Sumer is icumen in

"It was an age that enjoyed transvestism and [...] bisexuality. A great deal of Spenser's Faerie Queene concerns the exploits of the Amazonian knights Britomart and Belphoebe. Britomart, like Viola, has to woo a lady in order, we are told, to keep up her disguise. She seems to have been very convincing."

-- Maureen Duffy, The Erotic World of Faery

To mark the summer solstice we have some wild and riotous fantasy in store. Brawny knights dressed fetchingly in dainty frocks. Fair maidens clad in plate armour and knocking down opponents like ninepins at the joust. Courtly gatherings where honeyed words are more dangerous than poison. Tourneys that are tests of virtue as much as of mettle.

Come back tomorrow for all the cross-dressing, gender-bending, sword-clashing, monster-hunting, pseudo-medieval action you could ask for, as filtered through the triple lenses of Thomas Malory, Greg Stafford and, most of all, Edmund Spenser. Yes, it's The Faerie Queene as it might have been reimagined in an OSR module of the 1980s. Farewell for now, friends, I'll be gone; our queen and all her elves come here anon.