In 12th century England, a series of gruesome murders has led to riots in Cambridge and attacks on the Jewish community. Fearing for the state of his kingdom's finances, King Henry II sends for the famed investigator Simon of Naples and a master of the art of death, one of those famed Italian physicians able to discern causes of death from corpses. Thus Adelia Aguilar, mistress of the art of death, finds herself in a land far from her native Salerno with her friend Simon and her bodyguard Mansur, hiding her skills to avoid accusations of witchcraft. As tensions rise and the killer closes in, it will be up to her to unmask the killer before he unmasks her.
Mistress of the Art of Death is a completed five-book series by Mary Diana Norman under the pen name Ariana Franklin, each entry detailing a different murder mystery, with the final novel being completed by the author's daughter after her death. Courtly intrigue, the prejudices of the time, and the limits of science are recurring problems that Adelia must contest with to solve her mysteries.
General Tropes include:
- Action Survivor: Adelia was never taught to defend herself and has her bodyguard Mansur for that purpose, but she is clever, tough, and ferociously brave when the situation calls for it. In the climax of the first book she takes on Sir Joscelin despite her broken arm and ribs with the chain he's tied her with, and while she doesn't succeed at strangling him, she gives him enough of a fight for The Cavalry to arrive.
- Burn the Witch!: Adelia, being a female doctor who can deduce things, is often suspected of or accused of witchcraft by those seeking to get rid of her.
- Canine Companion: Prior Geoffrey has dogs specifically bred to be as smelly as possible so that they're easy for other dogs to track, and has one accompanying Adelia at all times. The first one, Safeguard, dies in the line of duty in the first book, but his scent leads the rest of the pack to Adelia.
- Decoy Leader: Since a female doctor would carry more scrutiny than a foreign male one, Mansur is often passed off as the "real" doctor so Adelia can do her work. The ruse mostly consists of Mansur babbling in Arabic while she pretends to follow his orders.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: All over the place, as it's the 12th century and antisemitism, racism, misogyny and Islamophobia are treated as the natural order of things. Even Adelia, who was somewhat shielded from most of the prejudices of her day by growing up in a Jewish-Christian household and having the Muslim Mansur as a friend, as well as suffering from sexism in her daily life, often falls into prejudices about loose women and sees gay people as pitiable and mad. Most notably, there are frequent problems with the Church regarding certain forms of medical treatment, especially pain relief, as sacrilegious (although this varies between clergy), and the absolute ban on dissection.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Adelia's full name is Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar. There are two situations in which her full name is used: her introduction at the beginning of each book, and to show how deeply personal something has become to her.
- Gaydar: Adelia seems to have a pretty good one, probably from growing up in the slightly more liberal Italy. She and Rowley are able to pick up on Prince Richard's orientation just by how he looks at a serving boy.
- Historical Domain Character: The main character is employed by Henry II of England. Other characters show up along the way, but he is the most consistent one.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: A complicated case with Henry II. He is working to reform the English legal system to be more just and to raise up the lower classes, but he is also fond of being unduly cruel and petty to Adelia and Rowley just because it makes him feel better. Adelia often has trouble reconciling her respect for his policies with her dislike of the man himself.
- Matron Chaperone: Margaret, Adelia's nursemaid, was meant to be this, but she died en route to England. After the first book, Gyltha takes up the job, although it's acknowledged as basically pointless since Adelia is already an unmarried woman with a baby.
- No Social Skills: Adelia is abrasive, brash, rude, and far too honest, something that repeatedly gets her into trouble.
- Prayer Is a Last Resort: Adelia is an atheist like her foster father, but when she's in a dire situation or particularly angry or worried, she'll call out to every version of God she knows for aid.
- Slut-Shaming: Adelia is an unmarried woman in the company of men in 12th century England, so naturally everyone around her assumes that she's sleeping with them and addresses her as whore, slut, mistress, or the like. This goes much farther once she has her child.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Adelia Aguilar, doctor to the dead, who would have to abandon her patients if she ever married, and Rowley Picot, who for all his love fundamentally does not understand her commitment and becomes a bishop after the first book, who is betraying his vows every time he sleeps with her. The conflict between their respective duties and their own strong emotions causes them no small amount of grief.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: As a doctor, Adelia is fundamentally opposed to the death penalty, a fact that makes her stand out from nearly everyone around her.
