Virtue and Violence: The Medieval Historical Romances of Roberta Gellis, Julie Garwood, and Madeline Hunter
By Sophia Berg (2025)
This paper analyzes how three authors—Roberta Gellis, Julie Garwood, and Madeline Hunter—represented masculinity in their Medieval Historical Romance novels spanning the 1960s/70s to 1980s/90s to early 2000s respectively. While depictions of masculinity across the three share common characteristics of virtue and goodness, they differ in their portrayals of violence, specifically in regard to its acceptability, or lack thereof. Beginning with a comparison of the authors’ crafting of a chivalrous Medieval Historical Romance hero, this paper will then delve into the varying portrayals of domestic abuse that all three authors have addressed, and the contrarian rhetoric surrounding historical accuracy in respect to a brutish, abusive hero. Incorporating authorial statements, fan material, reviews, and obituaries, I will establish the grounds by which Gellis, Garwood, and Hunter realize their heroes’ masculinities.
Virtue and Goodness: Staples of the “Knight in Shining Armor” Trope
In their Medieval Historical romances, Gellis, Garwood, and Hunter all attempted to portray their heroes as virtuous and good. For the heroes of their “medievals,” as they are colloquially referred to by Hunter, are allotted the higher social status of the Medieval period, and thus are almost exclusively knights, warlords turned noblemen, or another assortment of dignified and virtuous men (Hunter). The “knight in shining armor” motif appears to be a staple component of their Medieval Historical romances, with most of their heroes encapsulating both the career and the contemporary perception granted by such popular figures as Lancelot and Ivanhoe (Donaldson). When reading Madeline Hunter’s The Seducer, A Love So True’s Kayleigh Donaldson noted a particularly compelling figure in the narrative, who alone drew her attention and kept her all but glued to the book: “For Diane Albret, Daniel St. John was her knight in shining armor” (Donaldson). Although Daniel, the hero of Hunter’s novel, was not himself a knight, to his heroine Diane he embodied the qualities of an actual knight.
The author of 41 historical romance novels, nine of which are “medievals,” as her website dubs them (six actually belonging to a series called “Medievals”), Hunter is known for her gripping romances with a tendency towards well-researched historical representations (Hunter). For readers such as Donaldson, who celebrates Hunter’s contributions to Medieval Historical Romance as a fan of over 20 years, it is Hunter’s adherence to the historical accuracy of the Medieval period that marks her heroes as especially poignant in a given text. For instance, she writes that another hero, Addis from By Possession, is a kind, but hardened man, who has undergone strenuous trials in the Crusades only to rise above them as a virtuous figure, and thus proper husband material (Donaldson). It is Addis’ preservation of his goodness in the face of blatant suffering, and subsequent kindness towards his heroine, that tie his nature to the desirable representations of masculinity that Donaldson praises.
This description mirrors what Julie Garwood aspires towards in writing her romances, wherein the heroes are written with a female readership in mind. In an interview with All About Romance, Garwood reported that Gabriel, the hero of her novel, Saving Grace, was written to be “the champion of women” (“Lunch with Julie Garwood”). Garwood, a lauded author of over 27 romances, 11 of which are medievals, has hit the New York Times Bestseller’s List 15 times for her romance fiction, including for such Medieval Historical romances as The Wedding and Ransom (“Julie Garwood”). Like Hunter, Garwood’s heroes have been described as pinnacles of virtue, reflecting again the characteristics readers have come to associate with the Medieval period. For example, one of her most popular books, Honor’s Splendour, when reviewed by All About Romance, was praised for these thematic motifs, “complete with chivalry, romance, the strong protecting the innocent” (“Honor’s Splendour”). Once again, a praised element of Garwood’s work is the virtuous hero, who is written to match modern conceptions of the Medieval period by embodying chivalry and valor (Genzlinger).
