Finally, I have found a modern troubadour in these unromantic and rotten times that has done the old Breton lais justice. The Wolf and His King is how a roman de chevalerie should be retold.
I must confess that before this book I hadn’t read The Lays of Marie de France, which contains the knightly fairy tale this reimagined. I have owned the Penguin Classics edition for a long while, but spoilt for choice as we are in our modern world where books are abundant, I had let it languish someplace all dusty and forgotten. Out of memory, no plans to read it, one more Classic for my collection of knightly stories, my second favourite motif of all time. And when I saw this book’s release in paperback last year, the promotional blurb had made me think it was some sort of Little Red Riding Hood retelling but with men in shining armour and werewolves instead of Red and Big Bad Wolf.
I had never paid any attention to Bisclavret, and beyond the name I don’t think I knew its plotline before, it wasn’t one of the lais that I was familiar with by cultural osmosis and from mentions in other knightly books I had read. You could say I went into The Wolf and His King with no other expectations than a good knight’s tale. And it didn’t disappoint, I’m pleased to report. But one thing intrigued me…
Where had Finn Longman got the idea to retell a Medieval epic poem as a gay love story?
I do have reasons to be cautious with authors going for LGBTQ+ themes in stories set in the remote past, and not because LGBTQ+ people didn’t exist in those times—they always have—but because people from other periods didn’t share our concept of sexual identity and modernist transformations of old stories tend to result in unfortunate portrayals of characters supposedly from a different time & mores that are more likely to belong in a RuPaul drama than in the Middle Ages. It’s tricky to pull off minority representation right in a setting that is simply alien to our modern mindset.
Thus I decided to dust up my copy of The Lays of Marie de France and find out by myself.
As I read these lais (epic poems/songs with knightly and hero stories), all twelve of them, my mood alternated between Sansa Stark’s starry-eyed “There are true knights. All the stories can’t be lies” and Sandor Clegane’s cynical “Florian and Jonquil? A fool and his cunt” (begging your mercy to excuse his language, he’s not a housetrained dog). At first, it didn’t appear to be any different to the tonnes of knightly tales and poems by male troubadours: all these perfect knights, the best warriors, the most handsome, the most virtuous, the tallest, the strongest, the most creative at killing people a hundred ways with one blow, etc. Three lais in, and I was already bored and bracing myself for the dullest knighthood I had had the misfortune to read about.
And then, the fourth lai galloped in and swept me up and on for a ride.
As I read the tale of the wolf-man Bisclavret, my mood went from Oh to Oh-oh to Oh! I can now confidently assert that Finn Longman didn’t make it up out of thin air and with zero basis for his interpretation. Even a scatterbrained little chit of a girl like me with a garbage gaydar that’s more broken than useful can see what Mr Longman saw.
Bisclavret shifted my focus and made me see the rest of the lais—and this retelling—under a different light. Maybe it’s that the person authoring these was a poetess, but after the fourth lai I couldn’t but notice the same thing I had noticed about the poetry by the Countess de Diá, my first encounter with knightly epic poems by a woman: all troubadours male and female write the knights the same way, but the female troubadours write the ladies differently. In Madame de France’s lais, all the men are cookie-cutter, to borrow an American idiom, but the women…
Oh, the women! You have saints and sinners here, not just unattainable semi-goddesses for the knight to long for at a safe distance; there’s adulteresses planning to murder their husband to marry their lover, ladies in a polyamorous relationship with four knights (what did she have for breakfast for such stamina? I want to know!), gossipers that claim having twins means you slept with two chaps at once (I knew biology classes didn’t exist back then, but…), a noble wife that leaves her husband when she sees he loves another, a scorned woman who calls the knight that reject her advances gay (a millennium later, we haven’t changed in this sense, eh?), and the surprise of surprises… a woman dared write a story that is obviously male-on-male love.
I suppose we girls have always been into slash fics.
What a sweet love story this one was. I know many girls who are into M/M fiction prefer their stories with more jalapeños, but not me. I loved the quietness and the unassuming nature of the relationship between the Baron and the King. I loved that the King falls first whilst it takes the Baron an age and a half to realise his feelings. I loved that the King actually rules and has a life outside what his Wolf does. I loved that there’s a reason for the betrayal beyond Evil-for-the- LOLs.
