Henry d'Almain didn't really want to fight in the Second Barons' War,  because the leaders of the two sides were both his uncles, and when his uncle Simon de Montfort was killed and mutilated in the last battle, he wasn't part of that, so it was really unseemly for his cousins, the sons of Simon de Montfort, to find him in a church in Italy and slaughter him while he was clinging to the altar. As vengeance goes, it was a really stupid vengeance that didn't settle anything, and only got the de Montfort boys into more trouble. (Their father wouldn't have done such a thing; the de Montforts were going downhill, that generation.)  Anne wrassles with her grudging respect for Simon de Montfort, and Michelle finds a really badly behaved Victorian scholar. Because bad behavior transcends the Middle Ages.