When writing historical fiction, how important is it to get the history exactly right? (Quora)

How far is history an assemblage of facts, and how far is it a product of more modern ways of thinking?

Often, what we think of as history is mostly legend, primarily viewed through the eyes of prejudice, either favourable or unfavourable.

The Romantic Movement of the early 19th Century seriously distorted modern perspectives on various historical people and events. Their legends turned outlaws into heroes and discovered hitherto well-concealed hearts of gold beating in the breasts of black villains. The real Richard the Lionheart was a bad king. Rob Roy ran a protection racket. Quite a lot of people nowadays think the jury should still be out on whether the Princes in the Tower were murdered at all, let alone who murdered them.

A very big mistake is to attach a modern grievance to an imagined and highly embroidered ‘historic wrong’. Not only are we not our ancestors, we scarcely even know who our ancestors were, even when we know their names.

After the rise of nationalism in the Middle Ages, it became almost impossible to view the events that gave birth to nationalism without erroneously inferring that the effects were somehow self-contradictorily part of the cause. All over Europe, aristocrats and heroes who were probably mostly interested in their own power and security are today looked upon as fathers of their nations.

We also have a natural tendency to isolate our own country from the wider context and inflate people and events of local significance into towering giants. Then we wonder why the rest of the world hasn’t heard of them, and view their ignorance as somehow disrespectful.

This same near-sightedness also causes us to identify with ancient peoples who lived where we now live, even though they may have been swept away by history, leaving little behind for us to look at with wonder, and having no connection with us today except an accident of geography.

I would urge caution when writing about historical events in a manner designed to stir modern passions. You don’t know the truth. Even if you are trying to get at the truth, you aren’t going to succeed. Modern people don’t know the truth either. That means they may take your word for it. To precipitate modern events on supposed historical grounds would be bad enough even if you were right. If you are wrong, and worse, in some cases, not even trying to be right, or deliberately falsifying events, is not a good thing.

So write about imaginary people in reasonably-accurate historic settings, by all means. If you write about real people, even as background, be scrupulous. And if you must write about real people the way you would have liked them to be, rather than as justified by the best evidence, don’t be surprised if someone doesn’t like your work.