Madelon

Refusal to marry the man of her father's choice at the age of sixteen resulted in the beautiful Madelon del Rivas y Montevides being exiled to a convent where she was to spend the next three years until her father's death freed her to return with her brother to court and to a life she had glimpsed only briefly before being sent into seclusion. Beauty and innocence were rare qualities in a woman at the Spanish court in the year 1072, when Christians and Moslems formed strange alliances in the battle for wealth and power. Madelon had both and she was soon to find herself plunged into a world of lies, intrigues and murder. After successfully imprisoning their younger brother Garcia, and dividing his kingdom of Galicia between them, Alphonso, King of Leon and his elder brother, Sancho of Castile, wage war to determine who shall rule both kingdoms. Madelon finds herself on the opposing side to the man who has stolen her heart, Valentin Maratin, Lord of the Eagles, and his controversial friend Rodrigo Diaz, the Cid, both of whom had been instrumental in saving her from being taken prisoner by marauding Moors and sold into slavery. The story of her growing love for Valentin and of the disastrous consequences resulting from it is told in this exciting historical romance set in 11th Century Spain. Fiction and history have mingled to produce an exciting new heroine as unpredictable as the times in which she lived and loved . . . MADELON.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Romance, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.