Tropes found in Mistress of the Art of Death include:
- Angry Mob: One descends on the Jewish community after the first murder, hanging the moneylender Chaim and tearing his wife to bits. The community has to be moved inside the castle for their own safety and have been living there for a year when the novel begins.
- Artistic License – Law: The benefit of clergy is treated as all clergy getting a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card, with the worst thing possible being excommunication and even convicted murderers getting off scot-free because the church has no death penalty or true punishments. However, excommunication effectively strips a person of their right to clergy, leaving them at the mercy of the civil courts. Henry II is infuriated that Sister Veronica is getting off with only excommunication, but is powerless to do anything about it without angering the Church even more. However, the Church later kills her anyway. Possibly justified, as the benefit of clergy was very recently established and the political implications of it are still very raw, leaving Henry unable to press the issue.
- Bittersweet Ending: Rakshasa is stopped and the Jewish community is exonerated. However, Adelia and Rowley's romance has ended before it began, Adelia has been trapped in England by Henry II, and the Rabbi acknowledges that even if they've been proven innocent, the Jews will always carry suspicion and hate.
- Buried Alive: The final fate of Sister Veronica, being walled up in her cell and left to die by the church.
- Cluster F-Bomb: When trapped in Rakshasa's lair, Adelia realizes that he'll only move once he's sure she's terrified and so lets fly with a flurry of curses and insults in every language she knows.
- Devoured by the Horde: The final fate of Rakshasa, unmasked as Sir Joscelin. He gets out of the tunnels and makes a run for it, but Hugh sets his pack of hunting dogs on him and he's torn to pieces.
- Enlightened Self-Interest: King Henry II isn't helping the Jews out of any sympathy, but because they're a source of revenue he'd rather not lose.
- Externally Validated Prophecy: After they're exonerated, the Rabbi grimly tells Adelia that even if it was proven wrong, the accusation of ritual murder will stain the Jews forever. As history has shown, he was ultimately proven right.
- Groin Attack:
- The killer's victims are found having been violated with some sort of knife. As were the sheep he originally went after.
- Rowley Picot gets a cleaver to the groin. It's only thanks to Adelia's swift action that he isn't made a eunuch.
- He Knows Too Much: Simon figures out, by retrieving the tallies of who owed money to Chaim, who the killer was halfway through the book. Unfortuantely, he's drowned before he can tell anyone.
- Kangaroo Court: Adelia figures out quickly that the ecclesiastical court is not trying Sister Veronica for her involvement in the murders, but her for daring to accuse a holy woman while being foreign. The eyewitness who saw her is dismissed for being too young and a bastard, her murder of Simon is dismissed because they've already decided he drowned and besides, he was a Jew anyway, and all her forensic evidence is thrown out for being the product of foreign witchcraft. They even go so far as to accuse her of being party to the murders, even though that makes no sense and she was not even in Cambridge for them, declaring that her uncovering the killer was suspicious. It takes King Henry's intervention, the proof that Veronica wove the symbols on each body, and Veronica losing her mind to condemn the right person.
- Nun Too Holy: Sister Veronica was party to the murders and lured the victims into the water. What finally condemns her, after she'd been almost about to get off on a charge of Demonic Possession, is when Henry offers her a piglet to demonstrate what was done to the children. Any semblance of sanity swiftly disappears as she gleefully mutilates it, laughing as she does.
- Rabble Rouser: Roger of Acton hates the Jews, and spends most of his time rallying the people to storm the castle and kill them all for the sake of their souls. He succeeds in getting in once and nearly kills Rowley.
- Sacrificial Lion: Simon of Naples, the professional murder investigator, is killed halfway through the book when he gets too close to the truth. This devastates Adelia and makes her all the more determined to find his killer.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: At the end, King Henry tells Adelia that he's keeping her on as his mistress of death. She protests that he can't do this, as she's not his subject, and he responds that she's in England now and he's ordered all the ports closed to her and all her communication halted, so she'll be his investigator whether she likes it or not.
