now without thinking “oh – he sounds just like Nick Boulton!”
I fell in love with For My Lady’s Heart, a story of chivalry and romance, told in such beautiful prose that it often brought a lump to my throat.
“Then will we keepen watch and see. And if ye be someone new each morn, Melanthe – God knows thou art still my sovereign lady. Nought will I be at thy side in e’ery moment, but in spirit always, and return to thee with my whole heart, to see what bemazement thou wilt work upon me next.”
While I still think that Mr. Boulton’s performance of Flowers from the Storm is probably his best to date, his reading of For My Lady’s Heart runs it a very close second.
Medieval romances aren’t a great favourite of mine. I will admit that I haven’t read a large number of them, but most of those I have read have been too anachronistic for my taste. Of course, there is going to be a degree of anachronism in any historical romance – after all, we usually read about the titled and the wealthy and not about the miserable poor eking out a harsh existence in the slums – but for me, romances set in medieval time have to gloss over the more unpleasant aspects of their time to an even greater extent than those set in the nineteenth century. The other thing I’ve found frustrating is the language; in having characters who are supposed to live in the fifteenth century speaking as though they come from this one. It’s easier – I imagine – to ape the language used by Jane Austen as it is much closer to the English we use today, whereas a book written in language appropriate to the Middle Ages would probably not gain a huge audience.
But what Laura Kinsale does in For My Lady’s Heart is probably the closest thing I’ve ever come across to finding something that bridges the gap between my personal desire for at least some degree of authenticity in the language used in the story and the necessary compromise towards making it palatable for a contemporary audience.
I’ve read quite a few things about this book which led me to think that the language was difficult to understand – but that really isn’t the case at all, and if you’ve been put off by similar comments, then don’t be. I know the language isn’t authentic - if it was, I’d have been listening to seventeen hours of Chaucerian Middle English and having to rewind frequently to make sure I’d got the gist of what I’d just heard. But Ms Kinsale has so cleverly interwoven the archaic forms and expressions used by her characters into the text, that they feel completely natural to the modern reader/listener as well as doing more than just paying lip-service to the fifteenth century setting of the novel.
On top of that, however, there’s no denying that her master-stroke lies (once again) in her choice of narrator for this audio. In the hands (or vocal cords!) of Nicholas Boulton, what might, in lesser ones, have come across as quaint “Ye Olde Worlde” expressions, instead sound completely naturalistic and authentic. Spoken passages which might look somewhat clumsy when written down flow beautifully and seamlessly - and I would strongly recommend anyone who found that the language on the page didn’t work for them to listen to the book instead. It’s a revelation and could completely change your view of it.
One device I particularly liked was the way the author differentiated between French (and Italian) and English. When the characters spoke French or Italian, they spoke in what one might term “normal” speech, whereas when they switched to English, the idiom took on its more old-fashioned form.
The story centers around the knight, Sir Ruadrik of Wolfscar and the haughty Princess Melanthe of Monteverde, whom he is escorting from France to her estates in the north of England.
Thirteen years previously, Melanthe had saved Ruck’s life on the day that he had lost his wife (who believed herself to be a religious visionary) and all his money and possessions to the church. As a result, he pledged himself to her and has spent the intervening years making a name for himself as a valiant knight and warrior, eventually reaching the notice of the Duke of Lancaster, one of the sons of King Edward III.
The story is filled with intrigue, greed and murderous conspiracies as the widowed Princess Melanthe walks a tightrope to freedom. She was married to an elderly Italian prince, and since his death, has been closely watched by rival families, the Nevona and the Riata, both of whom want the wealth of the Monteverde. Gian Nevona wants to marry her to acquire her possessions and the Riata want to prevent it. Gian is so obsessed with making her his that he has ensured Melanthe has never taken a lover since her husband died. Any man to whom she showed the slightest favor was instantly killed and he has destroyed everything she loved simply because she loved it. Melanthe is surrounded by spies and assassins, living every day knowing it could be her last, knowing that one false move on her part could lead to death and destruction.
I thought initially that in this haughty princess, Ms. Kinsale had created another heroine who is hard to like, and who, no matter how much I loved the book (and I did love it), I would never feel was completely deserving of the hero. But my opinion changed as the book progressed. On first acquaintance, Melanthe is arrogant and cold, and the tone of voice Mr. Boulton has chosen to use is correspondingly clipped. But it soon becomes apparent that she wears her coldness like a shield. To protect those she cares for, she hides her emotions beneath an icy exterior, not daring to show any preferences for fear of the consequences.
It’s not until she and Ruck are separated from the rest of their party that she finally allows her façade to crack and to notice that her fierce “Green Knight” is a very attractive man. While Ruck has adored her from afar in the courtly tradition, Melanthe finds herself unexpectedly in love and lust for the first time.
Feeling herself to be free at last from the weight of her past, Melanthe is disturbed by these new emotions, but nonetheless keen to act on them. I rather liked that it was she who had to make the first move in the relationship, but that rings true, as the code of Courtly Love put all the power into the hands of the woman.
Ruck is the epitome of the chivalric knight of old; honorable, brave and dedicated to his lady. His life has been arduous – he lost his family when he was very young and though he is of a noble house, the plague that wiped out his family and most of the local populous also destroyed the evidence of his heritage. He has vowed not to reveal his name and origins until he has proved himself worthy of his name. I thought the depth and resonance Mr. Boulton gave to his voice expertly conveyed Ruck’s imposing physicality, while his softer tones clearly showed the intense kindness and compassion that underlay his outwardly gruff manner.
He falls in love with Melanthe when he is seventeen and swears life-long allegiance to her. But he does not know the real woman; he has fallen for an ideal, and when he does finally come face to face with her, she does not know him and is rather carelessly cruel in her treatment of him. Yet she is still his lady – and he is still bound to serve her, even though he quickly realizes that his idol has feet of clay.
I really enjoyed the way their relationship progressed and seeing the gradual power-shift once Melanthe believes herself to be safe from pursuit. She becomes more flirtatious and openly amorous; and Ruck opens up and allows her to see the man beneath the armor, both of which put their relationship onto more of an even footing, even then they still have to navigate through degrees of uncertainty and awkwardness as they try to work out where they stand with each other.
“We wenden us the moment ye are ready, my lady,”
“Dost thou know why I love thee?” she asked.
“In faith, I cannought believe that you do, far the less why.”
She curled her forefinger in his hair and tugged. “By hap one day I shall tell thee.”
Once again, Nicholas Boulton delivers a stellar performance on all counts. His command of the language is obvious and he not only reads the quotes from Chaucer most convincingly, but the archaic English words and expressions roll off his tongue effortlessly, bringing the characters and story to life in a way which exceeded even my – admittedly high – expectations.
Incidentally, this is the first time in these books that he’s used a regional accent for a principal character, and here he convinces absolutely as “a rude and runisch northeron” (man of the north) with a voice that frequently put me in mind of Sean Bean and Richard Armitage rolled into one! Although I confess, I’m probably not going to be able to listen to either of those gentlemen now without thinking “oh – he sounds just like Nick Boulton!”
I fell in love with For My Lady’s Heart, a story of chivalry and romance, told in such beautiful prose that it often brought a lump to my throat.
“Then will we keepen watch and see. And if ye be someone new each morn, Melanthe – God knows thou art still my sovereign lady. Nought will I be at thy side in e’ery moment, but in spirit always, and return to thee with my whole heart, to see what bemazement thou wilt work upon me next.”
While I still think that Mr. Boulton’s performance of Flowers from the Storm is probably his best to date, his reading of For My Lady’s Heart runs it a very close second.
August 13, 2016
Glorious.
Superb.
How do I say this is the finest hero ever put to paper without sounding like a hyperbole-spewing squeeon?
*clears throat and boldly announces*
This is one of the finest heroes created in ink.
The heroine is brilliantly complex.
I'm dazed with wonderment.
I want to befriend every single person who loved this book as much as I did... they are truly my soul-peeps. I am going to stalk every one of you. Fair warning.
Don't urge me not to...
where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your books will be my books and your authors my authors.
Superb.
How do I say this is the finest hero ever put to paper without sounding like a hyperbole-spewing squeeon?
*clears throat and boldly announces*
This is one of the finest heroes created in ink.
The heroine is brilliantly complex.
I'm dazed with wonderment.
I want to befriend every single person who loved this book as much as I did... they are truly my soul-peeps. I am going to stalk every one of you. Fair warning.
Don't urge me not to...
where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your books will be my books and your authors my authors.
July 20, 2023
Re-read July 2023: I revisited this after a Discord discussion and really took my time with it, savoring the story. There were so many fascinating insights in our discussion. This truly is a book that keeps on giving!
Re-read January 2021: I read this almost exactly one year ago and decided to buddy read it with friends. Good heavens, this story!!! Just as gripping the second time around. I picked up many more details because Laura Kinsale sure does love to cram a lot of plot into her plots. I think this might have been my first Old School Romance (if not the first, then close to it) and I've now read half of Kinsale's backlist to boot. On the whole, this book holds up well. There are, of course, elements that have not aged well and there's dubious consent and aspects of Ruck's past that are not in keeping with his otherwise great character. But if you can overlook those things, which are very minor when compared to other horrifying problematic Old School Romances, I highly recommend this one. I read the Modern Condensed version this time and as far as I can tell, only the dialogue has been modified. It was just as enjoyable but I was horrified that my favorite sentence "I have studied" was modified to "I've studied." Reader, this did not pack the same punch and I was very dismayed. What did the "have" do to you, Laura?? In any case, I'll be sticking with the original Middle English version from here on out.
Original review:
Absolute perfection! My first Kinsale did not disappoint. This is the second medieval romance I’ve read but this one felt the most medieval. The characters speak Middle English, which can take some adjusting to at first but it adds such a lovely lyrical quality to the dialogue. But if Middle English feels like too much for you, Kinsale released a modern condensed version alongside the original in the 2011 ebook and I plan on reading that eventually to see how it compares.
The story was inspired by Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (King Arthur). We meet a noble knight and a heroine who has just had to survive political intrigue her whole life and doesn’t trust anyone. Ruck has a whole lot of feelings, not to mention he’s been celibate since his wife joined a nunnery 13 years ago. He’s served Melanthe on some level as she interfered with him joining his wife’s fate but when fate brings their paths back together, he begins acting as her bodyguard as they travel across the country.
Melanthe is prickly af and for good reason. Gian Navona has killed everyone she’s ever cared about since he decided he was going to marry her someday. She’s doing everything she can to avoid that particular cruelty, while making sure Allegretto, Navona’s son and her constant shadow, stays unaware of her plans while also appeasing the King and hopefully getting herself to a nunnery where she can spend the rest of her days. All I’m saying is don’t mess with Melanthe because she will put you in her place.
There’s a lot happening in this plot but here are some reassurances: while Ruck was married, there’s no love triangle, nor is there any cheating. There is a slow burn between Ruck and Melanthe and once it ignites, it’s everything. This book is really all about the buildup and it’s so worth it. Ruck has put those years of celibacy to good use in learning the desires of the flesh. The last paragraph/sentence of chapter 16 is one of the best I've ever read. I’m still fanning myself! All hail, Ruck, hero unparalleled.
Gorgeous writing, through and through. I laughed, I cried, I sure enjoyed the journey. I cannot wait to read more of Kinsale’s work! I’m also delighted Allegretto gets his own book because he absolutely deserves his own HEA for all he endured in this story.
Characters: Ruck and Melanthe are 30 years old and white. Melanthe has a falcon named Gryngolet. Allegreto is 16 years old.
Content notes: stalker , past statutory rape , perceived statutory rape , past murder of FMC’s two year old child, concern of plague, murder, attempted murder, poison, threat of murder, threats of assault, physical assault, violence, ableism (not countered), Bury Your Disabled trope , sexism, past marital rape (referenced, not depicted) and MMC considered physically abusing his first wife in prologue , castrated secondary character , mute secondary character with scoliosis (referred to as “the hunchback"), secondary character with Traumatic Brain Injury, pregnant secondary character, past death of parents and brother, dubious consent (somnophilia that is not pre-negotiated), on page sex, alcohol, gender essentialism, ableist language
The first buddy read was with Beth! It was so great getting to discuss (and swoon over Ruck!) together.
The second buddy read was with Charlotte, Hannah, and Vicky.
