Points of View

This is predominately Gerutha/Gertrude's story. It is about her and her life, seen through the eyes of a narrator who is not she, but who knows her thoughts. The author does not hold to this strictly. The reader is with Rorik when he worries if he has sold his daughter into a kind of slavery. The reader is with Fengon/Claudius when we learn of his love for Gerutha, when his brother accuses him, and until soon after he kills him. The reader is led into the perspective only of sympathetic characters, characters whom the author likes and expects the reader to like. Information that might affect the reader's sympathy for Feng is revealed, but only in the context of dialogue, words spoken aloud by a character whom we do not like (Horwendil), or by someone whose knowledge may be tainted (Rorik).

Setting

The story...