The World Is Not Enough — Zoe Oldenbourg

Baron Ansiau rides with Richard Coeur de Lion into the horror and agony of the Third Crusade, while his young wife, Alis, assumes the management of their castle and lands and of her own interests and affairs

This might be defined as a fictional Life on a Mediaeval Barony, so completely detailed is it as to the life, the routine of each day, the work and play, the traditions and superstitions, the mores, the psychology of thought and action. The story centers around a marriage, that of young Ansiau, heir apparent to the impoverished barony of Linnieres, and Alis, still a child, the middle daughter of Joceran of Puiseaux, a marriage that became a lifelong romance, despite the side excursions each of them took. Punctuated by pregnancy, birth, death - for all but a small number of the children, racked by hardship and financial worries, interrupted by chivalric wanderings in search of adventure and gold, tourneys and wars - the Second Crusade the major break,- this record provides a microcosm of those years, seen in meticulous detail, but at a distance, as if through the wrong end of an opera glass. A singularly vigorous recapturing of moods and modes of distant times. The market? Those who liked Blessed Are the Meek