Castle Dangerous is the realisation of a thirty-year old project of Scott's to retell a story found in Barbour's Brus. Set in the early fourteenth century during the Scottish Wars of Independence, an English knight for a love wager commits himself to defend Douglas Castle against Scottish attempts to retake it. The ballad-like story embraces intriguing elements including national rivalry, and the idealisation and betrayal of love. The Douglas area, seen as an almost surrealist landscape of ravines, trenches, and tombs, and in abysmal weather, forms an appropriate setting for an impressively bleak narrative.