- Serial Killer: One has killed four children in Cambridge, mutilating their bodies and decorating them with woven symbols. He's also a Serial Rapist, with evidence that he violated them with a knife before they died, cutting off their eyelids to terrorize them.
- Torn Apart by the Mob: The fate of poor Chaim's wife, when she put herself between her daughter and the mob.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Serial Killer has claimed four children and almost kills Ulf in the climax.
Tropes found in The Death Maze include:
- Affably Evil: Sicarius might be in the business of assassination and nondiscriminating in his targets, but he is quite congenial and polite. When he and Adelia finally meet, he's quite pleasant to her, admires her cunning, and is one of the few men that is never misogynistic to her. He even apologizes for killing Bertha and says he doesn't like extra kills in his line of work, but circumstances forced his hand.
- Agent Peacock: Jacques wears scent and plays women in the Yule plays, and Rowley and the others often mock him for being effeminate. He's secretly the assassin Sicarius.
- Artistic License – Geography: The author herself admits in the afterword that she took some liberties with river travel in the book, and not all of the places they go are connected by river in real life.
- Bad Boss: Rosamund was so abusive to her servants that Bertha accepted a mysterious woman in the woods giving her a magic mushroom to be kinder. When Adelia goes through her tower she sees that all her servants have fled and sacked it, as well as stabbed and vandalized any images of her.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Dame Dakers' Establishing Character Moment is her boiling a cat alive to petition Satan for Rosamund's life.
- Chekhov's Gun: When searching Rosamund's tower, Rowley and his men find a mantrap in the barn. They notice that while most mantraps are designed for catching the leg, Rosamund made hers extra big and strong so that it would close on the victim's groin and kill them, and they decide not to explore the woods while the snow hides any traps she's left. In the climax, Dame Dakers retrieves the same mantrap from the barn and lays it on the road, and the Abbot is killed when he steps into it.
- Chubby Chaser: Henry's two mistresses, Rosamund and Ynekai, are both very chubby and Henry names their size as one of the things that drew him to them. It gives a dramatic contrast to his wife, the thin and angular Eleanor.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Schwyz the mercenary captain has an absolutely filthy mouth. The Abbot of Eynsham provides a Tactful Translation for Eleanor, but Adelia, and thus the reader, gets to hear it in full.
- Double Entendre: Rowley and the servants make a lot of jokes about how phallic Rosamund's tower is.
- Effeminate Misogynistic Guy: The Abbot of Eynsham has impotence problems, a condition that's given him a violent hatred of all female sexuality. He refers to all women as whores and loves describing sexual acts in great detail, demeans nuns as "dried up virgins who couldn't get a man", thinks Wolvercote's rape of Emma was hilarious, and sexually assaults Adelia twice while calling her a whore for refusing his advances.
- The Heretic: Mother Edyve privately admits to Adelia that she believes that God has both a male and a female nature, and that the lure of Courtly Love is men subconsciously calling out to God the Mother. While this would later become a more accepted reading and eventually official doctrine of the Catholic church (specifically, the idea that God transcends gender), at the time even the atheistic Adelia is shocked by it.
- Her Codename Was Mary Sue: Adelia saves Eleanor's life when Dame Dakers attacks her, intercepting a knife before she can stab the queen. In Eleanor's retelling of the story later, Dakers is a demon wielding an unholy sword, Eleanor herself defeats her by invoking the name of Jesus, and Adelia only picks up the unholy sword and throws it away. Adelia wonders for a moment if she actually believes it, and decides she probably doesn't, but knows the effect the story will have.
- Heroic Bastard: Well, heroic is a loose term, but King Henry wryly notes the irony that all his true sons save for John have rebelled against him, while his bastard Geoffrey has remained loyal. (Historically, even John eventually turned on him, but Geoffrey remained loyal to Henry until the end and was the only son present when he died.)
- Historical Domain Character: Eleanor of Aquitaine is a major character this time around, conspiring to start a civil war against her husband since she believes he was about to crown Rosamund over her.
- Hypocrisy Nod: When first sent to investigate Rosamund's death, Adelia initially sneers that she's being dragged out into all weather for a loose woman. Then she realizes that as the unmarried mother of a bishop's child, she is a loose woman by all sense of the word, and reprimands herself.
