Tag: historical fiction

Ahistorical fiction

The Elder Mr. Loch recently alerted me to The Final Sacrament by James Forrester. Set in Elizabethan England, the premise of the book is that Queen Elizabeth I is not the legitimate Queen of England because of Anne Boleyn’s previous relationship with the Earl of Northumberland. William Harley, who holds the office of Clarenceux King of Arms, has  proof of Boleyn’s precontract, which makes him a wanted man.

Even today, the Kings of Arms still dress like playing cards.
Clarenceux King of Arms. Public Domain image via Wikimedia Commons.

My first reaction upon hearing of the plot was to roll my eyes. The idea that Anne Boleyn might have been precontracted to the Earl of Northumberland was not exactly a secret. In fact, the Countess of Northumberland even tried to use it as grounds for annulling her marriage to the Earl. But Lord Northumberland swore on two separate occasions that there had been no such precontract. He even stuck to his story when agents of Henry VIII wanted him to say the opposite. If there had been a precontract between Boleyn and Northumberland, it would have arguably given Henry grounds for seeking an annulment of his marriage. As we all know, Henry found another way of getting rid of his queen.

While it’s true that a precontract might have rendered Elizabeth illegitimate, she was declared illegitimate anyway by Act of Parliament after her mother’s execution. A few years later, she was legitimized and returned to the line of succession. Since her legitimacy was ultimately determined by Parliament, I’m not sure the document that forms the book’s MacGuffin would really be as explosive as it might seem as first glance. I’m sorely tempted to pick up the book just to see how he deals with the succession legislation!

Although the historian in me took a dim view of the way Forrester seemed to approach his subject, I had a change of heart when I checked out his website. “James Forrester” is actually the pen name of of Dr. Ian J. F. Mortimer, who is a rather well-known historian. On his James Forrester website, he explains why he felt the need to adopt a separate persona for writing fiction. He’s quite upfront about the fact that he’s willing to change the details if it suits the story:

In Sacred Treason I changed the name of Henry Machyn’s wife from Dorothy to Rebecca because one of the early readers of the manuscript said ‘I couldn’t help thinking of the Yellow Brick Road every time she was mentioned’. I also changed the name of my main protagonist from Harvey to Harley. It’s close enough to show I know who the real Clarenceux King of Arms was in 1563; but I deliberately wanted to be inaccurate so people could be sure he is fictional. This is very different from most historical novelists’ way of working, many of whom have a strict rule about not contradicting the ‘known facts’.

You might think that this would have me frothing at the mouth, but it doesn’t. I’m willing to tell my inner pedant to STFU if it’s clear that the author did their homework and took the trouble to get things right whenever possible. But if you can’t even get the big things right, you’re not going to get any slack at all.

The pitfalls of scene-setting

One of the things that really annoys me about historical fiction is the tendency of some authors to go overboard when it comes to background information. It’s like they’re bound and determined to shoehorn in every single fact that they uncovered in the course of their research, regardless of whether or not it’s actually relevant to the plot. I recently started rereading The Scroll of Saqqara by Pauline Gedge, and several particularly blatant examples of this jumped off the page (though I hasten to add that it’s still one of my favorite books). Take this piece of dialogue, for example:

Sometimes I wish that Grandfather had not moved the capital of the country north. I can see the strategic advantage in a seat of government close to our eastern border and located on a river that empties into the Great Green for good trade, but Memphis has the beauty and dignity of the rulers of old.

That quote is spoken by the protagonist’s son as he and his father sail northward to the capital in question (Pi-Ramesse). But it doesn’t seem natural. It feels like a modern author trying to include another fun fact instead of an ancient Egyptian having a casual conversation with his father. The fact that it’s the only thing the son says in that scene just makes it seem even more awkward.

A few pages later, the protagonist is on the deck of his boat watching Pi-Ramesse come into view. As he watches the scenery pass by, he sees the old city of Avaris, the temple of Set, and “a heap of rubble that Khaemwaset knew was the remains of a Twelfth Dynasty town.” I’m not quite sure why Gedge felt the need to include that bit of information. It’s not relevant to the plot; it’s just another factoid she uncovered, and it’s not even all that interesting.

Base of a statue from Pi-Ramesse. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Now I get the fact that authors who write historical fiction need to provide more description than usual. When you’re writing about the past, you have to do more to help your readers envision the scene. But the tricky part is that your characters, being natives of their world, wouldn’t normally go around explaining everyday things. That’s why I’m not a fan of first-person narrators in historical fiction. It’s incredibly jarring to have the protagonist suddenly provide a detailed description of something that he or she would have taken for granted in real life. I prefer to write in the third person in order to let the invisible narrator do as much of the info dumping as possible.

Going back to Pi-Ramesse and The Scroll of Saqqara, I think it would have been much more effective if, instead of nattering on about the city’s strategic location, the protagonist’s son had commented on its splendor. Judging from the few first-hand accounts we have of Pi-Ramesse, that’s what really stuck in the Egyptians’ minds. They were impressed by the city’s beautiful temples and palaces, not its proximity to the Levant. That would have allowed Gedge to provide useful scene-setting while avoiding a blatant jump into Author Mode.

There’s a very fine line between setting the scene and bogging your story down in detail. Readers are going to have varying levels of interest in the historical setting you’ve chosen, and you can’t assume that everyone is as fascinated with the details as you are.