August, in the year of our Lord, 1066.

Lillyth, note the very historical placement of that Gaelic “Y” is the young daughter of some noble Saxon family whose home gets sacked during the invasion of the Normans after The Battle of Hastings. Incidentally it was at The Battle of Hastings that my direct ancestor Harold II was shot through the eye with an arrow and died. Had he not, I would today be a hard-drinking socialite with a penchant for wearing a monocle and saying inappropriate things at fancy pants parties.

So in strides Guy de Montgomery, who decides that Lillyth is going to be his new Saxon fuck-buddy, what with her lovely long hair and pretty pale face. She decides that she’s going to resist his chain-mailed charms for as long as she can and preserve her dignity – dignity is code for “historical dudes don’t get down with historical chicks that have had a lot of D(ick).”

The resistance lasts for a whole chapter or two, and she gives it up to him with little fuss, Virginia Henley uses all the good descriptors for the naughty bits too – “mound of Venus”, “pink bud”, “shaft”, “triangle of curls”, “manroot” and then in the next sentence, “manhood”, “sugared walls”, “tight sheath”, “volcanic eruption” and after all that, she decides that she’s not going to give it up to him again until they get married. So they do. It was lovely, you should have been there.

Then there’s the little vexation that is his first, and existing marriage to some shrew in France, with whom he has two children. Oh course he doesn’t tell her about this, and has her wrapped around his little finger and teaching her sexy sex stuff that cause her to have “The tawny look of a lioness. She was ripe, she was ready, she was a woman.” Later, she “straddled and mounted him for the most glorious ride of her life.”

Later, in like, the second week of their marriage, he comes home all drunk,and she won’t let him into the bedroom. So he stands in front of the door until she lets him in and he passes out snoring. Since she’s such a good wife, she can’t even be angry that he’s been out drunk and whoring, all she can do is tuck him and laugh until she cries.

Then she finds out about his wife, and she really shuts him out until he rapes her. Well, first he gives her the old it hurts to be aroused and not be able to masturbate with your vagina excuse, then he rapes her. Except it’s all justified as not really being rape because “she let down her love juices twice before Guy allowed himself the pleasure of fulfillment.” Um, yeah, later she refers to the incident as “Guy’s lovemaking” so whatever. Anyway, she’s knocked up now and takes off – first she fixes her hair.

So she has the baby – a son of course because real heroines only birth boys and what with his father’s super powered rape sperm, and she decides to head back home. He goes to reconcile with his shrew of a first wife and kids, only to discover in the most convenient of convenient plot tidying up that the bitch-face has died, who saw that one coming? Anyway, they get back together, he surprises her with the “the first wife died ten days before I married you, we legit, for reals, yo!” and she surprises him with her lactating boobs.

The cover is also really nice, there’s a weirdly muscular horse with a flowing mane and tail on it.