- Marital Rape License: Lord Wolvercote abducts Emma, has her married by a hedgepriest, and rapes her so they can't call off the marriage. The men of Eleanor's court all find this hilarious and even Eleanor isn't able to have him arrested for it. Luckily, once Henry arrives, he's killed for treason instead and Adelia makes Emma's safety part of her bargain with King Henry.
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: Rosamund's maid positioned her mistress in the act of writing in her finest clothes and with a crown on her head, then left her to freeze in that position.
- Mundane Object Amazement: Bertha thinks a crucifix is some sort of magic item. Adelia and Gyltha are utterly appalled that Rosamund so neglected her women that she doesn't even know what Christianity is.
- Professional Killer: Sicarius is a professional assassin sent to deal with Rosamund, and who later kills Bertha.
- She Knows Too Much: Bertha figures out who killed Rosamund, but is killed herself before she can pass this on to Adelia.
- Snowed-In: The majority of the book takes place at Godstow Abbey, where the snowy winter has made marching with an army impossible.
- Two Dun It: There are two murders: Talbot, the man who was murdered on the road, and Rosamund, the king's mistress. Despite some initial misgivings, Adelia quickly realizes that the two differ in circumstance, motive, and method of killing enough that they couldn't have been connected and she's looking for at least two different murderers.
- Woman Scorned: Downplayed. Eleanor understands that kings keep mistresses and if she ever had a problem with Rosamund before, she never stated it. It was Rosamund sending her gloating letters that King Henry plans to crown her queen instead that instigates her wrath.
- Would Hurt a Child: The assassin takes Adelia's baby out of the crib while Gyltha was watching her and leaves her on a step, making clear to Adela what he will do to her if she keeps pushing.
Tropes found in Relics Of The Dead include:
- Accidental Murder: When Wolf is about to kill Alf, Adelia impulsively jumps forward to stop him....forgetting that she's holding a sword in the other hand. As a doctor sworn to heal, the act of killing haunts her for the rest of the book.
- Accomplice by Inaction: Eustace has a frankpledge
or tithing, 9 other men who are sworn to either bring him in for his crime or who will hang for it with him. Since it's all their necks on the line, they eventually kidnap Adelia and Mansur to try and clear Eustace's name so they won't hang for his arson. - Artistic License – History: The fire at Glastonbury Abbey, the finding of King Arthur's tomb, and Henry II claiming Excalibur are all moved to different dates so Adelia can take part. Henry II also never disproved or even disputed the claim it was Arthur's tomb, and it's not even clear if the bodies ever existed or if it was just an advertising ploy by the monks to get revenue.
- The Atoner:
- Abbot Sigward has spent 24 years as the most pious and charitable man possible to atone for killing his son and his son's lover. When Adelia finds him out, he coolly confesses all, then kills himself and Hilda as a final atonement.
- Arthur, the Abbot's son, and his friend went to Crusade, only to find nothing good or holy about the endless, pointless slaughter. This led them to cast off their military crosses and return home, even knowing the shame that would follow them.
- Beneath Notice: Millie, the deaf girl at the Pilgrim's Inn, is commonly thought to be a half-wit. Adelia manages to get her first and most important clue by actually communicating with her.
- Buried Alive: While Adelia and Mansur are investigating the tomb, someone pushes over the pile of dirt on top, burying them. It's only thanks to Mansur quickly pushing Adelia above ground and Rowley being close enough to hear that both survive the experience, but Mansur nearly suffocates.
- Butt-Monkey: Rhys the bard spends most of his time being told to shut up or having his harp stolen. He kinda deserves it for being whiny and annoying.
- Career-Ending Injury: Emma's champion Roetger wins a Trial by Combat but gets his Achilles tendon torn. The subsequent events of the book (being forced to fight bandits, spending a month nearly starved) aggravate the injury, and ruin any chance of him walking or fighting again.
- Can't Stay Normal: After she and Ally nearly died in the last book, Adelia is determined not to get involved in any more murders, and only goes to check Arthur and Guinevere's bodies because there's no murder involved. Then she realizes how recent the bodies are, Emma goes missing, and an open arson case gets complicated, and by the end of the first act she's on another murder mystery.
