Combining all the political intrigue of Game of Thrones with the sweeping romanticism of Outlander, Dorothy Dunnett’s legendary Lymond Chronicles have enthralled readers for decades and amassed legions of devoted fans. The journey begins with the three books included in this set: The Game of Kings, Queens' Play, and The Disorderly Knights. In 1547, Francis Crawford of Lymond is disgraced and newly escaped from captivity. Returning to his beloved Scotland, he soon embarks on a fantastic journey that will take him from the castles and glens of his ancestral home, to the decadent French Court, to the battlegrounds of crusading knights in Malta—a quest which will require him to risk everything in order to redeem his reputation and protect his homeland.

Combining all the political intrigue of Game of Thrones with the sweeping romanticism of Outlander, Dorothy Dunnett’s legendary Lymond Chronicles have enthralled readers for decades and amassed legions of devoted fans. The journey begins with the three books included in this set: The Game of Kings, Queens' Play, and The Disorderly Knights. In 1547, Francis Crawford of Lymond is disgraced and newly escaped from captivity. Returning to his beloved Scotland, he soon embarks on a fantastic journey that will take him from the castles and glens of his ancestral home, to the decadent French Court, to the battlegrounds of crusading knights in Malta—a quest which will require him to risk everything in order to redeem his reputation and protect his homeland.

Combining all the political intrigue of Game of Thrones with the sweeping romanticism of Outlander, Dorothy Dunnett’s legendary Lymond Chronicles have enthralled readers for decades and amassed legions of devoted fans. Devour the whole saga with the complete series in this convenient ebook box set. In 1547, Francis Crawford of Lymond is disgraced and newly escaped from captivity. Returning to his beloved Scotland, he soon embarks on a fantastic journey that will take him from the decadent French Court to the battlegrounds of crusading knights in Malta, from the hidden palaces of the Ottoman Empire to the frozen vastness of Ivan the Terrible’s Russia—a quest which will require him to risk everything in order to redeem his reputation and protect his homeland.

This book—along with its companion volume Mary I in Writing: Letters, Literature, and Representations—centers on representations of Queen Mary I in writing, broadly construed, and the process of writing that queen into literature and other textual sources. It spans an equally wide chronological and geographical scope, accounting for the years prior to her accession in July 1553 through the centuries that followed her death in November 1558 and for her reach across England, and into Ireland, Spain, Italy, Russia, and Africa. Its intent is to foreground words and language—written, spoken, and acted out—and, by extension, to draw out matters of and conversations about rhetoric, imagery, methodology, source base, genre, narrative, form, and more. Taken together, these volumes find in England’s first crowned queen regnant an incomparable opportunity to ask new questions and seek new answers that deepen our understanding of queenship, the early modern era, and modern popular culture.

Since the first installment of Dunnett’s series was published in 1961, Francis Crawford of Lymond, the swashbuckling protagonist of the stories, has been captivating his fellow characters and readers alike. Instead of approaching the books primarily as historical fiction, Richardson, an enthusiastic admirer of the series, unravels the complexities of the main character by exploring his psychology, positioning the books within the genre of espionage, and examining Dunnett’s strategy of using games in her writing. Richardson’s insight and passion for his subject will inspire fans to revisit Dunnett’s series.

Here is a lovingly assembled, essential A-Z companion to Dorothy Dunnett’s brilliant Lymond Chronicles and the first five novels in the House of Niccolò series. Elspeth Morrison has re-created the author’s exhaustive original research, documenting her myriad sources and literary references. Foreign phrases are translated; poems and quotations presented in full; historical figures and events fleshed out; subtle allusions–and there are many–noted. From the origins of the Arabic drink qahveh to a recipe for quince paste, from the medical uses of ants and alum, to Zacco, Zenobia, and Zoroaster, this easy-to-use A-to-Z reference richly illuminates the intricacies of the complex and far-flung Renaissance world Dorothy Dunnett’s creations so colorfully inhabit.