Re-read January 2021: I read this almost exactly one year ago and decided to buddy read it with friends. Good heavens, this story!!! Just as gripping the second time around. I picked up many more details because Laura Kinsale sure does love to cram a lot of plot into her plots. I think this might have been my first Old School Romance (if not the first, then close to it) and I've now read half of Kinsale's backlist to boot. On the whole, this book holds up well. There are, of course, elements that have not aged well and there's dubious consent and aspects of Ruck's past that are not in keeping with his otherwise great character. But if you can overlook those things, which are very minor when compared to other horrifying problematic Old School Romances, I highly recommend this one. I read the Modern Condensed version this time and as far as I can tell, only the dialogue has been modified. It was just as enjoyable but I was horrified that my favorite sentence "I have studied" was modified to "I've studied." Reader, this did not pack the same punch and I was very dismayed. What did the "have" do to you, Laura?? In any case, I'll be sticking with the original Middle English version from here on out.
Original review:
Absolute perfection! My first Kinsale did not disappoint. This is the second medieval romance I’ve read but this one felt the most medieval. The characters speak Middle English, which can take some adjusting to at first but it adds such a lovely lyrical quality to the dialogue. But if Middle English feels like too much for you, Kinsale released a modern condensed version alongside the original in the 2011 ebook and I plan on reading that eventually to see how it compares.
The story was inspired by Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (King Arthur). We meet a noble knight and a heroine who has just had to survive political intrigue her whole life and doesn’t trust anyone. Ruck has a whole lot of feelings, not to mention he’s been celibate since his wife joined a nunnery 13 years ago. He’s served Melanthe on some level as she interfered with him joining his wife’s fate but when fate brings their paths back together, he begins acting as her bodyguard as they travel across the country.
Melanthe is prickly af and for good reason. Gian Navona has killed everyone she’s ever cared about since he decided he was going to marry her someday. She’s doing everything she can to avoid that particular cruelty, while making sure Allegretto, Navona’s son and her constant shadow, stays unaware of her plans while also appeasing the King and hopefully getting herself to a nunnery where she can spend the rest of her days. All I’m saying is don’t mess with Melanthe because she will put you in her place.
There’s a lot happening in this plot but here are some reassurances: while Ruck was married, there’s no love triangle, nor is there any cheating. There is a slow burn between Ruck and Melanthe and once it ignites, it’s everything. This book is really all about the buildup and it’s so worth it. Ruck has put those years of celibacy to good use in learning the desires of the flesh. The last paragraph/sentence of chapter 16 is one of the best I've ever read. I’m still fanning myself! All hail, Ruck, hero unparalleled.
Gorgeous writing, through and through. I laughed, I cried, I sure enjoyed the journey. I cannot wait to read more of Kinsale’s work! I’m also delighted Allegretto gets his own book because he absolutely deserves his own HEA for all he endured in this story.
Characters: Ruck and Melanthe are 30 years old and white. Melanthe has a falcon named Gryngolet. Allegreto is 16 years old.
Content notes: stalker , past statutory rape , perceived statutory rape , past murder of FMC’s two year old child, concern of plague, murder, attempted murder, poison, threat of murder, threats of assault, physical assault, violence, ableism (not countered), Bury Your Disabled trope , sexism, past marital rape (referenced, not depicted) and MMC considered physically abusing his first wife in prologue , castrated secondary character , mute secondary character with scoliosis (referred to as “the hunchback"), secondary character with Traumatic Brain Injury, pregnant secondary character, past death of parents and brother, dubious consent (somnophilia that is not pre-negotiated), on page sex, alcohol, gender essentialism, ableist language
The first buddy read was with Beth! It was so great getting to discuss (and swoon over Ruck!) together.
The second buddy read was with Charlotte, Hannah, and Vicky.
December 20, 2021
3,5 estrellas. Leído con motivo del #RetoRita5 #RitaKinsale, me ha costado mucho hacer una reseña en condiciones de esta novela de aventuras y caballería que transcurre durante la Edad Media en una Inglaterra asolada por la peste, pues se parece poco o nada a ninguna novela romántica histórica que haya leído antes. Vaya por delante que no es una novela fácil y que, aunque cumple las reglas del género, podría perfectamente no ser considerada romántica.
La ambientación y el lenguaje utilizados por la Kinsale me han parecido magníficos, al igual que ese retrato de la sociedad de entonces, dominada por la Iglesia y la nobleza, y ese plantel de personajes repletos de claroscuros, a cual más complejo.
Me ha parecido muy acertado que la autora no juzgue a los personajes por algunas de sus actitudes (que, aunque totalmente reprobables para un público moderno, eran ampliamente aceptadas en la época) y que seamos los lectores quienes lo hagamos. Kinsale corrió en 1993, año de publicación de esta novela, el riesgo de mostrar cómo eran las cosas en esa época, sin dulcificarlo pero tampoco juzgarlo, algo que dudo mucho hubiera podido hacer en la época actual, donde el reinado de lo políticamente correcto está acabando con el pensamiento crítico. No por dejar de mostrar cómo eran las cosas antes, lo que sucedió desaparece. En nuestra mano está conocerlo, aprender de ello y evitar que determinados comportamientos y actitudes se repitan.
También me ha gustado mucho que Melanthe y Ruck sean como el día y la noche, el yin y el yang, y que quien simbolice la luz sea el personaje masculino, no el femenino, como suele ser habitual. Ruck es aquí el héroe romántico, aunque no de una pieza, atormentado por sus deseos y castigado por sus convicciones y su sentido del honor; Melanthe, por su parte, representa el arte de la manipulación, una mujer que ha tenido que dejar de lado los sentimientos y aprender a defenderse en un mundo de intrigas y maquinaciones. El descubre con ella cómo son las cosas en realidad y ella con él, cómo podrían ser. Su intenso romance es de todo menos apacible, a veces tormentoso y otros muchas engañoso. Pena que a veces la historia se haga densa y muy cuesta arriba, así como la manera gratuita en que todo se soluciona al final.
El personaje de Allegreto me ha llamado mucho la atención, así que seguramente leeré su historia en breve.
#popsugar21 Reto 45: El libro que ha estado en tu lista TBR durante más tiempo
La ambientación y el lenguaje utilizados por la Kinsale me han parecido magníficos, al igual que ese retrato de la sociedad de entonces, dominada por la Iglesia y la nobleza, y ese plantel de personajes repletos de claroscuros, a cual más complejo.
Me ha parecido muy acertado que la autora no juzgue a los personajes por algunas de sus actitudes (que, aunque totalmente reprobables para un público moderno, eran ampliamente aceptadas en la época) y que seamos los lectores quienes lo hagamos. Kinsale corrió en 1993, año de publicación de esta novela, el riesgo de mostrar cómo eran las cosas en esa época, sin dulcificarlo pero tampoco juzgarlo, algo que dudo mucho hubiera podido hacer en la época actual, donde el reinado de lo políticamente correcto está acabando con el pensamiento crítico. No por dejar de mostrar cómo eran las cosas antes, lo que sucedió desaparece. En nuestra mano está conocerlo, aprender de ello y evitar que determinados comportamientos y actitudes se repitan.
También me ha gustado mucho que Melanthe y Ruck sean como el día y la noche, el yin y el yang, y que quien simbolice la luz sea el personaje masculino, no el femenino, como suele ser habitual. Ruck es aquí el héroe romántico, aunque no de una pieza, atormentado por sus deseos y castigado por sus convicciones y su sentido del honor; Melanthe, por su parte, representa el arte de la manipulación, una mujer que ha tenido que dejar de lado los sentimientos y aprender a defenderse en un mundo de intrigas y maquinaciones. El descubre con ella cómo son las cosas en realidad y ella con él, cómo podrían ser. Su intenso romance es de todo menos apacible, a veces tormentoso y otros muchas engañoso. Pena que a veces la historia se haga densa y muy cuesta arriba, así como la manera gratuita en que todo se soluciona al final.
El personaje de Allegreto me ha llamado mucho la atención, así que seguramente leeré su historia en breve.
#popsugar21 Reto 45: El libro que ha estado en tu lista TBR durante más tiempo
December 9, 2017
This is one of the best Kinsale romances I've read, and an instant favourite.
I loved the language especially, which isn't usual in my reading experience, but that was perfectly comprehensible without the need for a dictionary. And the plotline has clear "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" undertones, which I think was the author's intention. The hero, Ruck, is quite compelling, and the heroine, though at times she can raise eyebrows, is complex. Their romance developed by stages was entertaining to read, mostly because the woman is the one taking the lead because the hero is a . . . monkish-man, at first a teasing nickname that ended up being a term of endearment.
I highly recommend this novel, as all of Kinsale's books, too.
I loved the language especially, which isn't usual in my reading experience, but that was perfectly comprehensible without the need for a dictionary. And the plotline has clear "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" undertones, which I think was the author's intention. The hero, Ruck, is quite compelling, and the heroine, though at times she can raise eyebrows, is complex. Their romance developed by stages was entertaining to read, mostly because the woman is the one taking the lead because the hero is a . . . monkish-man, at first a teasing nickname that ended up being a term of endearment.
I highly recommend this novel, as all of Kinsale's books, too.
March 13, 2023
3.5 rounded up to 4
A Romance Novel for an Anti-Romantic
I consider myself too old and too cynical to be a fan of romance novels. But you know what they say: Scratch a cynic and you’ll find a disappointed romantic.
I’m no fan of bodice rippers or of porn/smut.
But sometimes I surprise myself. Give me an old fashioned love story between two strong personalities who love, respect, and know each other, and I’ll go for it, hook, line, and sinker.
Nastya Sent Me
My (relatively new) Goodreads friend Nastya wrote an ecstatic review praising this book and I thought it sounded interesting, so I went for it. Read Nastya’s review here.
I seem to be fascinated by the general time period including the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as I’ve lately been reading an awful lot of historical novels about that era.
Historical Romances
This is beautifully researched and the characters seem to authentically belong in their historical era, compared with those in, say, The Lymond Chronicles, a series that’s been criticized for placing people with modern sensibilities in the sixteenth century.
That said, we have to remember that historical fiction is just that: fiction. It’s not historical fact, no matter how well researched. As such, I expect writers of historical fiction to take some liberties. After all, even professional historians don’t really know exactly what happened in history. (Unless they are time travellers, like the historians in the delightful series The Chronicles of St. Mary's.)
Sex Scenes
Call me old fashioned, but I don’t find sex scenes compelling unless they’re between two strong personalities who have a genuine bond of love, respect, and intimacy.
Diana Gabaldon says the same thing, when people ask her how she writes such good sex scenes.
And the sex scenes in this book are pretty smoking hot!
But the sex scenes seemed a bit impersonal at times. There was a lot of focus on the sex, but not enough on the intimacy and love between the two main characters during sex. So these scenes did not quite live up to those written by Diana Gabaldon.
Story, Characters, Setting: A Brief Summary
There are a lot of surprises here, so the less said the better.
I will say that at first this masquerades as a bodice ripper. It’s not. It’s much more than that.
I’ll just give a very brief plot summary.
This takes place in the Middle Ages. The year isn’t specified, but going by the historical landmarks given, it’s approximately 1375 at the beginning of the book.
Ruck, a seventeen year old English knight of unknown origin and an accomplished fighter, is on a pilgrimage in France with his religious wife, Isabelle. Isabelle leaves Ruck to enter a nunnery. The very same day, he encounters Princess Melanthe, a beautiful widow (about whom the less said, the better, as she, like the story, is full of surprises).
Historical Romances I’ve Enjoyed
I liked this and, ultimately, after many twists and turns, there is a satisfyingly happy ending.
It’s also beautifully researched and full of period detail—sights, sounds, smells, etc.
But it doesn’t quite live up to my favorite historical romances.
These would be the fantasy/time travel series Outlander by Diana Gabaldon;
the difficult, but amazing series The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett;
and the Mistress of the Art of Death series by Ariana Franklin, which also takes place in the Middle Ages.
Summary
I think many readers will enjoy this book.
I do plan to read the second book in the series, Shadowheart (Medieval Hearts #2), which tells the story of a secondary character in this book, Allegreto Navona.
Language
This novel uses a lot of the language of the time, interspersed with Modern English.
But I did not find it hard to follow at all.
Maybe this is because I’ve read a lot of stuff that used Middle English, including, but not limited to Geoffrey Chaucer.
Condensed Version in Modern English
This edition of the book contained, at the end, a newer, condensed version of the story entirely in modern English.
I didn’t bother to read this, but it’s there for those who’d prefer it to the original.
Cover
The cover is quite striking.
But…Ruck is supposed to have green eyes and black curly hair. This cover guy has neither.
Did the cover artist even read the book?
Audio Narrator
Actor Nicholas Boulton is a very good and suitable audio narrator.
He does take occasional liberties with the text (usually rendering “thy” as “your”, for example), but this didn’t interrupt the flow of the story at all.
A Romance Novel for an Anti-Romantic
I consider myself too old and too cynical to be a fan of romance novels. But you know what they say: Scratch a cynic and you’ll find a disappointed romantic.
I’m no fan of bodice rippers or of porn/smut.