- Crusading Lawyer: Emma's advocate is Master Dickon, newly appointed and very eager to test out the new legal system. He went as far as tracking down the priest who married her to Lord Wolvercote and getting Mother Edyve's testimony to prove the marriage was legitimate.
- Depraved Homosexual: The Outlaw Couple Wolf and Scarry, who only have sex with women because they love the terror of raping someone and who conflate their own relationship with their worship of Satan. In contrast, the other gay couple of the book (the Arthur and "Guinevere" skeletons) were completely good and moral, which makes what happened to them all the more tragic.
- Dying Declaration of Love: Downplayed. While both Adelia and Rowley both knew that they loved each other, being trapped underground and running out of air causes Adelia to realize she no longer wants to deny her love for him They ultimately escape, but she keeps her promise.
- Empathic Weapon: Adelia finds an old 6th century sword which might be this. When she kills Wolf she feels like the sword is acting instead of her, having it nearby makes her feel better, and her final internal discussion on whether to keep it or not is framed like a conversation between her and the sword. Subverted in that Adelia ultimately comes to the conclusion that it's her own guilt talking to her, not the sword.
- Enlightened Self-Interest: Henry II reforms the legal system to be more fair, but it also has a side effect of putting all the fines back in his pocket rather than the church's.
- Everyone Has Standards: Henry II, opportunist galore, who has spent the entire book intending to find the body of King Arthur so he can show it off to the Welsh rebels he has so much trouble with sees the old Saxon warrior at rest, and ultimately decides to shut the tomb back up and tell no one. This is what makes Adelia decide to give him Excalibur.
- Good All Along: Godwyn, for a given degree of good. When Adelia connects Emma's disappearance to the inn, she assumes that he and Hilda are working together. In fact, he's been saving Hilda's victims while trying to talk reason into her, having convinced her to let Emma, Roetger, and Pippy go and rescuing Millie, Adelia, and Rowley when they're trapped in the tunnel.
- Graying Morality: To Adelia's unhappiness, the moral lines become less and less clear-cut here than they previously were. The poaching band of brigands are actually more honorable than the monks, Godwyn saved Hilda's victims but also covered up her crimes, the serial killer has spent 24 years atoning for the murder by becoming an upstanding leader of the convent, she herself has to kill someone in self-defense, and her romance with Rowley reaches its breaking point as she realizes there is no way they can honorably be together and also no way to ignore their feelings any longer.
- Handicapped Badass: Roetger managed to kill four of Wolf's men while confined to a cart with a useless leg, letting him, Emma, and Pippy get away. Unfortunately, the act ruins any chance he might have had at healing, making it likely the last fight he'll ever have.
- Hate Sink: In contrast to the more grey morality surrounding the tithing and the two killers, there are two people in the book that are utterly vile to the core: Wolf and Lady Wolvercote.
- Wolf is a bandit lord who hides in the forests of Glastonbury, terrorizing locals and lords alike with his brutality and sadism. He is responsible for the deaths of Emma's traveling party, raped the two women within it just because he loves how terrified they are, and lies to the tithing that they have free passage in his forest just so he can break that promise by capturing and threatening to rape Adelia. When Adelia accidentally kills him, only his equally evil second-in-command mourns.
- Lady Wolvercote starts by openly dismissing Emma as a whore for being raped by her son and then leaps over it by paying Wolf to raid the party, with the intention of getting her daughter-in-law raped and murdered and her own grandson killed so she can stay in her nice house. When her plan fails and she also fails to prove Emma's illegitimacy, she takes all her stuff and sets fire to her own house as a final act of spite.
- Heel–Faith Turn: Abbot Sigward is an atypical one: was always a religious man, but a vision from God convinced him to set down his lordship and dedicate himself to the monastic life instead. Specifically, after he killed his son and his son's lover, he had a vision of God condemning him for his hubris and filicide. He took the subsequent earthquake opening up the monastic graveyard as a sign that the two men were meant to be buried on holy ground, and that it was his job to atone for the murders by doing all he could. When Adelia finds him out at last, he accepts it as his just punishment from God and drowns himself.
- Irony: The skeleton identified "Guinevere" was actually a man named Arthur. Adelia even notes this in-universe, sighing that "of course it was" when she learns it.
