Blood fights against his slavery, becomes romantically involved with Arabella, and ultimately saves the city. The use of history is the foremost element of the genre, providing an exotic and remote setting, an emphasis on heroic deeds and definitive battles, an authentic and believable story, a lesson that history has meaning and purpose, with characters that become catalysts for progress, able to shape destiny out a defining crisis. The historical theme sometimes is so strong that it becomes deterministic, and the characters act as if they are agents of destiny.
History becomes legend and myth and fable, a vehicle for moral tales of virtue and valor.
The placing of characters on sailing ships, on pirate islands, riding horses, swimming, running on the beach, is crucial to the narrative's structure and creates an authentic alternative reality that gives the genre its epic nature. Battles are choreographed and progressive, emphasizing thrill and victory rather than terror and death. The adventure hero is a whole person, ideal in all aspects, attractive, chivalrous, romantic, nimble, quick-thinking, able to use disguise, lively, courageous, able to earn loyalty of followers and love of women, and in general personifies the mythical ideals of the culture. The villain portrays the opposite traits of the hero, disrupts peaceful lives, causes war, personifies the failings of the culture. The conflict between protagonist and antagonist is clear and central to the narrative.