Historians engage in a quest for the truth about the past, and in a great many cases, they report on customs and laws that seem insensitive by modern standards. Inevitably, Clancy's recreation of fifth- and sixth-century Britain turns up practices that seem insensitive to modern readers. Romans often sold Britons as slaves on the open market, and Arthurian legends portray women, such as Guenevere, as mere love objects for knights.

Whereas historians traditionally write in an objective style, Clancy chooses to deal directly and subjectively with the sensitive issues unearthed by his historical probings. When, for example, he writes about a Roman massacre of Druids in the first century A.D., he comments: I am not soothed by being told that Agricola and Tacitus were civilized men horrified by such Druid practices as human sacrifice...If I must choose, I prefer religious zeal to cold-blooded social...