- Justice by Other Legal Means: Because the only witness was Wolf and her servants will not testify against her, Lady Wolvercote essentially gets off scot-free for setting bandits on Emma's party, leading to six deaths and two rapes. However, she does not manage to prove Emma's illegitimacy, leading to her being thrown out of her manor.
- Life-or-Limb Decision: One of this posthumously exonerates Eustace, as Adelia sees that the corpse has three fingers missing, then later finds them in a steel trap. Due to the placement of the finger bones, she realizes that the man got his fingers caught on the night of the Abbey fire and had to saw them off to escape, but tragically died of blood loss anyway.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Even Adelia, a dyed-in-the-wool rationalist and atheist, acknowledges that there's something to Glastonbury Tor that makes magic feel more realistic. She is Plagued by Nightmares that might have been her subconscious guilt or something else, the sword she finds might be an Empathic Weapon eager to kill or it might just be Adelia trying to assuage her own guilt over the killing, Abbot Sigward claims to have had a holy vision, and the tomb with the dead Saxon king and his sword might be King Arthur and Excalibur, or just an unrelated chief who happened have the name Arturus. In the end, Adelia stands firmly on the side of the "mundane", dismissing it all as dangerous delusions brought on by the beauty of Glastonbury....but there's also a chance she's fooling herself.
- Not So Above It All: Adelia finds out she actually enjoys sneaking around and hiding with the frankpledge, despite the fact that they're a bigger danger to her than the one hunting her.
- Offing the Offspring: Abbot Sigward, back when he was Lord Sigward, caught his son having sex with his male friend and was so horrified he killed them both with an axe, chopping his own son into three pieces.
- Paper Tiger: Wolf, a bandit lord who maintains absolute control over the forests around Glastonbury by how terrifying he is to everyone else, is killed accidentally by Adelia. Even his second-in-command and the rest of the tithing are in disbelief at how anticlimactic it was.
- Revealing Cover-Up: Had Hilda just left well enough alone, all Adelia would have found was two skeletons. Instead, her attempts to murder at least seven people to cover it up just prompt further investigation and get the whole thing found out.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Adelia discovers that Guinevere's entire pelvis is missing, she realizes that it must have been a hateful attack. What she doesn't realize is that it was based in homophobia, not misogyny: "Guinevere" was actually a man whose pelvis was chopped off after death for having sex with another man.
- Roguish Poacher: The frankpledge that Eustace belonged to got up to a lot of poaching and thieving after the Glastonbury fire decimated the local economy, but maintain a certain sense of honor nonetheless. Adelia is fairly shocked to realize that she actually likes and trusts them more than the monks.
- Self-Disposing Villain: Abbot Sigward drowns himself in the swamp and takes Hilda with him to atone for the murders.
- Sequel Hook: The last line of the book reveals that Scarry, Wolf's lover and second in command, is now hunting Adelia for revenge.
- Symbolic Mutilation: The first thing Adelia notes about the corpses is that Guinevere's entire pelvis is missing, and it was clearly hacked off and thrown away apart from the bodies. She sees it as a symbolic and horrific Groin Attack, or perhaps an attack on Guinevere's femininity. The real reason becomes clear when she finally finds the pelvis: it clearly demonstrates that "Guinevere" was male. The symbolic mutilation part still stands, as it was a punishment for Arthur's homosexuality.
- Taught by Experience: After the assassin threatened her daughter in the last book, once Adelia figures out that a murderer is loose, she immediately has Mansur, Gyltha, and Allie sent away to where it's safe.
- Treachery Cover Up: Adelia and Rowley opt not to tell the Abbey about the Abbot's crimes and suicide (considered equally evil in the eyes of the Church), saying that he died in an accident instead. Many monks figure out it was a suicide, but they never learn of the Abbot's true guilt.
- Trial by Combat: One of the still extant methods of trial. Emma hires Roetger, a swordsman all the way from Germany, as her champion. Since they're stuck fighting with quarterstaffs, the trial takes hours and ends with both combatants permanently injured, something that horrifies Adelia. Fortunately for her, the new legal system is replacing them with trials by lawyer and jury, which she much prefers.
