When her 16 year old son runs away from their Paris home, Christine separately convinces two former lovers that they are each the boy's father. Depardieu and Richard's expert timing and interplay allow this tender farce to unfold with a breakneck pace.

In the 11th century, the powerful Duke William of Ghent sends his most trusted knight and a troop of warriors to guard Normandy’s coastal settlements from plunder and pillage by Frisian raiders. Smitten with Bronwyn, the foster child of village elder Odins, the war lord is tempted simply to take her, under the feudal custom of droit du seigneur, but finds he is falling in love.