Decades before Game of Thrones shook the fantasy genre in the 90s, Dorothy Dunnett was writing exciting and ambitious historical fiction set in the Renaissance era: starring her first creation and one of the great bad boys of the genre, Francis Crawford of Lymond. In the first of these books, The Game of Kings, Lymond returns to his homeland of Scotland and sets his mother's castle on fire. Why would he do this? Is he a traitor to his country or a secret bleeding-heart patriot? Sword duels, heart-rending melodrama and copious amounts of period detail await you in this series, a perennial favorite of authors ranging from George R. R. Martin to Ellen Kushner to Joanna Bourne.