Ivanhoe

Wilfred of Ivanhoe comes home from the Third Crusade in disguise, a pilgrim's robe over a disinherited Saxon knight his own father won't speak to — Cedric cut him off for following the Norman King Richard and for loving Lady Rowena, whom Cedric wants married to someone else entirely.

At the tournament at Ashby, a masked knight calling himself "Desdichado" — the Disinherited — beats the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert and the other Norman champions before revealing himself as Ivanhoe. Wounded, he's nursed by Rebecca, a Jewish healer travelling with her father Isaac, a moneylender, and when their party is captured and held at Torquilstone Castle, it's Robin of Locksley and a disguised King Richard who lead the siege that frees them. Bois-Guilbert, obsessed with Rebecca, hides her at the Templar preceptory, where the order's Grand Master finds her and puts her on trial for sorcery — on the theory that she has bewitched Bois-Guilbert. She demands trial by combat, and Ivanhoe — barely able to sit a horse — rides to fight for her.

It's the book that made Robin Hood a supporting character in everyone's imagination of the period, and it's for readers who want the tournament-and-siege version of medieval England rather than a realistic one. The honest reservation is the ending: Cedric finally consents to Ivanhoe marrying Rowena, who has almost nothing to do for the whole book, while Rebecca — braver, smarter, and the character the plot actually runs on — says goodbye and leaves the country with her father because England won't have her.