Montezuma's daughter

The British:

• Thomas Wingfield is the protagonist of the novel, half English, half Spaniard, who embarks on a dangerous journey to find and punish the killer of his mother.
• Jeffrey Wingfield is Thomas's elder brother and his rival in the fight for the hand and heart of Lily Bozard.
• Mary Wingfield - Thomas's younger sister, later - the wife of Wilfrid Bozard.
• Lily Bozard is the daughter of an English squire, beloved and bride of Thomas Wingfield.
• Wilfried Bozard is the elder brother of Lily Bozard, Mary's husband.

Spaniards:

• Luis de Garcia is a Spanish noblewoman who fled to England with her lover, mother of Thomas, Jeffrey and Mary.
• Andres de Fonseca is the keeper of secrets of the city of Seville, providing various services to people in a difficult situation.
• Juan de Garcia is a cousin of Luisa and her ex-fiancé.
• Isabella de Siguenza is a nun whom Juan de Garcia seduced and abandoned.
• Hernan Cortes - Spanish conquistador , conqueror of Mexico.
• Bernal Diaz - Spanish conquistador, member of the expedition of Hernan Cortes.

Indians:

• Montezuma II - Emperor of the Aztecs .
• Otomi is the daughter of the Aztec emperor Montezuma and a woman from the Otomi people, the sister of Kuautemok, the wife of Thomas Wingfield.
• Kuautemok is the nephew of Montezuma, and after the death of his uncle, the last Aztec emperor.
• Quitlauac is the brother of Montezuma, who ruled Anahuac for a short time.
• Marina is Cortes’s lover.

The novel takes place in the 16th century. The main character’s father, an English nobleman named Wingfield, married the Spanish noblewoman Luis de Garcia and took her with him to England against the will of her family. After 20 years, Juan de Garcia, cousin and ex-boyfriend of Luis, arrives in England. Juan and Luis meet in a grove near the Wingfield estate, Juan offers his beloved to return with him to Spain, and when he is refused, he kills her. Before his death, Luis predicts that Juan de Garcia will die at the hands of her son.

A little later, de Garcia accidentally meets Thomas Wingfield, the youngest son of Louise, and, remembering the prediction, decides to kill him. However, Thomas is lucky - he defeats the Spaniard and ties him to a tree. Thomas still does not know that de Garcia was killed by his mother, so calmly leaves the enemy and goes on a date with his lover Lily Beauzard. Juan de Garcia manages to free himself and escape. When the circumstances of Luisa’s death are clarified, Thomas’s father accuses his son of the fact that his mother’s killer escaped retribution through his fault. Thomas swears to his father that he will pursue de Garcia until he finds and kills him. Before leaving for Spain, Thomas says goodbye to Lily, and they swear allegiance to each other.

Thomas arrives in Seville , where he enters the service of Andres de Fonseca, a specialist in solving all kinds of delicate problems, who is aware of all the secrets and intrigues of the city. A few months later, Thomas accidentally meets de Garcia, but their guard begins to interrupt the city guard, and de Garcia again manages to slip away. Thomas returns to his life as an assistant to Fonseca, but the elderly Spaniard soon dies, bequeathing all his enormous fortune to Thomas, to whom he has become attached. Thomas sends the money to England, at the disposal of Lily Bozard, and he himself, learning that de Garcia went to America, embarks on a long voyage to the shores of the New World .

The ship is wrecked. Thomas and several other survivors drift in the open ocean in a boat until a Spanish ship picks them up. By fateful coincidence, one of the officers on the Spanish ship is Juan de Garcia. According to him, Thomas is locked in a hold with black slaves , and when a fever epidemic begins on a ship, he is thrown overboard. Thomas manages to escape in a barrel, which was thrown out of the ship like garbage, and get to the shore, where he is found by local Indians. At first they want to sacrifice a white man (teul), but the nephew of the Aztec king Montezuma - Prince Kuautemok - insists that the theul must be brought to the king. During his trip to Tenochtitlan, Thomas manages to learn the Aztec language and make friends with Prince Kuautemok. At the court of Montezuma, Thomas meets Otomi, the daughter of Montezuma, the princess of the Otomi people, and sympathy arises between them. By decision of the priests, Thomas was forced to depict the incarnation of the god Tescatlipoca during the year, and after that he should be sacrificed. Otomi (as part of the ritual) becomes Thomas's wife, although he confesses to her that he loves another. Meanwhile, the Spanish conquistadors , led by Cortes , are advancing deeper into the Aztec possessions and besieging Tenochtitlan. Otomi voluntarily agrees to share the fate of his husband and lays next to him on a sacrificial stone, and Thomas confesses her love to her. The conquistadors who seized the theocalls interrupt the sacrifice at the last moment. Ironically, Thomas is saved by Juan de Garcia, who at first did not recognize his enemy. Thomas manages to escape. Since a second sacrifice will not be pleasing to the gods, the Aztecs accept Thomas no longer as a teul, but as an equal to himself.

Cortes takes the Emperor Montezuma captive, and after the death of the Aztec ruler, power passes to Quautemoc. Having lost their trump card in the face of the royal hostage, the Spaniards leave Tenochtitlan. Quautemock, Thomas, and several faithful Indians take Montezuma's treasures from the city and bury them in a cave so that the Spaniards do not get gold. Soon, the conquistodors returned with the army of the Tlaskalan tribe hostile to the Aztecs and besieged Tenochtitlan. The Indians, led by Kuautemokom defend the city for as long as possible, but in the end forced to surrender to the mercy of the winner. Cortes orders Juan de Garcia to torture Thomas and Quautemock to find out where Montezuma’s treasures are hidden, but this does not bring results. The Indiana Marina , Cortez’s lover, who is linked with Thomas by a bond of friendship, helps him and Otomi escape from the city ruined and destroyed by the Spaniards.

Fugitives find shelter in the city of Pines. For 14 years, Thomas ruled the Otomi people with his wife, until the Spaniards, under the command of Bernal Diaz, besieged the city. Thomas learns that among the Spaniards and his enemy is Juan de Garcia. Realizing that there is no way to salvation, women led by Otomi perform a bloody ritual, sacrificing the captured Tlaskalans to the Witsilopocht (the Spanish captives Thomas managed to secretly release), and commit suicide (all except Otomi). Thomas announces to the Spaniards the surrender of the city in return for saving the lives of his family and his people. Juan de Garcia kills the only surviving son of Thomas, after which the old enemies finally meet for the last fight on the top of the volcano. De Garcia loses his mind, fights with ghosts and eventually falls into the mouth of a volcano. Otomi, without suffering the death of his son and the changed relationship of the spouse (after Thomas saw the ritual of sacrifice, he forbade Otomi to call him his husband), takes poison. Before her death, she says goodbye to Thomas and asks him to return to his homeland, to that girl whom he loved all these years.

Having lost everything that connected him with the world of Indians, Thomas returns to England. Lily Bozard, who has remained faithful to her lover, whom everyone has considered dead for 20 years, forgives him treason and life with another woman and agrees to become his wife. Further life of Thomas takes place in peace and next to his beloved wife, although the memories of Otomi and their dead children continue to torment him. Towards the end of his life, after the death of Lily, Thomas decides to write the story of his life. The story ends in 1588.

The novel was translated into Russian and became popular in Russia even before the revolution . From 1912 to 2011, the novel was reprinted in Russian dozens of times with a total circulation of at least 10 million copies. Nikolai Gumilev ^[1] has repeatedly addressed Haggardian images in his work.

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