Tender Is the Tyrant

Tender Is the Tyrant is a 1967 Mills & Boon romance by Violet Winspear, published as a 189-page paperback.

Lauri's circumstances are given in two sentences. She was a ballet student sharing a quiet household with her aunt until Maxim di Corte arrived, and she is then taken to his palace in Venice, where her training is organised around his demands. The description treats submission as a professional question before it becomes a personal one, which is the shape these novels used. She is living quietly with her aunt in Downhollow when Maxim di Corte arrives, and within a short time she has been taken to his palace in Venice to train under him.

What Lauri gains, according to the copy, is an understanding of the emotion behind the technique, so the book frames discipline as the route to expression rather than as its opposite. Winspear wrote many titles for Mills & Boon, and the Venetian setting and the master's authority are characteristic of her work, which was read by a large audience in paperback. The question the copy leaves open is whether she will submit to him as a dancer only, which is the line the novel works along.