Tea at Trianon: Historical Accuracy in Fiction

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, July 21, 2008

Historical Accuracy in Fiction

Yesterday Revisited has some thoughts on how the integrity of historical figures should be respected when writing novels. I could not agree more. Just because it is fiction does not mean it is a free-for-all. To quote Susan Higginbotham:

I'm not the sort of purist who goes ballistic when someone in a historical novel wears slashed sleeves a century before they were fashionable (though I'd rather not see such sartorial blunders, which are easy enough to avoid), but I do believe firmly that historical novelists should depict real people as accurately as possible. I harp a great deal on one pro-Richard III novel where William, Lord Hastings is portrayed as drugging and raping a virgin peasant girl, who later dies of the effects of the drug. Such a depiction, which has no justification in the historical record, is, simply put, character assassination.