But sometimes I surprise myself. Give me an old fashioned love story between two strong personalities who love, respect, and know each other, and I’ll go for it, hook, line, and sinker.
Nastya Sent Me
My (relatively new) Goodreads friend Nastya wrote an ecstatic review praising this book and I thought it sounded interesting, so I went for it. Read Nastya’s review here.
I seem to be fascinated by the general time period including the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as I’ve lately been reading an awful lot of historical novels about that era.
Historical Romances
This is beautifully researched and the characters seem to authentically belong in their historical era, compared with those in, say, The Lymond Chronicles, a series that’s been criticized for placing people with modern sensibilities in the sixteenth century.
That said, we have to remember that historical fiction is just that: fiction. It’s not historical fact, no matter how well researched. As such, I expect writers of historical fiction to take some liberties. After all, even professional historians don’t really know exactly what happened in history. (Unless they are time travellers, like the historians in the delightful series The Chronicles of St. Mary's.)
Sex Scenes
Call me old fashioned, but I don’t find sex scenes compelling unless they’re between two strong personalities who have a genuine bond of love, respect, and intimacy.
Diana Gabaldon says the same thing, when people ask her how she writes such good sex scenes.
And the sex scenes in this book are pretty smoking hot!
But the sex scenes seemed a bit impersonal at times. There was a lot of focus on the sex, but not enough on the intimacy and love between the two main characters during sex. So these scenes did not quite live up to those written by Diana Gabaldon.
Story, Characters, Setting: A Brief Summary
There are a lot of surprises here, so the less said the better.
I will say that at first this masquerades as a bodice ripper. It’s not. It’s much more than that.
I’ll just give a very brief plot summary.
This takes place in the Middle Ages. The year isn’t specified, but going by the historical landmarks given, it’s approximately 1375 at the beginning of the book.
Ruck, a seventeen year old English knight of unknown origin and an accomplished fighter, is on a pilgrimage in France with his religious wife, Isabelle. Isabelle leaves Ruck to enter a nunnery. The very same day, he encounters Princess Melanthe, a beautiful widow (about whom the less said, the better, as she, like the story, is full of surprises).
Historical Romances I’ve Enjoyed
I liked this and, ultimately, after many twists and turns, there is a satisfyingly happy ending.
It’s also beautifully researched and full of period detail—sights, sounds, smells, etc.
But it doesn’t quite live up to my favorite historical romances.
These would be the fantasy/time travel series Outlander by Diana Gabaldon;
the difficult, but amazing series The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett;
and the Mistress of the Art of Death series by Ariana Franklin, which also takes place in the Middle Ages.
Summary
I think many readers will enjoy this book.
I do plan to read the second book in the series, Shadowheart (Medieval Hearts #2), which tells the story of a secondary character in this book, Allegreto Navona.
Language
This novel uses a lot of the language of the time, interspersed with Modern English.
But I did not find it hard to follow at all.
Maybe this is because I’ve read a lot of stuff that used Middle English, including, but not limited to Geoffrey Chaucer.
Condensed Version in Modern English
This edition of the book contained, at the end, a newer, condensed version of the story entirely in modern English.
I didn’t bother to read this, but it’s there for those who’d prefer it to the original.
Cover
The cover is quite striking.
But…Ruck is supposed to have green eyes and black curly hair. This cover guy has neither.
Did the cover artist even read the book?
Audio Narrator
Actor Nicholas Boulton is a very good and suitable audio narrator.
He does take occasional liberties with the text (usually rendering “thy” as “your”, for example), but this didn’t interrupt the flow of the story at all.
March 25, 2015
The book was great, but the narrator? I swear, I'm in love with him
February 20, 2020
What! I finished a book? In a record six weeks?
Settle down. Settle down.
I don't think I'd like this book as much as a did if not for the Boulton factor. If not for the Allegretto. If not for Kinsale's usual one asshole protagonist.
Because, whew, Ruck was a little TOO devoted. Read: boring. He saved himself there right at the end. Melanthe is mean, and a weird combination of vulnerable and commanding and insecure.
Basically, I didn't get them. Still convinced of their love...because Kinsale, but despite all that it's likely my least favorite, skirting by on the high action sequences (wonderfully written and performed), the intriguing subplot, and a falcon.
So that is that. I'm looking forward to the next story, but I am going to wait a bit.
Settle down. Settle down.
I don't think I'd like this book as much as a did if not for the Boulton factor. If not for the Allegretto. If not for Kinsale's usual one asshole protagonist.
Because, whew, Ruck was a little TOO devoted. Read: boring. He saved himself there right at the end. Melanthe is mean, and a weird combination of vulnerable and commanding and insecure.
Basically, I didn't get them. Still convinced of their love...because Kinsale, but despite all that it's likely my least favorite, skirting by on the high action sequences (wonderfully written and performed), the intriguing subplot, and a falcon.
So that is that. I'm looking forward to the next story, but I am going to wait a bit.
July 4, 2021
Overall: 3.5 stars rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖 4 books
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋 3 butterflies
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔 3 broken hearts
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡ 2 lightnings
Romance: 💞💞💞💞 4 hearts
Sensuality: 💋💋 2 kisses
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑 2 peaches
Steam Scale: 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 5 flames (These scenes are really not explicit, so this would not fit the spirit of Upturned Petticoats and Undone Cravats facebook group)
Humor: a touch, though I wouldn’t label this a humorous book
(All of these are personal opinions on a 1-5 scale except the steam that follows our Steam Scale chart for The Ton and the Tartans facebook group)
We begin this story with Ruck losing his wife to the church and setting eyes on princess Melanthe, who steals his breath. It leads to an interaction that shames him, but she gives him a handful of jewels to help him on his way. They are then separated for 13 years before Ruck is wrangled into saving Melanthe from her enemies when he returns only known as The Green Knight.
Give this a try if you want:
- mid to late 1300s time period – King Edward III rules
- lower steam – while there’s 5 scenes and a few kisses, none are super explicit
- a celibate hero – he hasn’t touched another in 13 years
- class differences – heroine is a princess and hero is thought of as a freeman
- experienced heroine – she is widowed
- knight hero with touches of lovely chivalry
- you need to be okay with some content warnings – attached under a spoiler warning at the end
- you like a story with lots of busy plot and adventure
- you are prepared to read lots and lots of middle english – there is a glossary in the back of the book!
- a bit of unrequited love - from the hero! - he touches no one after meeting the heroine and is celibate for 13 years. Her memory is placed on a pedestal in his mind.
So, I’m a touch conflicted about this book. Aspects of it I really loved. Some of it bothered me. I had a really difficult time getting through it sadly and it seemed to take me forever to finish.
I enjoyed Ruck a lot, but I felt his character was lacking a bit as the focus was more on Malanthe. I wish I had gotten a bit of time in his head and more depth to him. I absolutely adored some of the scenes with him and Melanthe. The touches of chivalry in this book just really tugged on my heart. I believe he would have laid his life down for her willingly.
Melanthe was wonderful and annoying. She went through so so much so I can understand the drive of her choices. She was so strong and I loved that about her. I loved that she was able to take care of herself and really used her intelligence to help play the scenes around her to better her chances of survival. In some ways I found her cold though, especially with "the scene" at the end, that was a bit much for me.
I really enjoyed the time period change. This takes place in the mid to late 1300s - King Edward III rules and fear of the pestilence still cripples people. The castles, the life style, the food, the tournaments, the details of keeping a falcon, I was fascinated by it. It's been too long since I've read medieval.
The language in this book was really hard for me to get through. It’s written in middle English and I found myself having to really focus on the words to get the most out of it. Not going to lie, I’m just a really overtired and stressed mother and I had a really hard time with that. I think if I read this book like 10 years ago it would have felt different for me. But I found myself attempting to translate into readable English as I read and it just took me a lot longer to get through. None of this speaks against the author, it was purely myself.
I read this book because I really want to read Shadowheart. Shadowheart features Allegreto as the hero, and he plays a large part in this book. He’s 16 and is Melanthe’s constant companion and protector. He saves her from assassins and does everything to keep her safe so one day his father can marry her to get his hands on her lands and estate. You get to know him, his fears and some of his upbringing fairly well in this book. So I’m glad I read it for that. I plan on diving into Shadowheart this week, hopefully I find it a bit more ‘readable’ than this one. If not I’ll have to get a good nights sleep or something before reading hahahaha.
Content warnings:
Locations of kisses/intimate scenes
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖 4 books
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋 3 butterflies
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔 3 broken hearts
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡ 2 lightnings
Romance: 💞💞💞💞 4 hearts
Sensuality: 💋💋 2 kisses
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑 2 peaches
Steam Scale: 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 5 flames (These scenes are really not explicit, so this would not fit the spirit of Upturned Petticoats and Undone Cravats facebook group)
Humor: a touch, though I wouldn’t label this a humorous book
(All of these are personal opinions on a 1-5 scale except the steam that follows our Steam Scale chart for The Ton and the Tartans facebook group)
We begin this story with Ruck losing his wife to the church and setting eyes on princess Melanthe, who steals his breath. It leads to an interaction that shames him, but she gives him a handful of jewels to help him on his way. They are then separated for 13 years before Ruck is wrangled into saving Melanthe from her enemies when he returns only known as The Green Knight.
Give this a try if you want:
- mid to late 1300s time period – King Edward III rules
- lower steam – while there’s 5 scenes and a few kisses, none are super explicit
- a celibate hero – he hasn’t touched another in 13 years
- class differences – heroine is a princess and hero is thought of as a freeman
- experienced heroine – she is widowed
- knight hero with touches of lovely chivalry
- you need to be okay with some content warnings – attached under a spoiler warning at the end
- you like a story with lots of busy plot and adventure
- you are prepared to read lots and lots of middle english – there is a glossary in the back of the book!
- a bit of unrequited love - from the hero! - he touches no one after meeting the heroine and is celibate for 13 years. Her memory is placed on a pedestal in his mind.
So, I’m a touch conflicted about this book. Aspects of it I really loved. Some of it bothered me. I had a really difficult time getting through it sadly and it seemed to take me forever to finish.
I enjoyed Ruck a lot, but I felt his character was lacking a bit as the focus was more on Malanthe. I wish I had gotten a bit of time in his head and more depth to him. I absolutely adored some of the scenes with him and Melanthe. The touches of chivalry in this book just really tugged on my heart. I believe he would have laid his life down for her willingly.
Melanthe was wonderful and annoying. She went through so so much so I can understand the drive of her choices. She was so strong and I loved that about her. I loved that she was able to take care of herself and really used her intelligence to help play the scenes around her to better her chances of survival. In some ways I found her cold though, especially with "the scene" at the end, that was a bit much for me.
I really enjoyed the time period change. This takes place in the mid to late 1300s - King Edward III rules and fear of the pestilence still cripples people. The castles, the life style, the food, the tournaments, the details of keeping a falcon, I was fascinated by it. It's been too long since I've read medieval.
The language in this book was really hard for me to get through. It’s written in middle English and I found myself having to really focus on the words to get the most out of it. Not going to lie, I’m just a really overtired and stressed mother and I had a really hard time with that. I think if I read this book like 10 years ago it would have felt different for me. But I found myself attempting to translate into readable English as I read and it just took me a lot longer to get through. None of this speaks against the author, it was purely myself.
I read this book because I really want to read Shadowheart. Shadowheart features Allegreto as the hero, and he plays a large part in this book. He’s 16 and is Melanthe’s constant companion and protector. He saves her from assassins and does everything to keep her safe so one day his father can marry her to get his hands on her lands and estate. You get to know him, his fears and some of his upbringing fairly well in this book. So I’m glad I read it for that. I plan on diving into Shadowheart this week, hopefully I find it a bit more ‘readable’ than this one. If not I’ll have to get a good nights sleep or something before reading hahahaha.
Content warnings:
Locations of kisses/intimate scenes
October 11, 2024
HECK NAW, this is toted online as a sweet and tender knight romance. Within the FIRST CHAPTER, we find out our main male love interest assaults his more than likely mentally-ill wife.
After returning from a battle his very new wife starts experiencing what sounds like religious psychosis, and I QUOTE
"he'd come back, and found that God had turned her dizzy prattle into prophecy. For a sevennight he'd had his way with her, in spite of the weeping, in spite of the praying and begging, in spite of the scolds, but when she'd taken to screaming, he'd found it more than he could endure. He'd thought he ought to beat her; that was her father's advice, and sure it was that Ruck would gladly beat her or mayhap even strangle her when she was in the full flow of pious exhortations—but instead she'd beseeched him to take her on pilgrimage across the heap of war-torn ruins that was France."
Eventually this wife turns herself into a nunery and he's free to find him some new princess that he doesn't have to force himself on??
BROTHER EEEUUWW absolutely not, no no no. This is supposed to be our sweet and kind knight, our love interest, yeah no I am so good.
