Sydney Smith has been obsessed with fiction since childhood. Leo's Daughters came out of her girlhood love of fairy tales and her puzzlement over the king's daughter, who was usually the hero's reward for killing the dragon or ridding the land of some plague or terrible enchantment. She used to wonder what the king's daughter felt about being handed over like that, especially as she never believed the story's careless assertion that the girl in question was happy to marry this fortune-hunting stranger.
