If you’d asked me a year ago if I cared all that much for historical accuracy in fiction, I might have told you that it didn’t much matter to me at all. Historical accuracy, I might have said, is an argument too often used to complain about creating more inclusive television programming — complaints that are themselves often historically inaccurate or overly focused on racial or gender assumptions rather than the stories themselves. Today, that still largely holds true. I still think too many people use the phrase to complain about diversity initiatives, and I still think our primary interest as everyday consumers of fiction should be the narratives instead of obsessive hyperfocus on how perfectly a series presents its designated period.
However, the more I find myself immersed in period dramas in television and film, the more I’ve begun to nuance my perspective of historical accuracy. I blame part of this on my tendency to look up historical information as I watch. Frequently, this leads me to the knowledge that what I’m watching likely doesn’t resemble the real history. In the worst of cases, it has filled me with annoyance because often the fictional history is far less compelling than the actual history. In the best of cases, it renews my curiosity in human history, which leads me to buying new books to read.
In thinking of these things, I’ve set a kind of standard for how I assess historical accuracy. These “rules” help me answer a simple question: Are the inaccuracies here enough to ruin the story being told? So far, those “rules” look as follows:
Context matters! When I think back to examples of the historical accuracy argument, there seem to be two kinds: those that consider the context and those that don’t. Many critiques of video games tend to ignore the context of a video game: a (typically) fundamentally fictional circumstance that requires broad violations of reality (death is temporary). The accuracy in such situations, I’d argue, doesn’t really matter except in the broadest of strokes. Other critiques might look at television shows purporting to deal with real events and find them grossly inaccurate, as I’ll briefly suggest about Knightfall in a hot minute. The more deliberately removed from objective reality a series becomes, the more we must consider that context. Is a steampunk version of WW2 supposed to represent that period accurate, or is it sufficiently removed from our objective reality that its deviations are expected in the story proper?
Fictional deviations must be weighed against the depth of historical knowledge! In all historical narratives, deviations are expected, but we have to weigh those deviations against the amount of information available to us about the people, places, and times presented on screen. If a movie deals with a historical period about which we know quite a lot (WW2), I am likely to view significant historical deviations as completely unnecessary and in violation of the setting. However, if a movie deals with a historical period about which we know very little, I expect a greater degree of fictionalization, with the broad strokes represented accurately and the unknown portions filled in with best guesses and interpretations.
Historical accuracy must be weighed against dramatic demands! Time may be compressed or fictional characters added; wars may be adjusted to meet the dramatic demands of the story; and characters may say things they might never have said. Decisions are often made to highlight some aspects over others, such as a romance or a death, even if those things might have been minor events at the time. The relevance of historical accuracy depends a great deal on whether it is subjugated to the dramatic demands of the writing. If major events are rewritten solely for sensational presentations, this, to me, violates the value of historical accuracy more than enhancing existing dramas for additional effect. Erasing history simply for drama does not make for more compelling stories; rather, compelling stories are found in the gaps. What don’t we know, and what interpretation can we offer to provide an interesting explanation?
Having conceptualized these “rules,” I’ll turn my attention briefly to two examples: Knightfall and The Last Kingdom.
The Last Kingdom
To date, the four seasons of The Last Kingdom, based on Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories, are set during the reign of Alfred the Great (886-899) and Edward the Elder (899-924), a period in which a good portion of what we know as England today was conquered by the Vikings. The eyes of the show are those of the fictional Uhtred, an Anglo Saxon raised by Danes who is eventually enlisted by Alfred the Great to serve Wessex.
As a historical drama, The Last Kingdom jumps between dramatic interpretations of real figures and events and fictional accounts of people who never existed. For the most part, the fictional accounts are subjugated to the known history, creating a series that, in general, hews closely to what little we actually know about the Anglo Saxons of that period.
Therein lies the rub: compared to other historical dramas of later periods, The Last Kingdom deals with history known mostly in broad strokes. We don’t, for example, have exceedingly detailed accounts of Alfred the Great’s conversations or the specifics of the battles he and his commanders fought. Instead, we know that many of the battles that occur in the show happened and that certain people may have died at some of them. So when our fictional character Uhtred fights the very real character of Ubba at Arx Cynuit, we can see it not as a violation of the history it represents but as a dramatic interpretation based accounts from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (as opposed to the Estoire des Engleis, which suggests that he was killed elsewhere). In fact, the more you look into this event, the more you realize how little we actually know and how much scholars rely on inferences from the available written accounts of the period; The Last Kingdom, it turns out, simply offers one version of the possible ways the Battle at Arx Cynuit might have occurred.
While I find other aspects of The Last Kingdom frustrating (the endless sea of terrible people that includes the heroes), the fact that it may deviate from reality is the least of my concerns. The show is not perfect, but it doesn’t subjugate its history to the demands of drama. Instead, the broad strokes of that period are mostly presented, and the fictional story, especially of its fictional characters, is woven into that history. For me, this makes for a show that is far more enticing because it draws me into the real history. I want to know more about this time period and its people. What were they really like? What do we really know about the way they lived and the practices they followed?
