Maid Marian

Marian Fitzwater was married at five, for the sake of two families' fortunes, to a boy she never saw again before he died at seventeen. Left a widow who was never truly a wife, she becomes a ward of the crown while King Richard is off on Crusade, her fate in the hands of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.

When Eleanor arranges a second marriage — to a family with a history of convenient deaths — Marian knows what awaits her once her new husband controls her lands. On the eve of the wedding, Robin Hood's men spirit her away into Sherwood Forest, and the world believes her dead. Among Robin's outlaws, Marian finds not just refuge but an intellectual and spiritual equal, and a plan to take back her inheritance and expose the men who mean to profit from her death.

Elsa Watson retells the Robin Hood legend from Marian's point of view, giving her the same resourcefulness and agency the ballads usually reserve for Robin.