When I read something like this:
In a bid to keep a preferred hunting estate accessible, the king orders the widow who owns it to marry the Earl of Reston, an order she flatly refuses. Determined not to lose, he sends the Earl to win her over, but Hugh is caught in a storm along the way and ends up on her doorstep half-frozen. Joanna has no idea who he is, so he decides to pretend to be someone else in hopes of finding out why she refused the marriage proposal. He doesn’t expect to fall in love, though…
I think, “What’s the bloody point of having a king in a story if he can’t get a widow to do as he orders?”
It’s amazing how some authors don’t quite grasp a fact that a king or queen is basically the boss of all nobles. In this case, the king can chuck the widow out of her own home if he wants to. He could do this by turning up at her place without warning and take over without her say so. He’s that powerful. Mostly thanks to his people who can easily tidy up the legal mess afterwards.
FYI, I stumbled across that in a review of Kathleen Coddington’s Winning Joanna by the awesome Book Utopia.
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