After returning from a battle his very new wife starts experiencing what sounds like religious psychosis, and I QUOTE
"he'd come back, and found that God had turned her dizzy prattle into prophecy. For a sevennight he'd had his way with her, in spite of the weeping, in spite of the praying and begging, in spite of the scolds, but when she'd taken to screaming, he'd found it more than he could endure. He'd thought he ought to beat her; that was her father's advice, and sure it was that Ruck would gladly beat her or mayhap even strangle her when she was in the full flow of pious exhortations—but instead she'd beseeched him to take her on pilgrimage across the heap of war-torn ruins that was France."
Eventually this wife turns herself into a nunery and he's free to find him some new princess that he doesn't have to force himself on??
BROTHER EEEUUWW absolutely not, no no no. This is supposed to be our sweet and kind knight, our love interest, yeah no I am so good.
May 21, 2025
She looked at him beneath her lashes.'Come, wilt thou be such a poor love-sotted wretch, to die for me?'
'Yea,' he said simply. 'I would.'
[...]
'Yea, and so would I choose to be slain than to see thee in his bed, but I think me that I would nought die so tame.'
Taking inspiration from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight this is an utterly delicious historical romance. Both Ruck, the green knight who will not speak his name till his honour is restored, and Melanthe, feisty, cunning and vulnerable, leap off the page with their angsty, witty, heated feelings. In fact, I kind of wanted less plot and more of just Ruck and Melanthe on their journey with his destrier, Hawk, and her vicious pure white falcon.
I thought after reading Fourth Wing that I wanted a dragon - turns out I want a runisch knight dressed in green!
Thanks to Nastya for the recommendation and for sharing this journey!
April 4, 2023
I am so pleased I've finished my first ever Laura Kinsale romance! It did take me about a million Beth-years to finish reading it, but in my defense I did tackle the original, un-condensed version with ALL the Medieval words and ALL the plot. So much plot.
I am greedy and I wanted so many more pages of Melanthe and Ruck together. Those were my favorite parts, Melanthe being mean or cold, Ruck being in awe of her, Ruck fighting his lustful thoughts. Yes please. I regret that I didn't much care about Allegretto but that's probably because I was just waiting to get back to our main couple.
Melanthe is a queen and I loved her. I loved how much she slept, I loved how she protected herself. More heroines like this please. I also adored the Catholic guilt suffusing the page and the characters, especially Ruck. I feel you Ruck.
The language of this book is also stunning. The writing is superb. Just be prepared to really take your time and to take some breaths/pauses in reading to full enjoy.
I did a buddy read with Leigh Kramer!
I am greedy and I wanted so many more pages of Melanthe and Ruck together. Those were my favorite parts, Melanthe being mean or cold, Ruck being in awe of her, Ruck fighting his lustful thoughts. Yes please. I regret that I didn't much care about Allegretto but that's probably because I was just waiting to get back to our main couple.
Melanthe is a queen and I loved her. I loved how much she slept, I loved how she protected herself. More heroines like this please. I also adored the Catholic guilt suffusing the page and the characters, especially Ruck. I feel you Ruck.
The language of this book is also stunning. The writing is superb. Just be prepared to really take your time and to take some breaths/pauses in reading to full enjoy.
I did a buddy read with Leigh Kramer!
November 17, 2013
Remarkable story and Nick Boulton's narration is amazing. Laura Kinsale continues to wow with her audiobooks. Every one of her titles (five to date for me) is worthy of multiple relistens.
Narrated by Nicholas Boulton
I was hesitant to listen to For My Lady’s Heart as I read that it contained (horrors) Middle English. I want my listening to be easy but the lure was strong with all the highly favorable comments I was reading and … it’s a Medieval, a sub-genre I thoroughly enjoy. And that Middle English? I barely noticed it after hearing the first bit of dialogue as the author seamlessly blends the more archaic language into the overall text.
Nick Boulton, a stage actor more than a little familiar with Shakespeare, delivers it all with such great skill that I only thought about the beauty of the story, it’s complex characters, and the sheer intrigue Kinsale’s words convey. Facing a difficult heroine once again (Prince of Midnight featured such a heroine as well – an A listen for me), I didn’t run away as is my tendency. I have learned that in the hands of this author, it will work for me. I’m sure I’ll accept her character well before the story’s end and appreciate its inclusion. My grades – A+ for narration and A for content. Sensuality: Warm
Review written for the 11/04/13 Speaking of Audiobooks
http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=11014
Narrated by Nicholas Boulton
I was hesitant to listen to For My Lady’s Heart as I read that it contained (horrors) Middle English. I want my listening to be easy but the lure was strong with all the highly favorable comments I was reading and … it’s a Medieval, a sub-genre I thoroughly enjoy. And that Middle English? I barely noticed it after hearing the first bit of dialogue as the author seamlessly blends the more archaic language into the overall text.
Nick Boulton, a stage actor more than a little familiar with Shakespeare, delivers it all with such great skill that I only thought about the beauty of the story, it’s complex characters, and the sheer intrigue Kinsale’s words convey. Facing a difficult heroine once again (Prince of Midnight featured such a heroine as well – an A listen for me), I didn’t run away as is my tendency. I have learned that in the hands of this author, it will work for me. I’m sure I’ll accept her character well before the story’s end and appreciate its inclusion. My grades – A+ for narration and A for content. Sensuality: Warm
Review written for the 11/04/13 Speaking of Audiobooks
http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=11014
March 12, 2013
I adored (nearly all of) this book. It is a romance masterpiece. I wish it would have gone on more as I enjoyed the language and prose so very much. I also adored the hero and the heroine too, though Melanthe was a bit off putting once they reached Wolfscar. The set-up and plot for the "romance" was really unique and well-done. And the humor! Kinsale has an ability to deftly add character-driven humor that does not seem forced nor contrived.
I also want to thank Ms. Kinsale for allowing the reader the opportunity to interpret these characters for ourselves. Unlike a goodly number of romance-genre writers, she doesn't feel the need to hit her readers over the head, nor does she over-describe-- some authors write out their descriptions as if they were filling out a witness statement for a police report on a perp.
I almost hate to lump Ms. Kinsale in the romance category, as her work here qualifies more modern literature. Not that there aren't many, many fine writers in Romance--on the contrary, there are. But of the Kinsale novels I have read, she is writing a character study as much as a romance.
Here, the characters of Melanthe and Ruck, and several of the secondary characters were as fully realized as many considered masters: Robert Penn Warren or George RR Martin or Edith Wharton come to mind.
True, Ruck comes off as a bit one dimensional but that is surface reading. I found it amazing how much depth Ms. Kinsale could reveal in a character who lived his entire life by a code of conduct as restrictive as the Christian chivalric code. And Melanthe!...Melanthe is a deeply complex heroine. I enjoyed the relationship development between 2 people of opposite personalities--especially when Kinsale found humor in these differences, or by turning the tables on them ("There be peahens with greater wits than yours.")
I think my favorite Kinsale is still The Dream Hunter, which I have not yet reviewed-- I suspect because I am still in awe of the author's beautiful prose and deft, almost restrained character-development. I might be a sucker for bittersweet stories, and The Dream Hunter reminded me of Gone With the Wind. ("Reminded" may be too weak a word.) I openly sobbed throughout The Dream Hunter. For My Lady's Heart was different sort of novel, and I enjoyed the high adventure, the chivalric touches, and the religious overtones. (I may have to re-read Sir Thomas Malory soon, as I grew up reading Arthurian legends and took a senior seminar class on Arthurian works.)
Some quibbles:
1.the ministrels were an outlier which I had hoped (expected?) would be roped back into the resolution of the story, but alas, they were not. I would have loved, loved, loved if the minstrels had showed up at the wedding festivities to support Ruck and thereby prove to Melanthe that they wanted her around.
2. Cara was really too stupid and never did I understand why anyone would fancy her, let alone two people. And why would A. risk his life for her? I know it was supposed to do with her innocence but really, must she be innocent, annoying AND stupid?
3. I was so relieved to see we had an Epilogue because the H & H seemed to have many challenges to work through in the future. So I was furious when the Epilogue was another Cara POV, and we hardly learned anything about Ruck and Melanthe at all. In fact, I wondered if the Epilogue was added to later additions as a prelude to Shadowheart, because that is how it reads.
Speaking of Shadowheart, I am breaking my rule to space out Kinsale novels as little treats for myself and moving right into the "sequel"- I cannot wait to read Allegreto's story. He was a very forceful presence in this novel, even when I hated him, he compelled me to pay attention to him.
Iwysse, I ne would put off his story, though in troth I foreswore to ne'er dispoil myself with gluttonous enjoyment of all her (Kinsale's) lickerous writings, for I descrived Allegreto to be a most comelych knave, and full worth mine luf-loving. God grant me merci.
ETA 3/4/13
I just re-read substantial parts of the book and the entire last 150 pages and I am even more in awe of the author. I appreciated the resolution much more on second reading. What a delicious story! /sigh
June 3, 2023
Reread June 2023: Perfect book will never not be perfect.
Reread Dec 2022: I caught an urge and reread this almost in its entirety again (skipped some of the plottier bits this time) and just, gahhhhh…I love this book. I love Melanthe and I love her more every time I read this. I also love Ruck more every time. The first time I read FMLH I appreciated his tortured heart but I’ve grown to truly love him. Almost as much as I love his liege lady. Maybe someday I’ll have the wherewithal to write an in depth response to this book. But after 3 rereads and frequent passage perusals, I’m still stuck in the “ffffuuuukk so good” place.
Of note, I always read the original version with the Middle English. I really think the condensed version loses some of the magic sparkle the original does without the language that gives it such a strong sense of time and place.
Original review Jan 2020:
Quick review: Wow, the things Laura Kinsale can do with language and plot. This book was such a wild ride, truly an amazing representation of the roller coasters that are old school romances. Melanthe is absolute icy perfection and -- I don't say this lightly -- one of the best heroines I've ever read. Ruck is her broody, tortured man and I love him too, but he can't measure up to the magnificence that is Melanthe. He just gets closer than anyone else.
[READER BEWARE! Major CW.] I originally didn’t give this book all five stars, because even in the revised version there is mention of marital rape by the hero. It's mentioned pretty blatantly in the prologue that Ruck "had his way" with his first wife, who was mentally ill and very much protesting. There's also a scene later between Ruck and Melanthe in which he comes in her while she's sleeping (after she's had her pretty demanding way with him, but still). So some definite ick factor in a book that otherwise works so hard to address Melanthe's lack of agency as a woman and give her as much power as possible. I eventually came back and gave it all five stars because I loved the rest too damn much. Melanthe alone is worth all the stars.
Other CW: on-page violence/death, death of a child, reference to the Crusades, plague, mistreatment of a mentally ill person (off-page, described)
Reread Dec 2022: I caught an urge and reread this almost in its entirety again (skipped some of the plottier bits this time) and just, gahhhhh…I love this book. I love Melanthe and I love her more every time I read this. I also love Ruck more every time. The first time I read FMLH I appreciated his tortured heart but I’ve grown to truly love him. Almost as much as I love his liege lady. Maybe someday I’ll have the wherewithal to write an in depth response to this book. But after 3 rereads and frequent passage perusals, I’m still stuck in the “ffffuuuukk so good” place.
Of note, I always read the original version with the Middle English. I really think the condensed version loses some of the magic sparkle the original does without the language that gives it such a strong sense of time and place.
Original review Jan 2020:
Quick review: Wow, the things Laura Kinsale can do with language and plot. This book was such a wild ride, truly an amazing representation of the roller coasters that are old school romances. Melanthe is absolute icy perfection and -- I don't say this lightly -- one of the best heroines I've ever read. Ruck is her broody, tortured man and I love him too, but he can't measure up to the magnificence that is Melanthe. He just gets closer than anyone else.
[READER BEWARE! Major CW.] I originally didn’t give this book all five stars, because even in the revised version there is mention of marital rape by the hero. It's mentioned pretty blatantly in the prologue that Ruck "had his way" with his first wife, who was mentally ill and very much protesting. There's also a scene later between Ruck and Melanthe in which he comes in her while she's sleeping (after she's had her pretty demanding way with him, but still). So some definite ick factor in a book that otherwise works so hard to address Melanthe's lack of agency as a woman and give her as much power as possible. I eventually came back and gave it all five stars because I loved the rest too damn much. Melanthe alone is worth all the stars.
Other CW: on-page violence/death, death of a child, reference to the Crusades, plague, mistreatment of a mentally ill person (off-page, described)
September 16, 2010
I did not enjoy this book. I wanted it to be over.