And above all, I loved that the world, although imaginary and not real 12th Century Bretagne (as the author himself is quick to clarify) does feel real and authentic. The King, although aware of his inclination towards men and not ladies, isn’t an Identity Politics Victim; he doesn’t call himself “gay” and is aware that sooner or later he will have to marry a woman for throne and kingdom, and he doesn’t wring limp-wristed hands over the Baron doing the same. He pines with dignity, fully acknowledging what he can and can’t do to satisfy his desires in a way that befits his social standing. And that is accurate for a nobleman from the time.
Longman didn’t neglect to show realistic glimpses into what kind of court and kingdom this one could have been, as much as it’s possible to show a society through very limited POVs (only the King and the Baron are narrators, so don’t expect expansive worldbuilding). There’s even a confessor that is aware of the King’s sexuality, and religion is given its proper place as it should be in such a society, with prayers in Latin and faith struggles. You can tell Longman does know its subject and the time period he is emulating.
I love this kind of accuracy that’s not required but is made an effort for out of love for art and history. I mean, this is a fictional Brittany in a fictional period of its history with fantastical elements aplenty (the source lais have shapeshifters and magic like fairy tales), and Finn Longman could’ve made up as much ahistorical or anachronistic stuff as he wanted, such is the freedom of writing Fantasy as opposed to Historical Fiction, but he chose to make his novel as plausible within its historical context as he knew how.
Are there changes from the Lai of Bisclavret to The Wolf and His King? Of course, that’s what retellings are for, but none major or that would go against what is plausible within the confines drawn by the lai. The plot of the poem is short and straightforward, and there’s enough room for padding it up for a full novel, and there is where changes and differences appear. For example, the chaplain is an invented character, and the wife’s lover from the poem has a different sort of connection in the novel, and the wife’s portrayal is kinder than in the poem, her motives more nuanced. And, overall, both the Baron and the King are more fleshed out and have a more defined personality, especially the King, who was my favourite character.
Naturally, every knight has a dragon to slay. I believe the biggest book dragon for most readers will be the writing, which didn’t bother me in the least even though I admit it was odd and unusual. The two POVs here are each written in a distinct style: one is in Second Person present tense (the “You” chapters) and the other alternates between Third Person Limited (the “Him” chapters) and First Person (the versified chapters). That could make reading it in a smooth fashion rather challenging, and although I got used to this mishmash of styles rapidly, that won’t be the case for others. It has to be exceptional bad writing for me to be bothered by narration styles, and for me this was simply a cute authorial quirk, but there’s people for whom the simple oddity and unfamiliarity with a writer’s style is enough to be kicked out of immersion.
The pace of the Wolf phase is what would bother me a bit instead. The King, my favourite narrator, worked so much better contrasted with the Baron, because his quieter, more reflective tone was a counter to the other man’s quicker step, lady problems, and overall more macho-man lifestyle. In my mind, the King was the “lady” to the Baron that was the “knight.” The Baron was more imperfect as a person, more flawed, you can even see it coming that he will have his share of blame for the Wolf phase, and you can see more of the villain’s side and motives through his POV. But when the Wolf phase arrives, that counter is gone, and the world feels more sterile and the King is a tad too perfect in isolation, the pace of the story feels faster and more summed-up without a narrator on the other side, and it can feel like the Big Trouble is solved too quickly, the Bad Guys are punished expediently, and everything is right again, all seen from one side only.
I also wasn’t a fan of the Count’s son plotline. What was that in here for? To make us Bisclavret-or-bullet shippers shake fists at that interloper for stealing time and space in the King’s life, probably. But thank goodness that there was no triangle, I would’ve volunteered this book to my cat for shredding practice if that had happened.
Longman gives me hope for more stories of this kind, as there’s some retellings coming up that also have M/M twists on old stories and legends that I dare hope will be handled as skillfully and tastefully. Will he ever undertake another of the lais for a future book? I don’t know, but there’s at least one more lai that could be queered up (enough hints, though not as blatant as in Bisclavret) if he were so inclined. I have many questions for the author, maybe I’ll be fortunate enough to have them answered one day. For now, I’m very happy with this story, that has won the Best Retelling of 2025 title from us.
I received a copy of the Deluxe Limited Edition releasing today via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