- Universally Beloved Leader: Hardly anyone in Glastonbury can mention Abbot Sigward without talking about how kind and loving and pious he is, enough that he made Abbot over other more experienced monks. He ministers to the lepers of Lazarus island, cares deeply for everyone, and isn't racist or sexist to Mansur and Adelia, no small feat for the time period. He's also the one who murdered the two bodies found, and became as pious and kind as he was as a way to atone.
Tropes found in The Assassin's Prayer include:
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Henry thought that rediscovering "Excalibur" would give him more weight as a king. Instead, he's being bombarded with requests from all over Christendom to see the sword, hold the sword, that the sword rightfully belongs to them, that he needs to take up the sword on Crusade, etc. It gets bad enough that he contrives to have it sent to Sicily so it won't be his problem anymore.
- Burn the Witch!: Or in this case, burn the heretic, but to the Bishop of Aveyron the two are one and the same. Ermengarde is burnt to death for being a Cathar, something that traumatizes Adelia and her traveling companions and even the town finds disturbing. Adelia, Mansur, Ulf, and Rankin nearly go the same way before they are rescued by O'Donnell.
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: Adelia has to ride sidesaddle for the first time on the trip, and since she's in an acutely uncomfortable medieval saddle, all it takes is one misstep from her horse to send her tumbling and expose her undergarments. She then declares that she doesn't care what the men think of her, she'll be riding astride for the rest of the trip.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The Bishops and Dr. Arnulf decide to let Adelia be burned at the stake because it would be too much trouble to retrieve her.
- Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: Rankin fondly remembers his bagpipes, Ulf doesn't, and Adelia learns why when she first encounters them in Caronne.
- Evil Is Petty: While the official explanation is that it's for heresy, the Bishop of Aveyron primarily burns Ermengarde to death because she embarrassed him once by calling him out for his materialism and greed. He even gets a sexual thrill out of the idea of burning her alive, considering it akin to raping her.
- Fetishes Are Weird: Sir Nicholas, one of the troop's knights, has a thing for women's shoes which leads to him trying to lick their boots when he's drunk. While the situation is upsetting for the girls and arguably sexual assault given the context, Adelia seems most horrified at the idea that he likes women's boots, and describes him to Boggart as a man with a "demon" inside him.
- Frameup: When Scarry is trying to turn the caravan against Adelia, he kills people who have previously angered her to give the impression that she has the power to curse people and encourage them to Burn the Witch!.
- I Have Your Wife: Henry ensures that Adelia will return to England by keeping Allie behind with him, knowing that otherwise she'll head to Sicily and stay there.
- The Heretic: Adelia meets a few Cathars on her journey through Southern France. Unfortunately, the Bishop of Aveyron has a personal grudge and has one of them burned at the stake.
- Historical Villain Upgrade: A minor one, but Henry the Young King ditches Joanna so he can go to a tournament to demonstrate how empty-headed and irresponsible he is. The real Henry did no such thing, and escorted Joanna all the way to his brother Richard's lands.
- Hopeless Suitor: O'Donnell knows he doesn't have any chance with Adelia, and has fully accepted it. Doesn't stop him from going well out of his way to rescue her, or tearing Rowley a new one for abandoning her.
- Rage Breaking Point: Crossed with Tantrum Throwing. After months slowly starving to death in a prison cell, watching a woman be burnt alive, and weeks of living on the lam, O'Donnell saying that they'll be going to Sicily because it's safer makes Adelia break into a full blown, childish tantrum, pounding her fists against the earth and yelling that she wants to go home now. Once she cries it out and sanity returns, she is deeply embarrassed.
- Serious Business: At one point in Caronne, Dowager Countess Fabrisse invites Adelia to investigate the death of a goat. Adelia initially thinks it's ridiculous, and Fabrisse responds that having a feud spark up between two major families is a big deal in a small village. Thankfully, she finds the goat choked on some wool, acquitting both parties and allowing them to resume their friendship.
- Stranger in a Familiar Land: After seven years trapped in England and longing to go home, Adelia finally makes it home to Salerno only to find that the multicultural, rational land she loved is slowly collapsing as the Latinate church pushes in, mixed marriages are becoming a target of attacks, and the school she trained at no longer allows female students. This is what makes her finally decide to make England her home permanently.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: Scarry gets his own point of view chapters as he stalks Adelia.