Melanthe's husband died. Two powerful families want her husband's lands in Italy. She tells the two families she is going to England for a short trip and then they may have her property. She is lying to both of them. In England she falls in love and secretly marries Ruck. The story is about treachery, deceit, plotting and murder. I did not like several parts of the book.
CAUTION SPOILERS:
I did not like Melanthe because while she was blissfully married to Ruck, she continued to lie and mislead him. She didn't want him to know how much she loved him, because then he would have the upper hand with her. After Gian arrives in England, Melanthe further lies to Ruck telling him she never loved him and wants to marry Gian. She claimed that she feared Gian would kill Ruck, but she never gave Ruck the chance to help her fight Gian.
The author writes with too much description of places and things and not enough description of emotions and actions. When Gian died, it was not clearly described. His death was one of the most important events in the book, yet it was too vaguely described. He lost his balance on the boat, fell into the water and drowned because he had a lot of gold on him. Many people had been plotting and desiring his death, yet his death due to losing his balance seemed too convenient to me.
The author uses Middle English and has a glossary in the back of the book to translate many but not all of the words she used. Reading conversations in Middle English was difficult and not enjoyable for me.
DATA:
Sexual language: mild. Number of sex scenes: five. Setting: 9th year after the Great Pestilence in England. Copyright: 1993. Genre: historical romance and middle english.
Melanthe's husband died. Two powerful families want her husband's lands in Italy. She tells the two families she is going to England for a short trip and then they may have her property. She is lying to both of them. In England she falls in love and secretly marries Ruck. The story is about treachery, deceit, plotting and murder. I did not like several parts of the book.
CAUTION SPOILERS:
I did not like Melanthe because while she was blissfully married to Ruck, she continued to lie and mislead him. She didn't want him to know how much she loved him, because then he would have the upper hand with her. After Gian arrives in England, Melanthe further lies to Ruck telling him she never loved him and wants to marry Gian. She claimed that she feared Gian would kill Ruck, but she never gave Ruck the chance to help her fight Gian.
The author writes with too much description of places and things and not enough description of emotions and actions. When Gian died, it was not clearly described. His death was one of the most important events in the book, yet it was too vaguely described. He lost his balance on the boat, fell into the water and drowned because he had a lot of gold on him. Many people had been plotting and desiring his death, yet his death due to losing his balance seemed too convenient to me.
The author uses Middle English and has a glossary in the back of the book to translate many but not all of the words she used. Reading conversations in Middle English was difficult and not enjoyable for me.
DATA:
Sexual language: mild. Number of sex scenes: five. Setting: 9th year after the Great Pestilence in England. Copyright: 1993. Genre: historical romance and middle english.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 13, 2007
Old RRA-L review:
I liked FOR MY LADY'S HEART a great deal, and I generally don't like what passes for medieval. I read it on the recommendation of someone whose opinion on books I respect, and it is what got me to read medieval romances (and Laura Kinsale in general). Most medieval romances have modern stories dressed up and in a castle. A book I otherwise enjoyed ruined the ending by having the heroine marry her dead twin sister's widower--sorry, but in the Middle Ages that was incest, not a tidy solution at all. FMLH was true to the period, including the great "bob and wheel" form of the dragon story--just like "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
Of course, I did my B.A. in Medieval Studies and did my thesis on the portrayal of marriage in 12th century French romances, so I may not represent the general population here. :)
I liked FOR MY LADY'S HEART a great deal, and I generally don't like what passes for medieval. I read it on the recommendation of someone whose opinion on books I respect, and it is what got me to read medieval romances (and Laura Kinsale in general). Most medieval romances have modern stories dressed up and in a castle. A book I otherwise enjoyed ruined the ending by having the heroine marry her dead twin sister's widower--sorry, but in the Middle Ages that was incest, not a tidy solution at all. FMLH was true to the period, including the great "bob and wheel" form of the dragon story--just like "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
Of course, I did my B.A. in Medieval Studies and did my thesis on the portrayal of marriage in 12th century French romances, so I may not represent the general population here. :)
December 8, 2020
This book pulled off the near-impossible: making me fall in love with a couple who are not forthcoming with their emotions, who struggle to communicate, who are by no means tender-hearted, and whose relationship is characterized by lust and uncertainty. Right until the end, it seems as though Melanthe and Ruck might part ways.
Melanthe, in her efforts to spare Ruck's life at the end of the novel, has been unthinkably cruel to him, denying their marriage publicly. He is furious at her treatment. He tells her he will leave her to serve his former master, because he won't be controlled like a lapdog. She breaks down and begs him not to go. The novel's culminating scene is not of mindblowing sex: it is a negotiation of which tasks they will each be responsible for in their union. She will take care of financial matters, he of building concerns. He teases her that she will not be required to sweep hearths. And even though it seems a very modern negotiation process, Kinsale manages to convey the idea of historically-minded persons coming to this unconventional arrangement of power, between a minor baron and a much-more entitled princess, without betraying their historical outlook on the world.
The divide between the couple is vast. Melanthe has been raised in an environment in which she wields tremendous power, as a woman who has inherited her late father and late husband's lands. But that power is continually threatened by her rivals, who seek to entrap her in marriage unwillingly, or poison her to end her threat to their own power. Two rival spies have been installed within her service. She lacks the means to rid herself of them, since this will turn those she needs to pretend are allies. The entire atmosphere of her household is one in which truth can never be spoken; in which no one is faithful to her, and no one wants her for herself - they only want the advantages she conveys.
Ruck, the character with whom we're meant to sympathize, is the far more likeable half of the duo. He is devoted to his first wife, who is having a rather name-calling fit of prophecy when we are introduced to her. Ruck has taken Isabel to Avignon, seat of the Pope, so that she can confess to her holy visions, which she compares with those of famous female ecstatics. But Isabel's confession goes badly before the clergy. They at least suspect she is a heretic. Ruck is asked by the priest whether he believes in the holiness of his wife's words, and will swear himself to a lifetime of chastity as she commits herself to a nunnery. Melanthe, then a stranger to him, interrupts the session before he can answer. He cannot be trusted to make a vow of celibacy because he looked on her with lust, she tells the clergyman. Ruck's wife is hauled away while he is left in limbo, still married and thus forced into celibacy. Melanthe, in a token of apology, leaves him two large emeralds. With one of them, he buys a horse and armor. He then dresses himself in her colours, mounting the second emerald on his helmet, and swears himself to a lord's service.
This is the first of several scenes in which two characters present us with vastly differing perspectives on the same event. To Ruck, his wife is the apotheosis of feminine holiness, even if he would far rather she remained his wife without her vows of chastity. She represents all that is good and pure. The reader may wonder (as I did) whether Isabel's visions are truly motivated by holiness. Perhaps she was dissatisfied with rural life and wished for a more exciting adventure prophesying; perhaps she was actually mentally ill. Melanthe, recalling the event later, sees a greedy, dissatisfied girl who would throw away a good husband who loved her as no lord had ever loved Melanthe - with whole-hearted devotion.
It is this selfishness and jealousy that drives Melanthe's entire character. She thinks continually of the various untrustable mirrors provided by those the world around her, by the simpering lords who say sweet and courtly things insincerely which she cannot believe. She finds something else in Ruck: a naked longing for her as a woman, apparent even when he is furious at her. It is this she finds so enticing about Ruck - even when he hates her, he still really, really wants her.
Much of the novel unfolds as a detailed working-through of lust, not love. Ruck and Melanthe do not really know each other in some intimate, personal sense, not even at the very end of things. But this feels incredibly true to the world of the characters. How can Melanthe possibly convey or overcome the intense toxicity of the courtly world to Ruck? Conversely, how could Ruck find the will to persevere after thirteen years of celibacy without creating some vision of the world in which a good woman was worth his total self-sacrifice? Of course the only common-ground between the pair would be this raw, unthinking physical lust fraught with danger, as the marriage of a nameless man to a princess is inadvisable and politically destabilizing.
On many occasions Melanthe spurns and provokes Ruck just because she can. There is a thirteen-year gap between the introductory events of the novel and its subsequent scenes. We leave Ruck after he has lost his wife and all his money to the church's demands, rejoining him at a tournament where he has sworn to fight as Melanthe's champion. Melanthe, just for fun, decides to provoke the pompous lord Lancaster, who is trying to court her, into fighting Ruck. Ruck has sworn himself to both Melanthe and Lancaster's service, so he has everything to lose by defeating his own lord. Ruck disarms Lancaster, then injures him badly when Lancaster persists in fighting back instead of surrendering, and is on the verge of taking his lord's life when he looks to her for the command to stop. Melanthe will not relent. She laughs at them both when Ruck stops fighting of his own accord, enjoying their humiliation. She is sent from the city, Ruck along with her, after having embarrassed Lancaster terribly. Ruck, thanks to her behaviour, comes to realize that the woman he has imagined as a paragon of feminine virtue is more like a viper: capricious, ruthless, and completely without affection.
Melanthe accomplishes a rare feat of female villainy by being almost totally unlikable for every second she's on the page, yet still garnering my sympathy. She is absolutely selfish, with maybe a couple of exceptions made for Ruck; once when she gives him jewels, also when she contemplates finding a nice wife for him in thanks for his service to her. She is lazy. After their marriage, she takes to her bed for three days. Ruck good-naturedly teases her about how much she sleeps, even in the wilderness when any number of life-ending things could beset them. Even after Ruck is totally besotted with her and married to her, she still decides to capriciously deny him and play games with him to assure herself he really does want her; to be convinced of her own power. In the dark moments of the book, she calls him a deluded fool and has him shackled in a temporary prison. Yes, she does it to save his life, to save him from a vengeful lord's assassins. Ruck escapes and reclaims her as much in anger over what she's done as out of love for her. He is furious, and also still wildly besotted with her. I have to say I'm with Ruck: I was totally obsessed with Melanthe as a character. Her myopia, self-obsession, childish tantrums - even Ruck wonders how she can be so immature as to throw sand at him in a fit of petulance - speak to the narcissism of a person who has only learned to manipulate, rather than to love, as a survival strategy in a cruel world.
Meanwhile, Ruck, in his long journey towards Melanthe's bed as her sworn husband, is gradually stripped of his own naive delusions about honor and valour. This is an uniformly corrupt world, and only Melanthe seems to realize how deeply and broadly its corruption runs. The priest who tried Isabel sent her off to be killed for heresy while telling Ruck she was alive and demanding a yearly payment for her upkeep at the abbey. When Melanthe and Ruck arrive at Wolfscar, his late father's castle, Melanthe not unreasonably points out that he has allowed a group of minstrels to take over the estate and live there for free, who spend most of their time in circus-like amusements instead of making the estate profitable.She's accused of trying to overthrow them, but she has a point. On their journey to Wolfscar, Melanthe and Ruck seek hospitality at the estate of a lord, who turns out to be a usurper, posing as the ruling lord's brother. Everyone in the world of the book presents themselves with some degree of falseness, taking advantage of the fluid, hearsay-susceptible nature of medieval life to lie, cheat and estate-squat their way to profit, or, at least, survival. Ruck alone is honest in declaring himself a man of no name. He cannot prove his claim until he is finally recognized by the king, who confuses Ruck for his father. Even in a confession of truth, Ruck is thought to be someone he is not.
The central scene of this novel is a beautiful sequence of events that unfolds as Melanthe and Ruck progress on their roadtrip to Wolfscar. She asks Ruck to amuse her, so he tells her a story. It is a recurring joke that his former Lord, Lancaster, sent him off to "hunt dragons" all the time; a harmless amusement to waste his time with its futility. Ruck describes to Melanthe how, in a place very near to here, he did come across the signs of a dragon. He heard a roaring like its breath. He smelled a vile scent that could only be dragon-ish in origin. Melanthe, standing-in for the modern reader, posits several natural explanations for this phenomena. But no - he saw the dragon with his own eyes, he tells her. He slayed it himself. Producing some wonderful, alliteration-rich and rhyming middle-English verse, he speaks of his own triumph. He stabbed it in the heart right before it would have killed him. It seems too fantastical to be true. Then he takes her to a small chapel. Inside are the giant bones of a beast that does resemble a dragon. She's convinced, but then she touches them. They are not bone, but stone. It is a mockery of the truth; counterfeit.
She is furious at him. She depends on him to tell her the truth. Of everyone in the world, Ruck is the one man she trusts, she tells him in a burst of emotion. She makes him swear he will never lie to her. He swears, "on My Lady's Heart," that he will not lie to her again. Whose heart did he swear on? She asks him. "On my lady wife's," he tells her, meaning Isabel. As they discuss what constitutes truth between them, Melanthe drops her guard almost entirely. She tells him she would like to lie with him. "My lady; it is a church," he says. 'Then release me, monkish man, and I will lead thee astray outside," she says. (Did I mention how subtly funny this book is? Perhaps because the rest of the book is so somber, the funny parts are absolutely hysterical.) Ruck tells her he cannot be with her in a physical sense, but he swears, "on my lady's heart," which he holds more sacred than anything else in the world, that he will serve her for the rest of his life.
