This historical romance of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of much of the British royal family, is set in the vibrant 14th-century England of Chaucer, when magnificent pageantry was confronted by the Black Death, when knights went to battle in expensive foreign wars while peasants struggled to survive, and when the magnificent but despotic Plantagenets--Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II--ruled over a court rotten with intrigue. In this era of danger and passion, John of Gaunt, the king's son and the proudest of the Plantagenets, fought for power and fell desperately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented romance persisted through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption.