John of Gaunt III's rule was becoming unpopular due to high taxation and his affair with Alice Perrers, political opinion closely associated the Duke of Lancaster with the failing government of the 1370s. Furthermore, while King Edward and the Prince of Wales were popular heroes due to their successes on the battlefield, John of Gaunt had not won equivalent military renown that could have bolstered his reputation. Although he fought in the Battle of Nájera (1367), for example, his later military projects proved unsuccessful. When Edward III died in 1377 and John's ten-year-old nephew succeeded as Richard II of England, John's influence strengthened.
The Mistress of the Copper Mountain kind and nature. She compares the character with Mephistopheles, because a human needs to wager his soul with her in order to get the ultimate knowledge, however, the Mistress does not force anyone to abandon their moral values, and therefore "is not painted in dark colours". Lyudmila Skorino believed that she represented the nature of the Urals, which inspires a creative person with its beauty. The Mistress of the Copper Mountain The Mistress of the Copper Mountain (), also known as The Malachite Maid, is a legendary creature from Slavic mythology and a Russian fairy tale character, the mountain spirit