The two sentences that indicate that Sir Walter Scott's <em>Ivanhoe </em>is a work of historical fiction are B. Princess Matilda, though a daughter of the King King of Scotland, and afterwards both Queen of England, niece to Edgar Atheling, and mother to the Empress of Germany, the daughter, the wife, and the mother of monarchs, was obliged, during her early residence for education in England, to assume the veil of a nun, as the only means of escaping the licentious pursuit of the Norman nobles, and D. It was a matter of public knowledge, they said, that after the conquest of King William, his Norman followers, elated by so great a victory, acknowledged no law but their own wicked pleasure, and not only despoiled the conquered Saxons of their lands and their goods, but invaded the honour of their wives and of their daughters with the most unbridled license.
The works of Sir Walter Scott represent the foundations of historical fiction. In <em>Ivanhoe </em>(1820)<em>, </em>the author depicts medieval England and the conflicts between Jews and Christians. The story is set in 12th-century England, it is set in the past, an important characteristic of the historical novel. Furthermore, these two sentences include notable historical figures, Princess Matilda and King William, another essential element of this type of fiction. In these fragments, there are allusions to real history. As the first sentence establishes, Princess Matilda was the daughter of Henry I and the claimant to the English throne during the Anarchy and, as the second sentence states, there was a strong feud between Normans and Saxons, an struggle for the control of England, after the Norman Conquest and William the Conqueror's claim to the throne in the 11th century.<em> Ivanhoe</em> tells the<em> </em>story of a remaining Anglo-Saxon noble family at a time when most nobles in England were Normans.
