Author responsibility

[JaneConsumer]

One of the aspects that hasn't been mentioned yet is where what is known about historical characters changes after a book has been written.

Good point. Historical context is important. I can forgive these kinds of errors, assuming I know enough to recognize them in the first place.

[Ariadne]

I found it interesting that in between completion of the manuscript for Carolly Erickson's The Tsarina's Daughter and its publication (later this month), DNA testing proved that the bodies of all of the Romanov siblings were accounted for. The novel imagines that Grand Duchess Tatiana survived. Suddenly, what was originally speculative (extremely speculative) historical fiction became, in essence, alternate history

[EC2]

A novelist has to go by what's known or accepted at the time. As a reader I wouldn't be scathing of a writer who'd done their research to the best of their ability. Since SKP started writing her latest trilogy, it's been discovered that Eleanor of Aquitaine is two years older than everyone thought she was. Richard the Lionheart has been all red-blooded hero male, bent as a nine bob note, and now the pendulum's swinging back a little the other way and who knows where it'll go from there. Discovering Richard III's or Henry VII's signed confession 'I murdered the boys!' would really set the cat among the pigeons. I wonder what Carolly Erickson thinks of the discovery re Tatiana

[Leyland]

I try to keep in mind as I'm reading a novel that the story the author is telling about real events and persons might be a sort of snapshot of a relatively short period of time. People change as they go through experiences of their particular era in response to all sorts of external influences. An author may need to narrow down research to just a few years at times and portray a character differently in the novel than the character may have been known for being at an earlier or later time.

[Cuchulainn]

I think the only responsibility a fictional writer has is not to pass something off as something that it is not.