Scholars of the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes may be less forgiving than me, but I think it’s important to recognize that minor deviations are always less disruptive than broad deviations. The Last Kingdom would be a completely different show if it simply ignored the known battles, the details of Alfred’s probable illness, etc. Indeed, ignoring the history entirely doesn’t make for a better story; rather, as I’ll discuss next, it tends to produce a dysfunctional narrative far less interesting than the reality it supposedly represents.
Knightfall
Alas, my praise of The Last Kingdom does not hold true for Knightfall, which tells the story of (at least for one season) the Knights Templar search for the Holy Grail and the conflict between the Catholic Church and Philip IV. Much like The Last Kingdom, the story is framed through the experiences of a fictional character: Landry, a Templar. Yet, unlike The Last Kingdom, Knightfall violates all of my “rules” for historical accuracy.
For one, the show’s context requires that its treatment of historical detail remain fixed to the actual history (within reason). While most of the Templar figures are fictional or mythical, the overarching political narrative they are a part of is not. Philip IV was real. His work to dismantle the Templar and challenge Pope Boniface VIII did happen. There were fights and conflicts and heretic burnings and Luciferians throughout the period. All of these things are part of the story we’re being told about Landry. You cannot extricate his Templar story from his relationship to Philip IV or from the context of Philip IV’s attack on the power of the Church. They are intertwined.
Yet, the show routinely violates the history it imagines with gross inaccuracies, most of them deliberate fabrications included for dramatic effect. Here’s an incomplete list of Knightfall‘s most egregious errors:
Pope Boniface VIII was kidnapped in 1303 by Guillaume de Nogaret (Philip IV’s minister), but he was released and died a month later from a fever, apparently in the presence of an entire papal household. Yet, in the show, he is assassinated by Nogaret in his chambers with no cardinals or household members nearby. There is no kidnapping. He is simply murdered.
Isabella of France was married to Edward II of England at the age of 12 (betrothed at 7); she had her 18th birthday some 11 years after the death of Pope Boniface VIII. In the show, she is presented as a mid- to late-teenager. Being generous by saying she’s 14 at the show’s start, this would mean that by the death of Boniface in the show, she would be at least 15 and would not technically marry Edward II until she is 26, an age more than double that of the real Isabella. Yeah, I’m grossed out by the whole “married at 12” thing, too, but it’s real hard to take her age seriously when she looks almost the same age as her parents.
Joan I of Navarre, born in Champagne, never visited Navarre despite being its queen regent. Apparently, she never got closer than 500 km from it in part because, it is believed, of Philip IV’s emotional dependence on her. Joan did raise and lead an army against a rebellion in Champagne, though (against the Count of Bar). The show, however, suggests that she traveled to Navarre against Philip IV’s wishes to stop her cousin, Queen Elena of Catalonia, from annexing Navarre as retribution for the death of her son. Joan subsequently murders her cousin and miraculously walks away because nobody liked her cousin anyway.
There was no Queen Elena of Catalonia. That’s the history. The show presents such a figure as a cousin to Joan I, but no Elena or Eleanor exists in Joan’s family tree (as far as I can find). More importantly, the Queen Elena of the show is supposedly Queen of Catalonia at a time when Catalonia was part of the Crown of Aragon, a dynastic union that included Catalonia itself. This is also the period of the House of Barcelona (1164-1410), in which there were several Eleanors, but none queen during the time this story is meant to take place. Perhaps the show means to reference the Count of Bar’s wife, but she was the daughter of Edward I of England and not of Catalan. They might also mean Eleanor of Castile (Edward I’s wife), but, again, she was not from Catalonia and she would have been dead by the time of Knightfall‘s story. The conflict the show depicts between Elena and Joan I, as such, is total nonsense.
None of this should be surprising, though. Knightfall is produced by the History Channel, where historical accuracy has long been a rotting corpse. Dan Jones, the show’s history consultant, gave an interview about his involvement to History Extra back in 2018, and I think it’s quite telling that almost all of it focuses on the Templar and their mythology and not the other aspects that are clearly central to the plot. It’s clear from the interview and from his body of work that his interest lies in the Templar and their history, not the specifics of Philip IV or Joan I or Isabella of France.
If Knightfall were simply a story of the Templar pursuit of the Holy Grail featuring assassins, scheming priests, and secret organizations, it would likely not suffer so much from an almost pathological obsession with hyperdrama. Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. It punts historical accuracy as far as it can, deviating almost entirely for sensationalism despite the fact that many of the show’s real characters lived extraordinary lives. Do we need imagined cousins, family murders, and affairs to make this story work? I’d argue that we don’t. The real history is sufficient on its own.
In the end, watching shows like these has convinced me that my approach to historical accuracy deserves nuance. Not all shows will stay true to reality in all respects, but some will replace historical drama with hyperdrama solely for titillation in much the same way as shows like Game of Thrones rely on nudity and shock deaths for audience reaction. Yet, the deeper I look into the true histories, the more I realize that history is actually far more interesting than the sensationalist fictions some try to insert into the past. Those are the stories I want to see. Those are the stories that I think have something more to say. Those are the stories that make me want to read a book.
