I once met someone who insisted Richard III of England was a much better king (and Henry VII a correspondingly greater bastard) than is popular opinion... but most people haven't studied the era, they just take Will Shakespeare's word for it. Except there's a fair amount of research that shows that Richard III was pretty much sandbagged historically by the following reign. I have not doubt he was both bad and good. History alone knows how he really was, we'll never really know. And Henry was a Bastard in a lot of ways. Dood killed several of his wives on rumour alone. And other reasons. But just as medieval and renaissance characters fall into the comfortable zone of 'okay to write cause they are so dead', Vietnam era characters are also okay to write because they are historical as well. Last week is historical. Two sentences ago is historical in the strictest sense. History is not a hard and fast objective genre. It's a manipulation of events through the eyes of the recorders of the history who are biased in their own ways, most of whom are the victors and have an agenda regarding the content of their stories for posterity. In a sense, a very real sense, historical writing is fanfiction. People writing it are fans of the event and write from that bias. The bible as well as many scriptoral writings also fall into this catagory. There are many actual canon pieces of information, I'll grant you that. Dates and times and sometimes even amounts of things, like deaths or monies or such. But the why's and wherefores are muddled by time and distance. Anyhow, this got a lot longer than I anticipated. I would add that even the telling of a story within a family has it's twists and turns. Ever play telephone as a child? That's how I view history. The idea of absolute truth is, in my mind, reserved for scientific facts and human nature. How we interpret them is what makes the fiction. I'll shut up now.
no subject
Except there's a fair amount of research that shows that Richard III was pretty much sandbagged historically by the following reign. I have not doubt he was both bad and good. History alone knows how he really was, we'll never really know. And Henry was a Bastard in a lot of ways. Dood killed several of his wives on rumour alone. And other reasons.
But just as medieval and renaissance characters fall into the comfortable zone of 'okay to write cause they are so dead', Vietnam era characters are also okay to write because they are historical as well. Last week is historical. Two sentences ago is historical in the strictest sense. History is not a hard and fast objective genre. It's a manipulation of events through the eyes of the recorders of the history who are biased in their own ways, most of whom are the victors and have an agenda regarding the content of their stories for posterity.
In a sense, a very real sense, historical writing is fanfiction. People writing it are fans of the event and write from that bias. The bible as well as many scriptoral writings also fall into this catagory.
There are many actual canon pieces of information, I'll grant you that. Dates and times and sometimes even amounts of things, like deaths or monies or such. But the why's and wherefores are muddled by time and distance.
Anyhow, this got a lot longer than I anticipated.
I would add that even the telling of a story within a family has it's twists and turns. Ever play telephone as a child? That's how I view history. The idea of absolute truth is, in my mind, reserved for scientific facts and human nature. How we interpret them is what makes the fiction.
I'll shut up now.