My medieval series, Her Stern Husband, is made up of steamy romance books set in Henry II’s England (the twelfth century). As a lover of medieval literature, I tried to make these hot stories as true to the age as possible and, in order to build my series, I took as a point of reference the knightly virtues that Chaucer refers to in his Canterbury Tales. Even if Chaucer’s text is of a later medieval age than the one in which my characters live, I tried to create a series based on these four “romancey” medieval virtues.
Honour
The first book in the series is A Stern Lord for My Lady and it revolves around honour. Both the heroine and the hero are highly honourable characters and at the beginning of the book, the hero is compelled to punish the heroine in order to preserve his family’s honour.
Freedom
In Chaucer’s text, freedom does not mean liberty in the same way as today, but generosity. But I played with the word a little bit in the second book in the series, The Blacksmith’s Woman. One of the hero’s main virtues is generosity (and this is one medieval meaning of “freedom”), but in the heroine’s case, choices and free will are very important. Beth wants to be free to choose her fate even she is a woman and not noble-born.
Courtesy
Lord Tristram’s Love Match is the third book in the series. Its main theme is courtly love and the sacrifices one is prepared to make for it. So you will get to see that Sir Tristram, my hero, is definitely the most knightly of the heroes in the series. My heroine is a troubadour, so also well versed in the art of courtly love.
Truth
My Lady’s Archer is coming up soon, and here is a sneak peak at the cover. And I’m not going to say more about it, but it is by all means a book where truth plays a central part. BTW, what do Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper and Alexandre Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask have in common? I actually used the same plot trick in this book…
Check out the series on both Amazon and Goodreads! And you should know all these stories have high heat levels…
