The Knave and the Moon draws heavily on a class of European folk ballads and fairy tales commonly gathered under the English titles “The Outlandish Knight” or “Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight.” In most variants, a villainous knight entices a maiden with promises of marriage, leading her to a remote location to murder her as he has previous victims. The clever heroine, however, often turns the tables, tricking the knight and killing him instead. This framework is clearly reflected in King Benji, who lures Sybil with the promise of a reformed kingdom, only to entrap her in a forced marriage to cement his own power. He is the treacherous suitor seeking to possess the heroine, while Sybil is the quick-witted heroine who defeats her captor by turning his own methods against him—just as, in one of the ballad’s most popular versions, the heroine slits her would-be killer’s throat with his own knife. Other parallels abound: In “The Outlandish Knight,” the knight/kidnapper tells the young woman that he has killed seven other women and that she is to be the eighth, just as Benji reminds Sybil of her role as the sixth in a line of sacrificially murdered Diviners by calling her “Six”; meanwhile, the gowan flowers that function as a motif throughout this novel allude to another version of the folk ballad, “The Gowans Sae Gae” (gowan is a Scottish and Northern English term for wild flowers, most often daisies or dandelions). The novel is steeped in gothic elements that highlight its connection to medieval legend, such as Sybil’s imprisonment in Castle Luricht and the decaying cathedral, creating a dark romantasy that questions traditional notions of chivalry and heroism.