OK, this is from a fantasy novel (or connected collection of short stories, depending on how you look at it) from 1971.
Quote:
The girl was beautiful, and rich, and inordinately proud.
"No!" she continually insisted, discarding suitor after suitor. "I wish to be loved for myself, for what I am!"
"As you wish, so be it," said the traveller, who had just come in the guise of a pilgrim to one of the jousts organized that this lady might view her potential husbands. Twenty-one men had died in the lists that afternoon, and she had thrown her glove in the champion's face and gone to supper.
The next time there were jousts announced, no challenger came, and the girl pulled a face and demanded that more heralds go forth. Her father summoned a hundred heralds. The news went abroad. And personable young men said in every city, "Fight for a stuck-up shrew like her? Ho-ho! I've better ways to pass my time, and so've my friends!"
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