The story
The masked warrior who kept saving him was his wife.
Eleanor was born a commoner and has spent years quietly protecting Duke Adrian and his kingdom, while he decided her loyalty was ambition and that she married him for the title. He humiliates her in public and casts her off, and she finally stops trying. Only once she is gone does he find out who the mysterious warrior was. He still does not know she is the long lost heir to a powerful empire, which she is about to reclaim.