This is an odd thing about Book IV and the relationship between Dido and Aeneas. After Juno engineers the cave get together, Dido is somehow not only the victim but somehow a perpetrator. That is, she gets together with Aeneas but somehow the overall sense of the book is that she’s done something worth shame.

“Coniugium vocat; hoc praetexit nomine culpam” (Book IV, 172)

The translation is “She calls [their tryst] marriage and with that name veils her sin.”

Well, this is fucked up, big time.

So what I did is turn this around. Instead of my female protagonist feeling guilty about the get together, it is the male protagonist who covers his shame of leaving (as Aeneas did) with the word, please.