Cristal, LOL, OK although I must say that the love plot really isn’t that important in the novel. But then Hollywood adapted Quo Vadis as a love story set in the Roman Empire, while the book is about advising the Poles to abandon violent resistance and fight for their freedom rather through constant adherence to their convictions, so why not?!

Here it is:

*** spoiler warning ***

First some vocabulary:

• Cossacks - warriors living in Ukraine. They were the light cavalry or infantry, there were many peoples living in Poland and the main ones often had their own kind of army, applying their major skills.
• Winged Hussars – Polish heavy cavalry (the Hungarian was light)
• Poland – hmm, what in English was called Poland all the time, here was called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or the Republic of Both Nations. Together with feuds it constituted of today’s Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, part of Estonia, and the Baltic Russia. Ukraine and Belarus were then called Rus or Ruthenia, and there were plans of creating the country the Republic of Three Nations, giving Rus equal position. The home war was about changing the plans.
• Ukraine – the word Ukraina literally means “at the borders” because they were at the foremost south-eastern part of the country. Here’s a map They were bordering with the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire. So then those were our most problematic borders as Russia practically wasn’t yet an issue, being a young, weak and sparcely inhabited country without even their own borders determined, and Prussia was our feud.

The book starts with the rebellion in Ukraine. Yurko Bohun is a Cossack commander, who has been madly in love with Helena for some years now. So in order to stay with her he doesn’t join his fellow men in their fight. She is a Ukrainian princess, which in practice means she has some property. Her parents are dead and she remains under the care of a woman and her sons. They promise her to Yurko, and in return he agrees that after he marries Helena he will allow them to remain there. She is Ukrainian as in she’s Orthodox, prays in Ukrainian etc, so she’s not polonised. Which is important because the story is about the unity of Poland and Ukraine. She hates Yurko and is afraid of him, thinking he’s a dangerous man.

In the meantime Jan Skrzetuski, a hussars commander, returns from Crimea. On his way he encounters several men trying to kill a nobleman. He saves the man’s life. Later it appears that the man was Chmielnicki – villain #1 in Poland, and a national hero of Ukraine, who started the entire rebellion. Skrzetuski doesn’t yet know about it. On his way home he encounters Helena and her companion. Their carriage broke while crossing a river. They help them, and it’s love from the first sight. He’s a lost man. Soon after he asks for her hand. The woman and her sons at first refuse saying they already promised her to Yurko, but Jan says that it was against her will and threatens to throw them out if they don’t consent. Helena is overjoyed because of course the feeling is mutual.

That happens in the first minutes of the film, and now we can skip all the rest of it as he won’t see her again until just before the end, lol. In the meantime she will be kidnapped by Yurko, who will find Jan’s love letters to her and kill the people she lives with, she’ll be escaping with Skrzetuski’s friend, dressed as a peasant boy, held hostage by a witch – Yurko’s acquaintance etc. Jan will go on missions as an envoy, fight several battles, be hold as a POW, looking for her, then ceasing looking for her to defend the country, then looking for her again etc. At the end they finally meet and marry with special king’s blessings, and Jan will release Yurko who was caught as a POW during a battle.

THE END

I told you it’s not about love! But since it’s a historical novel it depicts many real people and events. It was actually written mostly in the US, so there are some gross inaccuracies. Mostly the Ukrainian steppes are stylised after the American prairie, and the Cossacks after Indians.