Sir H Rider Haggard

Montezuma's Daughter Sir H Rider Haggard

Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard

Montezuma's Daughter, first published in 1893, is a novel by the Victorian adventure writer H. Rider Haggard. Narrated in the first person by Thomas Wingfield, an Englishman whose adventures include the murder of his mother, an encounter with the Spanish Inquisition, shipwreck and slavery. Eventually, Thomas unwittingly joins a Spanish expedition to New Spain and the novel tells a fictionalized story of the earliest interactions between natives and European explorers. This includes a series of misunderstandings, prejudices on the part of the Spaniards and, ultimately, open warfare.

Throughout the story, Thomas meets and marries the daughter of the native king from whom the novel takes its title, and settles in Mexico. The war destroys his native family and eventually Thomas takes revenge on the antagonist and returns to England.

While Haggard was in Mexico in 1891, researching the book, he received news that his only child had died, which dealt a severe blow and severely affected his health. Haggard later wrote that Montezuma's Daughter was the last of his best works "otherwise it was repetition as far as fiction is concerned". Like many Victorian adventure novels, this one sometimes treats the natives as naive and barbaric, but this is a flaw that Haggard explicitly points out in his main character.