The reader may have noticed that the animal skull is most likely the real fossil of a dinosaur. Ruck's telling of how he slayed the dragon, in gorgeously inflated language, is a micorcosm of the story itself - too beautiful to be true, but we want its truth so badly, we allow it to seduce us, to bring the dragon to life. Only from our perspective can we see what they cannot: they are looking at a real, once-living thing completely incommensurable with the mentality of their age. Yet it once breathed, just like Middle English once sang and was alive, intelligible and perfectly capable of expressing the thoughts of the living.
Truth, in this novel, is inextricable from one's point-of-view. Even Ruck, becoming cannier as the novel progresses, recognizes this. At Lord Torbec's estate, he has dinner with the men to find out whether any of them are ambitious and clever enough to be pressed into service, accompanying Melanthe and him to her Bowlands estate. Instead, he finds that they posture as brave killers but in reality are only silly boys. The truth is something which must be negotiated and discovered in each instance, as one cannot count on the proper order of things to be upheld. In this respect, the book is extremely modern while simultaneously portraying medieval life in a manner that feels faithful to the time period.
Incommensurate points-of-view and performances meant to conceal true identities is a recurring theme of the novel. When Ruck and Melanthe stay at the supposed Lord Torbec's brother's estate, they are housed in a room fitted with spying holes. In this way, the occupants of the court can see if he is really a knight keeping company with a nameless wench bedecked in a lady's finery, or if something stranger occurs. In perhaps my favourite-ever execution of the "and there was only one bed" trope, Melanthe discovers the spy-holes from the appearance of eyes around the openings, which darken and brighten the apertures as faces are pressed to the holes. Another wonderful reproduction of what her life is, in essence: imprisonment observed by many pairs of eyes who do not regard her with any affection whatsoever. Ruck had planned to sleep on the floor near the door, to guard Melanthe, but because of the spy-holes, he cannot. So they retreat to the bed, closed off from all intrusion with heavy curtains. There, in the complete darkness, unable to see even a glimmer of each other's appearance, they speak of their feelings for each other. Falseness has been transformed to truth.
Through all his service to her, Ruck has not known whether he hates or loves Melanthe. She has been pure (in his imagination) and evil, a witch bent on seducing him. She has been the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, and at other times plain. She has been the highest, most unreachable princess, and masqueraded as a common wench. In the moment before she proposes to him, she is all these appearances and sentiments simultaneously in his mind: "But love and hate turned so close in his heart that they seemed to dazzle him together as one passion." After he has spoken his vows, Ruck is filled with "bliss and horror" at the irresponsible thing he has done.
In 1995, long before anti-airbrushing campaigns were thought of, Laura Kinsale has her hero caress the heroine's stomach to find faint, feathery scars inexplicable to him. They are stretch marks. We know it; he does not, and can only wonder at their cause. Melanthe is an unknowable mystery to him, revealed through these traces of experience beyond the depths of his understanding. This whole novel was that sort of experience for me; recognizing truth sometimes through the characters, sometimes in spite of their unseeing eyes.
Melanthe, in her efforts to spare Ruck's life at the end of the novel, has been unthinkably cruel to him, denying their marriage publicly. He is furious at her treatment. He tells her he will leave her to serve his former master, because he won't be controlled like a lapdog. She breaks down and begs him not to go. The novel's culminating scene is not of mindblowing sex: it is a negotiation of which tasks they will each be responsible for in their union. She will take care of financial matters, he of building concerns. He teases her that she will not be required to sweep hearths. And even though it seems a very modern negotiation process, Kinsale manages to convey the idea of historically-minded persons coming to this unconventional arrangement of power, between a minor baron and a much-more entitled princess, without betraying their historical outlook on the world.
The divide between the couple is vast. Melanthe has been raised in an environment in which she wields tremendous power, as a woman who has inherited her late father and late husband's lands. But that power is continually threatened by her rivals, who seek to entrap her in marriage unwillingly, or poison her to end her threat to their own power. Two rival spies have been installed within her service. She lacks the means to rid herself of them, since this will turn those she needs to pretend are allies. The entire atmosphere of her household is one in which truth can never be spoken; in which no one is faithful to her, and no one wants her for herself - they only want the advantages she conveys.
Ruck, the character with whom we're meant to sympathize, is the far more likeable half of the duo. He is devoted to his first wife, who is having a rather name-calling fit of prophecy when we are introduced to her. Ruck has taken Isabel to Avignon, seat of the Pope, so that she can confess to her holy visions, which she compares with those of famous female ecstatics. But Isabel's confession goes badly before the clergy. They at least suspect she is a heretic. Ruck is asked by the priest whether he believes in the holiness of his wife's words, and will swear himself to a lifetime of chastity as she commits herself to a nunnery. Melanthe, then a stranger to him, interrupts the session before he can answer. He cannot be trusted to make a vow of celibacy because he looked on her with lust, she tells the clergyman. Ruck's wife is hauled away while he is left in limbo, still married and thus forced into celibacy. Melanthe, in a token of apology, leaves him two large emeralds. With one of them, he buys a horse and armor. He then dresses himself in her colours, mounting the second emerald on his helmet, and swears himself to a lord's service.
This is the first of several scenes in which two characters present us with vastly differing perspectives on the same event. To Ruck, his wife is the apotheosis of feminine holiness, even if he would far rather she remained his wife without her vows of chastity. She represents all that is good and pure. The reader may wonder (as I did) whether Isabel's visions are truly motivated by holiness. Perhaps she was dissatisfied with rural life and wished for a more exciting adventure prophesying; perhaps she was actually mentally ill. Melanthe, recalling the event later, sees a greedy, dissatisfied girl who would throw away a good husband who loved her as no lord had ever loved Melanthe - with whole-hearted devotion.
It is this selfishness and jealousy that drives Melanthe's entire character. She thinks continually of the various untrustable mirrors provided by those the world around her, by the simpering lords who say sweet and courtly things insincerely which she cannot believe. She finds something else in Ruck: a naked longing for her as a woman, apparent even when he is furious at her. It is this she finds so enticing about Ruck - even when he hates her, he still really, really wants her.
Much of the novel unfolds as a detailed working-through of lust, not love. Ruck and Melanthe do not really know each other in some intimate, personal sense, not even at the very end of things. But this feels incredibly true to the world of the characters. How can Melanthe possibly convey or overcome the intense toxicity of the courtly world to Ruck? Conversely, how could Ruck find the will to persevere after thirteen years of celibacy without creating some vision of the world in which a good woman was worth his total self-sacrifice? Of course the only common-ground between the pair would be this raw, unthinking physical lust fraught with danger, as the marriage of a nameless man to a princess is inadvisable and politically destabilizing.
On many occasions Melanthe spurns and provokes Ruck just because she can. There is a thirteen-year gap between the introductory events of the novel and its subsequent scenes. We leave Ruck after he has lost his wife and all his money to the church's demands, rejoining him at a tournament where he has sworn to fight as Melanthe's champion. Melanthe, just for fun, decides to provoke the pompous lord Lancaster, who is trying to court her, into fighting Ruck. Ruck has sworn himself to both Melanthe and Lancaster's service, so he has everything to lose by defeating his own lord. Ruck disarms Lancaster, then injures him badly when Lancaster persists in fighting back instead of surrendering, and is on the verge of taking his lord's life when he looks to her for the command to stop. Melanthe will not relent. She laughs at them both when Ruck stops fighting of his own accord, enjoying their humiliation. She is sent from the city, Ruck along with her, after having embarrassed Lancaster terribly. Ruck, thanks to her behaviour, comes to realize that the woman he has imagined as a paragon of feminine virtue is more like a viper: capricious, ruthless, and completely without affection.
Melanthe accomplishes a rare feat of female villainy by being almost totally unlikable for every second she's on the page, yet still garnering my sympathy. She is absolutely selfish, with maybe a couple of exceptions made for Ruck; once when she gives him jewels, also when she contemplates finding a nice wife for him in thanks for his service to her. She is lazy. After their marriage, she takes to her bed for three days. Ruck good-naturedly teases her about how much she sleeps, even in the wilderness when any number of life-ending things could beset them. Even after Ruck is totally besotted with her and married to her, she still decides to capriciously deny him and play games with him to assure herself he really does want her; to be convinced of her own power. In the dark moments of the book, she calls him a deluded fool and has him shackled in a temporary prison. Yes, she does it to save his life, to save him from a vengeful lord's assassins. Ruck escapes and reclaims her as much in anger over what she's done as out of love for her. He is furious, and also still wildly besotted with her. I have to say I'm with Ruck: I was totally obsessed with Melanthe as a character. Her myopia, self-obsession, childish tantrums - even Ruck wonders how she can be so immature as to throw sand at him in a fit of petulance - speak to the narcissism of a person who has only learned to manipulate, rather than to love, as a survival strategy in a cruel world.
Meanwhile, Ruck, in his long journey towards Melanthe's bed as her sworn husband, is gradually stripped of his own naive delusions about honor and valour. This is an uniformly corrupt world, and only Melanthe seems to realize how deeply and broadly its corruption runs. The priest who tried Isabel sent her off to be killed for heresy while telling Ruck she was alive and demanding a yearly payment for her upkeep at the abbey. When Melanthe and Ruck arrive at Wolfscar, his late father's castle, Melanthe not unreasonably points out that he has allowed a group of minstrels to take over the estate and live there for free, who spend most of their time in circus-like amusements instead of making the estate profitable.She's accused of trying to overthrow them, but she has a point. On their journey to Wolfscar, Melanthe and Ruck seek hospitality at the estate of a lord, who turns out to be a usurper, posing as the ruling lord's brother. Everyone in the world of the book presents themselves with some degree of falseness, taking advantage of the fluid, hearsay-susceptible nature of medieval life to lie, cheat and estate-squat their way to profit, or, at least, survival. Ruck alone is honest in declaring himself a man of no name. He cannot prove his claim until he is finally recognized by the king, who confuses Ruck for his father. Even in a confession of truth, Ruck is thought to be someone he is not.
The central scene of this novel is a beautiful sequence of events that unfolds as Melanthe and Ruck progress on their roadtrip to Wolfscar. She asks Ruck to amuse her, so he tells her a story. It is a recurring joke that his former Lord, Lancaster, sent him off to "hunt dragons" all the time; a harmless amusement to waste his time with its futility. Ruck describes to Melanthe how, in a place very near to here, he did come across the signs of a dragon. He heard a roaring like its breath. He smelled a vile scent that could only be dragon-ish in origin. Melanthe, standing-in for the modern reader, posits several natural explanations for this phenomena. But no - he saw the dragon with his own eyes, he tells her. He slayed it himself. Producing some wonderful, alliteration-rich and rhyming middle-English verse, he speaks of his own triumph. He stabbed it in the heart right before it would have killed him. It seems too fantastical to be true. Then he takes her to a small chapel. Inside are the giant bones of a beast that does resemble a dragon. She's convinced, but then she touches them. They are not bone, but stone. It is a mockery of the truth; counterfeit.
She is furious at him. She depends on him to tell her the truth. Of everyone in the world, Ruck is the one man she trusts, she tells him in a burst of emotion. She makes him swear he will never lie to her. He swears, "on My Lady's Heart," that he will not lie to her again. Whose heart did he swear on? She asks him. "On my lady wife's," he tells her, meaning Isabel. As they discuss what constitutes truth between them, Melanthe drops her guard almost entirely. She tells him she would like to lie with him. "My lady; it is a church," he says. 'Then release me, monkish man, and I will lead thee astray outside," she says. (Did I mention how subtly funny this book is? Perhaps because the rest of the book is so somber, the funny parts are absolutely hysterical.) Ruck tells her he cannot be with her in a physical sense, but he swears, "on my lady's heart," which he holds more sacred than anything else in the world, that he will serve her for the rest of his life.
The reader may have noticed that the animal skull is most likely the real fossil of a dinosaur. Ruck's telling of how he slayed the dragon, in gorgeously inflated language, is a micorcosm of the story itself - too beautiful to be true, but we want its truth so badly, we allow it to seduce us, to bring the dragon to life. Only from our perspective can we see what they cannot: they are looking at a real, once-living thing completely incommensurable with the mentality of their age. Yet it once breathed, just like Middle English once sang and was alive, intelligible and perfectly capable of expressing the thoughts of the living.
