Marfisa

She is by turns fearful and jealous, self-effacing and wholly exacting, forgiving and unforgiving, variable as the wind and yet constant as the fixed star, just as if she had never donned armor.

Even Marfisa, who in some ways is the counterpart of Rogermo, is never brutally masculine, and shows her saving graces on occasions with delightful unexpectedness, as when she forbears to hang Brunello.

The Amazons themselves are made quite reasonable, even in their savage laws against men, granted the original provocation.

The devotion of Ariosto to women and the honor he paid to women in his great poem are plainly genuine and sincere, and in marked contrast to the courtly flattery bestowed on his contemptible patron, Cardinal Ippolito.

The chief of the besieging forces was Agricon, King of Tartary, to whom Angelica had been promised by her father in marriage, and he was trying to get by force what he could not obtain by favor.

And on the side of Angelica were many champions, her suitors, and most notable of all, Orlando.

Against her were arrayed the kings and chiefs whom she had scorned, and amongst her enemies was also Marfisa, the fiercest of warrior queens, and unsurpassed in courage and prowess by any knight in that or any other age.

And the siege of Albracca is as famous as the siege of Troy.