The English plays, however, formed a type unknown in France or anywhere else on sea or land. The plots of all the "Sieges," "Rivals," and "Conquests" are mainly concerned with love, which inspires heroic sentiment and valor, encounters much jealousy and intrigue, runs counter to friendship and honor, and works its sorrows and joys among persons illustrious in history. In the end, the hero, a man of prodigious valor and most exemplary honor, weds the heroine, who is equally skilled in the artificial code of honor, while the deaths of the ambitious villain and the evil princess, in love with the hero and seeking revenge on the heroine, provide a tragic catastrophe. The persons are usually historical, English, Classical, or Eastern, and a little historical fact was intended to give a kind of grandeur to the story. The Alexanders and Montezumas, however, have manners and sentiments drawn partly from the courts of Louis and Charles and partly from the world of romance. The curious conception of honor as superhuman valor and magnanimity combined with formal propriety leads to impossibilities like those in a child's book of wonders. Duels and rescues take the place of pitched fields; the valorous champion puts to rout an army, exchanges compliments and courtesies with the grace of a fashion-plate, boasts and rants in Cambyses' vein, and is near to expire in an ecstasy of declamation when the heroine extends her hand for him to kiss. The two rival lovers and the two rival ladies generally play their game of jealousy, ambition, and wounded honor during a conquest or a siege; but world and empire count for naught. _Amor vincit omnia._