By Right of Arms

By Right of Arms is a 1986 historical romance by Robyn Carr, published by Little, Brown and Company. It was written before Carr became known for contemporary small-town fiction.

The novel opens on a military conquest. Sir Hyatt takes the stronghold of De la Noye from the French, and Lady Aurelie, who was married as a child to a weak and obsessive man and is now widowed, becomes one of the people seized. Her position is decided by her father's betrayal rather than her own preference, since marrying the English knight is offered as the alternative to being homeless. The campaign is dated to the fourteenth century in Aquitaine, under King Edward and his son the Black Prince, so the seizure of one stronghold is a small part of a much larger war.

Hyatt's motive is political. Aurelie's loyalty and discretion are qualities that could help bind the province, so the marriage is a tool of occupation as much as a romance, and the book has to reconcile that with the private relationship it develops. Carr wrote a number of medieval and historical romances before turning to the contemporary work she is now best known for.