Truth, in this novel, is inextricable from one's point-of-view. Even Ruck, becoming cannier as the novel progresses, recognizes this. At Lord Torbec's estate, he has dinner with the men to find out whether any of them are ambitious and clever enough to be pressed into service, accompanying Melanthe and him to her Bowlands estate. Instead, he finds that they posture as brave killers but in reality are only silly boys. The truth is something which must be negotiated and discovered in each instance, as one cannot count on the proper order of things to be upheld. In this respect, the book is extremely modern while simultaneously portraying medieval life in a manner that feels faithful to the time period.
Incommensurate points-of-view and performances meant to conceal true identities is a recurring theme of the novel. When Ruck and Melanthe stay at the supposed Lord Torbec's brother's estate, they are housed in a room fitted with spying holes. In this way, the occupants of the court can see if he is really a knight keeping company with a nameless wench bedecked in a lady's finery, or if something stranger occurs. In perhaps my favourite-ever execution of the "and there was only one bed" trope, Melanthe discovers the spy-holes from the appearance of eyes around the openings, which darken and brighten the apertures as faces are pressed to the holes. Another wonderful reproduction of what her life is, in essence: imprisonment observed by many pairs of eyes who do not regard her with any affection whatsoever. Ruck had planned to sleep on the floor near the door, to guard Melanthe, but because of the spy-holes, he cannot. So they retreat to the bed, closed off from all intrusion with heavy curtains. There, in the complete darkness, unable to see even a glimmer of each other's appearance, they speak of their feelings for each other. Falseness has been transformed to truth.
Through all his service to her, Ruck has not known whether he hates or loves Melanthe. She has been pure (in his imagination) and evil, a witch bent on seducing him. She has been the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, and at other times plain. She has been the highest, most unreachable princess, and masqueraded as a common wench. In the moment before she proposes to him, she is all these appearances and sentiments simultaneously in his mind: "But love and hate turned so close in his heart that they seemed to dazzle him together as one passion." After he has spoken his vows, Ruck is filled with "bliss and horror" at the irresponsible thing he has done.
In 1995, long before anti-airbrushing campaigns were thought of, Laura Kinsale has her hero caress the heroine's stomach to find faint, feathery scars inexplicable to him. They are stretch marks. We know it; he does not, and can only wonder at their cause. Melanthe is an unknowable mystery to him, revealed through these traces of experience beyond the depths of his understanding. This whole novel was that sort of experience for me; recognizing truth sometimes through the characters, sometimes in spite of their unseeing eyes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2015
Laura Kinsale never disappoints me. In For My Lady's Heart, she has written a masterpiece, not just of romance, but of universal literary merit. It's one of the most subversive works of literature I've read. Well, listened to actually. My husband and I got the audio book and played it in the car on road trips for about six months. And since I'm going to spend the rest of this review talking about myths and cake, let me just say that Nicholas Boulton's narration of this book is outstanding. Well worth acquiring, even if you've already read it. What Kinsale subverts in this book though isn't just narrative structure or genre conventions. No, she's got a much bigger target: the archetypal heroic story arc that underpins much of humanity's storytelling.
For My Lady's Heart's romantic arc begins with the hero and heroine's meet-cute across a crowded room full of priests and petitioners. The hero is instantly attracted to the beautiful, sophisticated heroine, who promptly laughs at him, then saves his ass when he gets in over his head. He pledges his life and sword to her and they go their separate ways, she with her court, he to earn his name and seek his fortune. We rejoin the couple years later when Melanthe is now the widow of a powerful Italian noble, has promised to wed yet another Italian noble, and is journeying home to England to solidify her claim to some land that her soon-to-be-betrothed wants to get his dastardly hands on. Another chance meeting brings Ruck back into her life, this time for good, and he serves as her bodyguard on the trip back north. Nothing goes as planned of course, their pasts catch up with both of them and they have to learn to either stay apart forever or work together.
For My Lady's Heart is anything but straightforward, however. Right away, both my husband and I keyed in on the fact that Ruck calls himself "The Green Knight" in lieu of a name for much of the story. Even before Kinsale hopped into a conversation I was having with Lisa Hendrix on Twitter to say that she'd been inspired by Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the parallels were obvious. If you're not familiar though, basically, we're talking King Arthur here, which clued us into the idea that the book would follow Ruck, his mysterious identity and daring exploits. There's a whole tradition of this kind of literary behavior going back to the beginning of written story-telling. It's the "hero's journey" Joseph Campbell talks about in The Hero With A Thousand Faces: the man leaves home to seek adventure, experiences trials, hits rock bottom, transforms, rights his wrongs, reconciles with his father and emerges triumphant, returning home a hero. That's Ruck's story completely. It's also Luke Skywalker's. And Thor's in the Marvel movie. If you ever studied The Odyssey or Gilgamesh in school, you probably learned about this concept. There's a reason it's considered archetypal.
What's fascinating to me about veering off from something like the hero's journey in a romance novel though, a genre written primarily for, by, and about women, is that those stories are all about the dudes. They're the heroes. The protectors. Large and in charge, even when being buffeted by life. The women are mainly witches, connivers and adulteresses; goddesses and temptresses; Madonnas and whores. They're dramatic foils; obstacles that get in the way of the heroes' honorable impulses.
But what about the "heroine's journey"; a woman's archetypal/literary/epic/mythological path? I'm not sure there is one, at least not one that doesn't focus exclusively on fertility. It's not like most Medieval men ran off and became knights. Or that Grecian peasants were out sailing the Mediterranean for a decade or two. For high school literature students, Elizabeth Bennett might have been the first female main character encountered who was written by a woman. Before that it's all Penelope, Hester Prynne and Lady Macbeth. At least, it was at my school. And while I will never say anything negative about Austen because of course I adore her books, her world was small. The heroes in epics and myths, their worlds are not small. Melanthe's world is not small. Melanthe plays on the highest levels of the Medieval international political stage. She's skilled at diplomacy and deception, but limited in power by her gender and hampered rather than helped by her beauty, which would be the more typical role of feminine beauty in an historical romance. And most people in the story believe that she is a witch who took lovers and murdered her husband.
Outside of the maiden, the mother or the crone, there's no script for Melanthe to follow. Even though she does rather torture Ruck in his celibacy, she for sure doesn't follow the archetypal path of mythological women. She's not a goddess or a witch or a whore or a virtuous woman who stays home and waits for her husband to return triumphant. And, well, maybe that's the point. Despite what everyone would want to believe of Melanthe, how they perceive her, how they would use her or how they would change her (Ruck included), she resists. She remains her own paranoid, difficult, irascible self, refusing all aid and comfort, solving her own problems and shaping her world to suit herself. She proves not to be a witch on their trip through the marsh, not a whore in her sexual inexperience, not a mother or wife when they marry and arrive at Wolfscar, Ruck's castle, midway through the book.
Contrasted with the set path Ruck is allowed to tread, one worn into the literary bedrock over the course of centuries, Melanthe's is one of her own invention. She almost never does what either Ruck or the reader expect. Her values include her freedom, her life and perhaps the well-being of her beloved pet falcon. And whatever she has to be or do in order to preserve those things are what she does. She's rather infinitely adaptable actually, not particularly constrained by social mores, the Church or an inconveniently well-born husband despite being hyper-aware of those restrictions. Ruck is far below her in social standing and can't match her wits, except on rare occasions (and we do root for him when he stands up to her because he's so utterly outmatched most of the time). She makes her own way right to the very end. And speaking of the end, it's no one's triumph. It's an accident that delivers our heroine. Or an act of God.
For My Lady's Heart contains all this and yet, it still functions as a road trip romance. As Melanthe and Ruck journey together, sometimes together, sometimes apart, sometimes in harmony and sometimes (okay, mostly) not, their attraction to one another becomes obvious to both of them. However, Melanthe for fear of her political enemies and Ruck out of fear for his immortal soul, must resist the temptation they represent to each other. All that thwarted desire is awfully hot. We also get Kinsale's humor in hunting herons, slaying dragons, and jokes about sex and confession. The scene where Ruck and Melanthe consummate their unusual marriage and Ruck turns out to be rather a savant of sex as a result of his many, many forays into the confessional is one of the funniest things I've ever read. I went back and read the scene in the book to be sure that it wasn't only Boulton's impeccable comedic timing and it wasn't. Still funny.
I grabbed a used copy of For My Lady's Heart just so I could put it on my Very Favorite Book Ever shelf next to Flowers From the Storm and Prince of Midnight. It's just...everything.
For My Lady's Heart's romantic arc begins with the hero and heroine's meet-cute across a crowded room full of priests and petitioners. The hero is instantly attracted to the beautiful, sophisticated heroine, who promptly laughs at him, then saves his ass when he gets in over his head. He pledges his life and sword to her and they go their separate ways, she with her court, he to earn his name and seek his fortune. We rejoin the couple years later when Melanthe is now the widow of a powerful Italian noble, has promised to wed yet another Italian noble, and is journeying home to England to solidify her claim to some land that her soon-to-be-betrothed wants to get his dastardly hands on. Another chance meeting brings Ruck back into her life, this time for good, and he serves as her bodyguard on the trip back north. Nothing goes as planned of course, their pasts catch up with both of them and they have to learn to either stay apart forever or work together.
For My Lady's Heart is anything but straightforward, however. Right away, both my husband and I keyed in on the fact that Ruck calls himself "The Green Knight" in lieu of a name for much of the story. Even before Kinsale hopped into a conversation I was having with Lisa Hendrix on Twitter to say that she'd been inspired by Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the parallels were obvious. If you're not familiar though, basically, we're talking King Arthur here, which clued us into the idea that the book would follow Ruck, his mysterious identity and daring exploits. There's a whole tradition of this kind of literary behavior going back to the beginning of written story-telling. It's the "hero's journey" Joseph Campbell talks about in The Hero With A Thousand Faces: the man leaves home to seek adventure, experiences trials, hits rock bottom, transforms, rights his wrongs, reconciles with his father and emerges triumphant, returning home a hero. That's Ruck's story completely. It's also Luke Skywalker's. And Thor's in the Marvel movie. If you ever studied The Odyssey or Gilgamesh in school, you probably learned about this concept. There's a reason it's considered archetypal.
What's fascinating to me about veering off from something like the hero's journey in a romance novel though, a genre written primarily for, by, and about women, is that those stories are all about the dudes. They're the heroes. The protectors. Large and in charge, even when being buffeted by life. The women are mainly witches, connivers and adulteresses; goddesses and temptresses; Madonnas and whores. They're dramatic foils; obstacles that get in the way of the heroes' honorable impulses.
But what about the "heroine's journey"; a woman's archetypal/literary/epic/mythological path? I'm not sure there is one, at least not one that doesn't focus exclusively on fertility. It's not like most Medieval men ran off and became knights. Or that Grecian peasants were out sailing the Mediterranean for a decade or two. For high school literature students, Elizabeth Bennett might have been the first female main character encountered who was written by a woman. Before that it's all Penelope, Hester Prynne and Lady Macbeth. At least, it was at my school. And while I will never say anything negative about Austen because of course I adore her books, her world was small. The heroes in epics and myths, their worlds are not small. Melanthe's world is not small. Melanthe plays on the highest levels of the Medieval international political stage. She's skilled at diplomacy and deception, but limited in power by her gender and hampered rather than helped by her beauty, which would be the more typical role of feminine beauty in an historical romance. And most people in the story believe that she is a witch who took lovers and murdered her husband.
Outside of the maiden, the mother or the crone, there's no script for Melanthe to follow. Even though she does rather torture Ruck in his celibacy, she for sure doesn't follow the archetypal path of mythological women. She's not a goddess or a witch or a whore or a virtuous woman who stays home and waits for her husband to return triumphant. And, well, maybe that's the point. Despite what everyone would want to believe of Melanthe, how they perceive her, how they would use her or how they would change her (Ruck included), she resists. She remains her own paranoid, difficult, irascible self, refusing all aid and comfort, solving her own problems and shaping her world to suit herself. She proves not to be a witch on their trip through the marsh, not a whore in her sexual inexperience, not a mother or wife when they marry and arrive at Wolfscar, Ruck's castle, midway through the book.
Contrasted with the set path Ruck is allowed to tread, one worn into the literary bedrock over the course of centuries, Melanthe's is one of her own invention. She almost never does what either Ruck or the reader expect. Her values include her freedom, her life and perhaps the well-being of her beloved pet falcon. And whatever she has to be or do in order to preserve those things are what she does. She's rather infinitely adaptable actually, not particularly constrained by social mores, the Church or an inconveniently well-born husband despite being hyper-aware of those restrictions. Ruck is far below her in social standing and can't match her wits, except on rare occasions (and we do root for him when he stands up to her because he's so utterly outmatched most of the time). She makes her own way right to the very end. And speaking of the end, it's no one's triumph. It's an accident that delivers our heroine. Or an act of God.