For Garwood, historical accuracy was of the utmost importance, and in her eyes, historical accuracy to the Medieval period entailed the heroine ending up with a kind and virtuous hero. “If I have a heroine who stays with a man who is obnoxious until the last page of the book,” Garwood told The Birmingham Post-Herald of Alabama in 1993, “then she’s not a heroine. She needs more work” (Genzlinger). The crux of Garwood’s heroes lied in their transformation throughout the novel’s progression; even if the hero was a condemnable boor on page one, by the story’s end he must have developed Medieval-typical virtue to be worthy of his heroine. Like Hunter, Garwood prioritized historical accuracy, although she was often criticized on the grounds that her characters were “simplistic,” and incorporated attributes akin to the above chivalry and goodness to maintain that historical accuracy.
In an interview conducted by All About Romance’s Jane Jorgenson, Roberta Gellis similarly emphasized the importance of a virtuous hero in Medieval Historical Romance, remarking that when writing the male counterparts to her heroines, she distinguishes them by incorporating chivalrous attributes: “pure in heart, honest and honorable” (Jorgenson). For Gellis, as for Hunter and Garwood, a virtuous hero is necessary to abide by historical accuracy. Gellis reported for each novel she writes, she conducts in-depth research into the era she wishes to develop for her setting, and that when researching the Medieval period many of her books are set in, the virtuous hero is not only a staple of a successful romance, but a vital component of the historically accurate “hero” (Jorgenson).
Gellis, a prolific Medieval Historical Romance writer from the early 1960s to the early 2000s, has published 44 books throughout her career, 19 of which are Medieval Historical romances (Belgrave House). Although never having penned a bestseller herself, Gellis is generally regarded as one of the foremost romance authors of her time, with “Romantic Times” founder, Kathryn Falk, naming Gellis as one of the most popular authors of romance in the 1960s-70s (Bissel). Following Gellis’ death in 2016, many of her long standing fans posted tributes online in memoriam, and one such individual was Elizabeth Chadwick, a blogger writing under the History Girls site, and herself a best-selling Medieval Historical fiction author. When Chadwick was still in her late teens, she picked up Bond of Blood at her local library, and spent the next few years engrossed in Gellis’ many medievals, passionate about Gellis’ novels due to Gellis’ strict adherence to what Chadwick, and many other readers as she cites, calls historical accuracy (Chadwick). “As a fledgling writer, she also taught me that it was possible to write romantic tales that were about people who were of their time. They thought like medieval people, they behaved like medieval people,” Chadwick explained, touching on the most essential component of Gellis’ narratives that drew her interest and made her a lifelong fan: historical accuracy (Chadwick). It is the nature of Gellis’ ability to compose heroes that are artfully articulated and historically accurate that attracted readers such as Chadwick, her friends, and the readers of her blog.
Domestic Violence: The Flip-Side of Timely Portrayal, or an Abusive Kink?
Gellis’ adherence to historical accuracy oftentimes veered towards a darker route, encompassing more patriarchal oppressive tendencies. When asked in an interview with All About Romance about her devotion to historical accuracy, Gellis responded that her heroes are imbued with the Medieval trait of virtue, which is demonstrative through their goodness of character and willingness to beat their heroines, because as she said, “women are evil and need to be controlled by men… a good beating makes a good wife” (Jorgenson). She defended this assertion in the face of offended modern sensibilities by remarking, “I am medievally correct, if not politically correct” (Jorgenson). It was Gellis’ perspective that in order to properly represent masculinity as the epitome of virtue, her heroes must act in accordance with what she considered to be the status quo morality of the Medieval period. Put simply, a virtuous hero must abuse his heroine.
