Under Two Flags

The novel that invented the Foreign Legion romance and shaped a century of imitators. Bertie Cecil, aristocratic Guardsman and darling of London society, sacrifices everything to protect two people he loves: his bankrupt younger brother and the married woman who has captured his heart. He abandons his glittering world for the scorching deserts of Algeria, enlisting in the Chasseurs d'Afrique where survival demands everything a gentleman possesses. There, amid the camp followers and hardened soldiers, he finds salvation in the form of two women who love him: Cigarette, the brave and unconventional camp follower, and the mysterious Princess Venetia. The triangle they form became the template for a hundred years of romantic imitations. The book endures because it captures something primal about honor and sacrifice, love stripped of social pretense, and the question of what a man will risk for duty and desire.