For My Lady's Heart contains all this and yet, it still functions as a road trip romance. As Melanthe and Ruck journey together, sometimes together, sometimes apart, sometimes in harmony and sometimes (okay, mostly) not, their attraction to one another becomes obvious to both of them. However, Melanthe for fear of her political enemies and Ruck out of fear for his immortal soul, must resist the temptation they represent to each other. All that thwarted desire is awfully hot. We also get Kinsale's humor in hunting herons, slaying dragons, and jokes about sex and confession. The scene where Ruck and Melanthe consummate their unusual marriage and Ruck turns out to be rather a savant of sex as a result of his many, many forays into the confessional is one of the funniest things I've ever read. I went back and read the scene in the book to be sure that it wasn't only Boulton's impeccable comedic timing and it wasn't. Still funny.
I grabbed a used copy of For My Lady's Heart just so I could put it on my Very Favorite Book Ever shelf next to Flowers From the Storm and Prince of Midnight. It's just...everything.
April 7, 2021
I loved this and really wasn't expecting to considering I found Shadowheart, its sequel, good (particularly the sex scenes) but not amazing. I really should have read this novel first, but I picked up Shadowheart last year thinking the premise sounded much more promising. Well, I was wrong! This book was fantastic in every way.
I started out listening to the audiobook because the text's Middle English was a bit too intense for me and Nicholas Boulton's voice makes me weak in the knees. However, about halfway into the story, I got too impatient to finish and switched to my ebook. I was so engrossed at that point that the Middle English ceased to be intrusive.
Kinsale always creates such fascinating, unique heroines. It's never a paint by numbers "sassy, quirky, independent girl" meant to draw the brooding hero out of his own trauma and despair that you see in many historical romances. Her heroines have so much depth and Melanthe, this novel's heroine, is possibly my favorite of all those that she has created. How much do I love a complicated, morally gray heroine? Kinsale gave us an amazing one here--bizarre and textured and frustrating.
In Chapter Two, Melanthe helps her courtier, Allegretto, dispose of a dead body and then lets him practically make love to her in front of the hero. As weird as it sounds, that's when I knew that I was going to love her. She was wildly calculating and came to love the hero, Ruck, with so much nuance and depth, but she was also incredibly weird, damaged, off-kilter to the point of being a bit kooky at times, and haughty as hell. So three-dimensional.
As she says of herself...
“But—haps I am a witch. Haps I am no one. Haps the Devil came and took me while I slept. I dreamed it once, that he took me, and left naught but a thing fashioned of lies, to seem like me.”
Loved it!
One of my favorite scenes in this book is when she blows up at Ruck for telling a silly tale about slaying a dragon. Up until that point, Ruck is a knight entirely without guile, so she happens to believe his tale. When she realizes he's made up the story she becomes furious that he would lie to her. It’s ridiculous how upset she gets, but because her character has been drawn so well I just sat there nodding, thinking yup, this shit, of all things, would set homegirl off. As a reader, I understood her well enough to sympathize with her, even if I knew she was acting cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Ruck is the only person she's ever known who does not lie to her, so even this small hint of falsehood explodes her perception of him.
That dragon scene is just perfection. It swings from one extreme emotion to another so quickly and deftly. It progresses from Melanthe's fascination with Ruck's feats of bravery; to her blow up when she realizes he's only spinning a yarn; to her humiliating him by making him get on his knees to swear, as her liege, he'll never tell a speck of a lie to her again; to her feeling guilty and attempting to provoke him to express his interest and desire for her; to her finally just kissing him in an abandoned chapel and dragging him outside when he says he will not kiss her in a church. A lovely, lovely chapter.
I don't want to neglect Ruck either. He is a fantastic character. Wholly good and noble and chivalrous from start to finish without ever being boring. He idealizes Melanthe from the word 'go,' but as he grows to know her he trusts and likes her less and less. The inverse is true for Melanthe. When they finally come together on a sort of middle ground it really is beautiful. I rooted for these two so hard.
I am fresh out of Kinsale novels to read. It makes me so sad, y'all. What will I do? :'(
5 stars
Below is my ranking of her novels. This is simply my order of preference. I will always say that Flowers from the Storm is objectively her best book, for instance, but it is not my all-time favorite. The top 6 on this list I consider five star novels, absolute must-reads. However, I recommend all of the books on this list but the bottom two.
1. The Shadow and the Star
2. The Dream Hunter
3. Seize the Fire
4. For My Lady’s Heart
5. Flowers from the Storm
6. The Prince of Midnight
7. Uncertain Magic
8. Shadowheart
9. The Hidden Heart
10. Midsummer Moon
11. My Sweet Folly
12. Lessons in French
I started out listening to the audiobook because the text's Middle English was a bit too intense for me and Nicholas Boulton's voice makes me weak in the knees. However, about halfway into the story, I got too impatient to finish and switched to my ebook. I was so engrossed at that point that the Middle English ceased to be intrusive.
Kinsale always creates such fascinating, unique heroines. It's never a paint by numbers "sassy, quirky, independent girl" meant to draw the brooding hero out of his own trauma and despair that you see in many historical romances. Her heroines have so much depth and Melanthe, this novel's heroine, is possibly my favorite of all those that she has created. How much do I love a complicated, morally gray heroine? Kinsale gave us an amazing one here--bizarre and textured and frustrating.
In Chapter Two, Melanthe helps her courtier, Allegretto, dispose of a dead body and then lets him practically make love to her in front of the hero. As weird as it sounds, that's when I knew that I was going to love her. She was wildly calculating and came to love the hero, Ruck, with so much nuance and depth, but she was also incredibly weird, damaged, off-kilter to the point of being a bit kooky at times, and haughty as hell. So three-dimensional.
As she says of herself...
“But—haps I am a witch. Haps I am no one. Haps the Devil came and took me while I slept. I dreamed it once, that he took me, and left naught but a thing fashioned of lies, to seem like me.”
Loved it!
One of my favorite scenes in this book is when she blows up at Ruck for telling a silly tale about slaying a dragon. Up until that point, Ruck is a knight entirely without guile, so she happens to believe his tale. When she realizes he's made up the story she becomes furious that he would lie to her. It’s ridiculous how upset she gets, but because her character has been drawn so well I just sat there nodding, thinking yup, this shit, of all things, would set homegirl off. As a reader, I understood her well enough to sympathize with her, even if I knew she was acting cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Ruck is the only person she's ever known who does not lie to her, so even this small hint of falsehood explodes her perception of him.
That dragon scene is just perfection. It swings from one extreme emotion to another so quickly and deftly. It progresses from Melanthe's fascination with Ruck's feats of bravery; to her blow up when she realizes he's only spinning a yarn; to her humiliating him by making him get on his knees to swear, as her liege, he'll never tell a speck of a lie to her again; to her feeling guilty and attempting to provoke him to express his interest and desire for her; to her finally just kissing him in an abandoned chapel and dragging him outside when he says he will not kiss her in a church. A lovely, lovely chapter.
I don't want to neglect Ruck either. He is a fantastic character. Wholly good and noble and chivalrous from start to finish without ever being boring. He idealizes Melanthe from the word 'go,' but as he grows to know her he trusts and likes her less and less. The inverse is true for Melanthe. When they finally come together on a sort of middle ground it really is beautiful. I rooted for these two so hard.
I am fresh out of Kinsale novels to read. It makes me so sad, y'all. What will I do? :'(
5 stars
Below is my ranking of her novels. This is simply my order of preference. I will always say that Flowers from the Storm is objectively her best book, for instance, but it is not my all-time favorite. The top 6 on this list I consider five star novels, absolute must-reads. However, I recommend all of the books on this list but the bottom two.
1. The Shadow and the Star
2. The Dream Hunter
3. Seize the Fire
4. For My Lady’s Heart
5. Flowers from the Storm
6. The Prince of Midnight
7. Uncertain Magic
8. Shadowheart
9. The Hidden Heart
10. Midsummer Moon
11. My Sweet Folly
12. Lessons in French
March 29, 2023
5 STARS
Ahhh... how I love these epic medieval romances. I had trouble putting this one down. Just fantastic writing. Btw, there are two versions of this story published, her original version with the more complex middle English-type dialogue, and a condensed version with a more modern dialogue. I chose to read her original version. I prefer the more authentic style of verse for the historical time period represented. But I'm sure either version would be just as good. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in this series, which I believe is Alegretto's story.
"My lady—naught is lost. I am with you yet, and always, to serve you and sayen you ne'er false. I swear it upon what I hold more precious than my life—"
He reached out and touched her, laid his hand above her breast, against the soft green felt and ermine. She raised her eyes. Even through his heavy gauntlet, he could feel her pulse.
"For my lady's heart," he said. "My life, my troth, and my honor. For your heart I swear it, and none other."
Ahhh... how I love these epic medieval romances. I had trouble putting this one down. Just fantastic writing. Btw, there are two versions of this story published, her original version with the more complex middle English-type dialogue, and a condensed version with a more modern dialogue. I chose to read her original version. I prefer the more authentic style of verse for the historical time period represented. But I'm sure either version would be just as good. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in this series, which I believe is Alegretto's story.
June 4, 2023
I considered writing something here about For My Lady's Heart before realizing that... I have already written quite a bit about this book! So instead, I will share a short enticement to read, and couple of links that might make a fun addition to your reading.
In short, For My Lady's Heart is a truly epic romance in every sense of the word. Kinsale creates a language and world that will immerse you entirely, weaves it around a plot that will draw you in inexorably, all while foregrounding a romance so achingly complex and beautiful that it will have you crying into your sleeve. This one's for the lovers of heroines with a ruthless will of steel and a secret fear of never being enough; of heroes who find the greatest strength in utter devotion. Read it for the first time, read it over and over again, this book will keep on giving in the richest way possible.
---- Links! ----
Especially if you're a first time reader, some of the political intrigue can be a lot to follow! I had the ABSOLUTE BEST time creating chapter-by-chapter plot summaries for a buddy read in the Romance Salon. Equal parts helpful (I hope) information, and loving plot snark. Sharing those in a GoogleDoc here!
If you want a deeper dive, I wrote some close readings. Two short and spoiler-free "Friday Features" on two lines I loved from the book, and a very very deep dive into the first and last scenes between Melanthe and Ruck.
In short, For My Lady's Heart is a truly epic romance in every sense of the word. Kinsale creates a language and world that will immerse you entirely, weaves it around a plot that will draw you in inexorably, all while foregrounding a romance so achingly complex and beautiful that it will have you crying into your sleeve. This one's for the lovers of heroines with a ruthless will of steel and a secret fear of never being enough; of heroes who find the greatest strength in utter devotion. Read it for the first time, read it over and over again, this book will keep on giving in the richest way possible.
---- Links! ----
Especially if you're a first time reader, some of the political intrigue can be a lot to follow! I had the ABSOLUTE BEST time creating chapter-by-chapter plot summaries for a buddy read in the Romance Salon. Equal parts helpful (I hope) information, and loving plot snark. Sharing those in a GoogleDoc here!
If you want a deeper dive, I wrote some close readings. Two short and spoiler-free "Friday Features" on two lines I loved from the book, and a very very deep dive into the first and last scenes between Melanthe and Ruck.
June 3, 2023
May/June 2023 re-read: Yep, still great.
Ruck, a supremely competent, kind, honest and loyal knight, becomes sworn to scheming, ruthless Princess Melanthe who’s just trying to survive court intrigue in the 1370s. Cue high angst, miscommunication, repression, a roadtrip through England after the “Great Pestilence”, complex characters and motivations, swoon-worthy romance, unexpected funny moments, action-packed plot and a bleak moment that slayed me.
The set-up and tropes alone would make this a favourite, but Kinsale’s writing is just sublime. The use of Middle English words in the dialogue and the fact that religion and superstition play a big part in characters’ motivations felt authentic and immersive. Loved it.
Ruck, a supremely competent, kind, honest and loyal knight, becomes sworn to scheming, ruthless Princess Melanthe who’s just trying to survive court intrigue in the 1370s. Cue high angst, miscommunication, repression, a roadtrip through England after the “Great Pestilence”, complex characters and motivations, swoon-worthy romance, unexpected funny moments, action-packed plot and a bleak moment that slayed me.
The set-up and tropes alone would make this a favourite, but Kinsale’s writing is just sublime. The use of Middle English words in the dialogue and the fact that religion and superstition play a big part in characters’ motivations felt authentic and immersive. Loved it.
January 17, 2020
Don't worry! The main character only raped his mentally ill wife for a week. He could put up with the begging and crying, but once she started screaming when he tried to rape her, he stopped!
THIS IS REALLY A THING THAT HAPPENED IN THIS BOOK. Which is why I DNF'd it. WTAF?!
THIS IS REALLY A THING THAT HAPPENED IN THIS BOOK. Which is why I DNF'd it. WTAF?!
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