A review published by Dear Author reiterated Gellis’ proclivity towards more graphic, but, as she told it, historically justified masculinity, asserting that Gellis’ novels are desirable because the immersive quality of her Medieval settings—namely in their portrayal of mass, and moralized violence against women—grant readers the ability to distance themselves from their “modern sensibilities” because they are consuming “a book set in a time when patriarchal power was more obviously wielded” (Allen). Regardless of contemporary criticism of such patriarchal behavior, Dear Author aptly raises the point that allows Gellis’ abusive representations of masculinity to stand: domestic abuse was commonplace in the Medieval period, and thus, morally justified,—even in modern iterations. Even Chadwick, who praised Gellis’ heroes, wrote that “Gellis’s skill lay in her ability to create a man who was drop dead gorgeous but at the same time the complete antithesis of the cardboard cutout he could so easily have become in less skilled hands… [with] believable flaws and insecurities” attributive towards their less-than civil relations with their heroines (Chadwick). Gellis herself seemed to take pride in the fact that her books are more rooted in this historical accuracy than in modern political correctness, and the Dear Author review along with Chadwick’s blog seem to agree, voicing that by employing a rougher, more violent and misogynistic masculinity trope, Gellis has actually drawn them into her reader base due to the perceived “accuracy” of that masculinity in Medieval times, making the act of reading it immersive, rather than distasteful to these two readers.
However, as much as Gellis attempts historical accuracy by imbuing her heroes with violent inclinations towards domestic abuse, Hunter and Garwood both take issue with this type of interpretation of Medieval history. While Garwood’s novels are often accused of historical inaccuracy due to the modern social issues it appears she addresses—often domestic abuse and violence—Garwood has remarked that her reviewers are missing her point in condemning these through the plot: “Well, surprise, [spousal violence] is not a contemporary issue” (Genzlinger). To Garwood, virtuous heroes must embody virtue through acts of protection, not violence. For Garwood’s heroes, the willingness to abuse their heroine, or any woman, is not a virtuous quality of masculinity. Garwood’s heroes are marked by their kindness towards their heroines and her villains are construed in the opposite; for instance, in one of her Medieval Historical romances, Saving Grace, the antagonist is “an evil man who believes women should be beaten into obedience,” thus portraying the very “virtuous” beliefs—that is the abuse of women—that Gellis so praised, in the villain rather than the hero. Garwood’s representations of masculinity in respect to her heroes resemble the stark opposite of Gellis’ dignifying domestic abuse; men who impose violence upon women in a Garwood romance can only be the villain (Genzlinger).
Hunter similarly disparages the notion that a virtuous hero is a violent man in her commentary about authors such as Gellis, and their proneness towards such representations of masculinity. When discussing the changes that have taken place in the Medieval Historical Romance genre since the prominence of such writers as Roberta Gellis, Hunter writes, “There are also changes that are very much for the good. We are all glad to be done with the rapes, aren’t we? Not seductions, mind you, but rape” (Walker). Hunter, like Garwood, attempts to represent masculinity in a way not only more attuned to modern sensibilities, but encompassing their twin views of virtue as a human goodness rather than timely behavior. When All About Romance reviewed her famed novel, Stealing Heaven, reviewer Blythe Smith commented that even when the heroine, Nesta, was disloyal to her hero, Marcus, “he doesn’t throw temper tantrums over it, as is the wont of so many alpha males. Instead he seeks to subvert her without conquering her or psychologically beating her into submission” (Smith). A hero like Marcus, who is unwilling to abuse his heroine, is what Smith characterized as “the worthy hero” (Smith). Garwood and Hunter define virtuous men in their representations of masculinity as a hero who is protective and unwilling to abuse his heroine.
Virtue and Violence: Synonymy or Juxtaposition?
Gellis, Garwood, and Hunter each claim to write historically accurate heroes, yet differ vehemently in their definitions of that accuracy. Although all three craft virtuous heroes, as per their understanding of virtue in the Medieval period, Gellis views virtue as a construct of violence and morally acceptable domestic abuse. Meanwhile, Garwood and Hunter abhor such representations of masculinity, not only vilifying those traits in their own characters, but at times criticizing earlier romance authors who glorified violence as embodying timely morality.
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