ABOUT THE BOOK
Thoroughly disgusted with her twenty-year political marriage to Mark of Cornwall, Isolde returns to her beloved Ireland for good, only to find its shores terrorized by warring Picti from the north. At their head is Darath, a fierce young king whose taste for blood swiftly becomes a taste for flesh when he meets the mesmerizing Isolde and determines to make her his bride—an offer that tantalizes Isolde more than she cares to admit.
Meanwhile, (mis)guided by ruthless Christian counselors whose delight is the downfall of the Mother-right, Mark becomes convinced that impregnating his reluctant wife is the key to Cornwall’s future. But when Tristan and Isolde make their illicit love affair impossible to ignore, Mark unleashes a rage that threatens to kill them both. Only the Lady of the Sea and her fathomless compassion can save the imperiled couple as they journey toward their awesome fate.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How does the relationship between Merlin and the Lady of the Sea frame the novel? Does their discourse read as power struggle or love affair? Ultimately, these two mighty forces have the same goals. Why, then, is Merlin open to the whims of the Christians while the Lady is vehemently not?
2. At a certain point in the novel, Mark shifts from being a weak, impressionable, almost comical character, to being a terrifying, truly dark-hearted menace. What causes this change? How does the author build tension around Mark’s transformation?
3. Knowing all that he does about Mark, why does Tristan cling to his fealty to the rascally monarch? Does his resistance to Isoldes’s plan to abandon Cornwall stem from chivalry, or fear?
4. How does the author weave comedy into the relationship between Dominian and Arraganzo?
5. Isolde is well-schooled in the ways of the Mother-right and the fact that, as Queen, she is entitled to a “chosen one” whenever she wants and however many times she wants. Why, then, is she desperate for Cormac’s approval of her leaving Mark? What link to her past does Cormac represent?
6. Tristan suffers from a crippling lack of faith in Isolde’s opinion of him. He worries that if she accidentally dies in the woods, “she would have thought of him as a faithless man. If he never again contacted her after that, she would be sure he was a recreant knight who had broken his oath to them both, and simply slipped away to find an easier life.” Is there any basis for this fear? Is Isolde aware of his fragile grip on trust?
7. Darath presents two faces: one, a man hopelessly in love, who defies his own war ethics in the pursuit of Isolde; and two, a man who would happily slaughter Isolde after bedding her and winning her lands. Which one do you believe?
8. Why does Andred join Arraganzo and Dominion in encouraging Mark to marry one of the Dun Haven princesses, if his ultimate plot is to be named sole heir to the throne?
9. What is the source of Merlin’s obsession with “Tristan—Arthur—all these sorrowful lost boys. Motherless, fatherless, nameless, and homeless, too, flying boys becoming wounded men”? Is Merlin successful at helping these hapless boys?
10. Where does the author harness natural phenomena like the weather as a storytelling device? How does this contribute to the mood of the novel?
11. Tristan and Isolde agree to return to Castle Dore with the intention to “make a clean and honorable break with the past, then afterward we can live as we want.” Why are they suddenly naïve about Mark’s capacity for justice? Do they honestly believe they’ll sway the king, or are they trying to assuage their own sense of guilt? Are they doing the right thing?
12. How does the theme of abandonment play out in the characters of Dominian, Gawaine, and Igraine?
13. How do townsfolk help Gawaine solve the riddle of Tristan and Isolde’s so-called deaths? Why does his well-intentioned visit to them spell disaster?
14. Dominian is charged with helping to oust the “pagan” Isolde from the throne of Cornwall. Why, then, does he challenge Isolde’s assertion that her marriage to Mark is null and void?
15. How is Isolde’s mother’s curse—“May all those he loves, and all who ever love him, suffer until the sea kisses the sky, and the trees bow down their heads at his cursed feet!”—fulfilled, while leaving Tristan and Isolde unscathed?
books by rosalind miles
fiction
THE GUENEVERE TRILOGY
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country
The Knight of the Sacred Lake
The Child of the Holy Grail
THE TRISTAN AND ISOLDE TRILOGY
Isolde, Queen of the Western Isle
The Maid of the White Hands
The Lady of the Sea
I, Elizabeth
Return to Eden
Bitter Legacy
Prodigal Sins
Act of Passion
nonfiction
The Fiction of Sex
The Problem of Measure for Measure
Danger! Men at Work
Modest Proposals
Women and Power
The Female Form
The Women’s History of the World
The Rites of Man
The Children We Deserve
Ben Jonson: His Life and Work
Ben Jonson: His Craft and Art
Who Cooked the Last Supper?
Now available in paperback,
the first two books in the thrilling
Tristan and Isolde trilogy.
The star-crossed Isolde and Tristan meet for the very first time and are swept into a perilous love affair that blossoms against a backdrop of international war and court scandal.
The Maid of the
White Hands
1-4000-8154-8
$12.95 paper (Canada: $17.95)
Isolde, Queen of the
Western Isle
1-4000-4786-2
$13.95 paper (Canada: $21.00)
Isolde is crowned Queen of Ireland, as conniving forces unite to undermine her power. Meanwhile Tristan is coerced into a journey that will take him to the very edge of madness—and even death—before he is reunited with his one true love.
The Guenevere Trilogy
Long relegated to a quiet role on the arm of King Arthur, Guenevere at last springs to life in this lavish retelling of one of the most enduring epic tales of Western culture. Rosalind Miles’s magical interpretation recreates the stirring pageant of love, war, heartbreak, jealousy, revenge, and desire from Guenevere’s perspective, capturing as never before her formidable power as a queen and her full-blooded passion as a woman.
The Knight of the Sacred Lake
0-609-80802-8
$12.95 paperback (Canada: $19.95)
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country
0-609-80650-5
$12.95 paperback (Canada: $19.95)
The Child of the Holy Grail
0-609-80956-3
$13.95 paperback (Canada: $21.00)
Copyright © 2004 by Rosalind Miles
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
THREE RIVERS PRESS and the tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published hardcover in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK, London, and subsequently in hardcover in the United States by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2004.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miles, Rosalind.
The lady of the sea : the third of the Tristan and Isolde novels / Rosalind Miles.—1st ed.
Sequel to: The maid of the white hands.
1. Isolde (Legendary character)—Fiction. 2. Tristan (Legendary character)—Fiction. 3. Mark
, King of Cornwall (Legendary character)—Fiction. 4. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction. 5. Cornwall (England : County)—Fiction. 6. Knights and knighthood—Fiction. 7. Arthurian romances—Adaptations. 8. Adultery—Fiction. 9. Ireland—Fiction. 10. Queens—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6063. I319L33 2004
813' .914—dc22
2004010503
eISBN: 978-0-307-33755-9
v3.0
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