Welcome to Based on Bygone Events

I can’t remember when I fell in love with historical fiction, although I know that I learned to read with picture books depicting Empress Sissi and Franz Joseph’s Vienna.  I didn’t have television until I was eight years old, so while my first-grade classmates were obsessed with “Flipper” and “Batman,” I had my nose firmly buried in Treasure Island, Ivanhoe and The Last Days of Pompeii. I was not only learning history through my readings, I was also taking sides. At age nine, I couldn’t decide who was the worst foe in the Civil War: The Union that almost burned Tara and kept Ashley Wilkes a prisoner, or the Confederates, who kept Reverend March from returning to his Little Women.

I grew up hooked on  books, films and  tv shows set in bygone days. My hobby paid off on my senior year, when I got the highest grade in my class in the Social Studies Regents. My history teacher advised me to devote myself to the study of past events. What none of us realized then was that being a historical fiction fan did not make me a historian, a fact I learned in college from dull classes where I had to cram my head with dates and statistics. I loved historical novels precisely because they romanticized true events.   On that note, I switched majors, from history to comparative literature. It took me years to learn another lesson. History makes the greatest literature precisely because it is based on true events.

Humans are in love with the past, that’s a fact. Our past, our ancestors ’past, anybody’s past. It’s why period dramas and historical fiction always have a following.  Television overflows with homage to bygone days, whether it is a nostalgic view to recent decades (“The Americans,” “Call the Midwife”) or shows like “The Crown,” “Reign,“ or ”Victoria” that satisfy our incessant, almost snobbish, curiosity with the private lives of royalty.

Sadly, this proliferation of historical but fictional material does not guarantee quality products. The genre has given birth to facile clichés that have become the Cliff Notes of producers, writers and directors.  There is practically an ideological need to implant modern canons of political correction in stories set in times when such canons were unknown. Finally, just as it is easy to grab hold of clichés, it is also easy to cloak weak scripts with sex and gore. The result is that a public who never cared much for history lessons feels it’s being educated by this pseudo historicity. It comes to a point when we have people thinking “Game of Throne” does take place on The Middle Ages. After all, it is not less fantastic than “Versailles” that supposedly covers the scandals at The Sun King’s court.

Philippe D' Orleans and Chevalier de Lorraine. Renly and Ser Loras of Versailles

 It’s been an old dream of mine to draft a blog devoted to period pieces, but I resented competing with so many fine ones already in existence. I needed a different angle, and the mediocrity that affects recent examples of the genre seems to provide it, but I just don’t want to focus on historical blunders. We have the excellent Hollywood vs History for that purpose. What I want is to review period pieces looking for reasons behind the manipulation of historical facts.

 I would analyze how fiction has shaped the image of public figures in popular imagination.  How has "Taboo"changed our perception of the Regency Era?Why is it that we yet can’t make our minds as to whether Anne Boleyn actually committed adultery ? Could it be that mean Bloody Mary was, in fact, the lovely, sensitive, abused child of “The Tudors”?  If Bonnie Prince Charlie was really the nincompoop portrayed in Outlander, why has he become such a beloved legend?

I would also like to examine how fiction endeavors to solve historical mysteries like the possibility of Perkin Warbeck being one of the Princes in the Tower or what really happened in Mayerling.  Was Cesare Borgia his sister’s lover? Why did the Queen of France gave birth to a black baby? And so many more examples.

I hope this blog will attract other historical fiction addicts as well as those immersed in historical research. I will concentrate on films and television series, but I will also mention literary works and historian’s point of view when it is deemed necessary.  So…Welcome!