Reading Time
It Didn’t Happen Like That: On the Dimensions of Historical Accuracy
If you’d asked me a year ago if I cared all that much for historical accuracy in fiction, I might have told you that it didn’t much matter to me at all. Historical accuracy, I might have said, is an argument too often used to complain about creating more inclusive television programming — complaints that are themselves often historically inaccurate or overly focused on racial or gender assumptions rather than the stories themselves. Today, that still largely holds true. I still think too many people use the phrase to complain about diversity initiatives, and I still think our primary interest as everyday consumers of fiction should be the narratives instead of obsessive hyperfocus on how perfectly a series presents its designated period.
However, the more I find myself immersed in period dramas in television and film, the more I’ve begun to nuance my perspective of historical accuracy. I blame part of this on my tendency to look up historical information as I watch. Frequently, this leads me to the knowledge that what I’m watching likely doesn’t resemble the real history. In the worst of cases, it has filled me with annoyance because often the fictional history is far less compelling than the actual history. In the best of cases, it renews my curiosity in human history, which leads me to buying new books to read.
In thinking of these things, I’ve set a kind of standard for how I assess historical accuracy. These “rules” help me answer a simple question: Are the inaccuracies here enough to ruin the story being told? So far, those “rules” look as follows:
When I think back to examples of the historical accuracy argument, there seem to be two kinds: those that consider the context and those that don’t. Many critiques of video games tend to ignore the context of a video game: a (typically) fundamentally fictional circumstance that requires broad violations of reality (death is temporary). The accuracy in such situations, I’d argue, doesn’t really matter except in the broadest of strokes. Other critiques might look at television shows purporting to deal with real events and find them grossly inaccurate, as I’ll briefly suggest about Knightfall in a hot minute. The more deliberately removed from objective reality a series becomes, the more we must consider that context. Is a steampunk version of WW2 supposed to represent that period accurate, or is it sufficiently removed from our objective reality that its deviations are expected in the story proper?
In all historical narratives, deviations are expected, but we have to weigh those deviations against the amount of information available to us about the people, places, and times presented on screen. If a movie deals with a historical period about which we know quite a lot (WW2), I am likely to view significant historical deviations as completely unnecessary and in violation of the setting. However, if a movie deals with a historical period about which we know very little, I expect a greater degree of fictionalization, with the broad strokes represented accurately and the unknown portions filled in with best guesses and interpretations.
Time may be compressed or fictional characters added; wars may be adjusted to meet the dramatic demands of the story; and characters may say things they might never have said. Decisions are often made to highlight some aspects over others, such as a romance or a death, even if those things might have been minor events at the time. The relevance of historical accuracy depends a great deal on whether it is subjugated to the dramatic demands of the writing. If major events are rewritten solely for sensational presentations, this, to me, violates the value of historical accuracy more than enhancing existing dramas for additional effect. Erasing history simply for drama does not make for more compelling stories; rather, compelling stories are found in the gaps. What don’t we know, and what interpretation can we offer to provide an interesting explanation?
Having conceptualized these “rules,” I’ll turn my attention briefly to two examples: Knightfall and The Last Kingdom.
The Last Kingdom
To date, the four seasons of The Last Kingdom, based on Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories, are set during the reign of Alfred the Great (886-899) and Edward the Elder (899-924), a period in which a good portion of what we know as England today was conquered by the Vikings. The eyes of the show are those of the fictional Uhtred, an Anglo Saxon raised by Danes who is eventually enlisted by Alfred the Great to serve Wessex.
As a historical drama, The Last Kingdom jumps between dramatic interpretations of real figures and events and fictional accounts of people who never existed. For the most part, the fictional accounts are subjugated to the known history, creating a series that, in general, hews closely to what little we actually know about the Anglo Saxons of that period.
Therein lies the rub: compared to other historical dramas of later periods, The Last Kingdom deals with history known mostly in broad strokes. We don’t, for example, have exceedingly detailed accounts of Alfred the Great’s conversations or the specifics of the battles he and his commanders fought. Instead, we know that many of the battles that occur in the show happened and that certain people may have died at some of them. So when our fictional character Uhtred fights the very real character of Ubba at Arx Cynuit, we can see it not as a violation of the history it represents but as a dramatic interpretation based accounts from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (as opposed to the Estoire des Engleis, which suggests that he was killed elsewhere). In fact, the more you look into this event, the more you realize how little we actually know and how much scholars rely on inferences from the available written accounts of the period; The Last Kingdom, it turns out, simply offers one version of the possible ways the Battle at Arx Cynuit might have occurred.
While I find other aspects of The Last Kingdom frustrating (the endless sea of terrible people that includes the heroes), the fact that it may deviate from reality is the least of my concerns. The show is not perfect, but it doesn’t subjugate its history to the demands of drama. Instead, the broad strokes of that period are mostly presented, and the fictional story, especially of its fictional characters, is woven into that history. For me, this makes for a show that is far more enticing because it draws me into the real history. I want to know more about this time period and its people. What were they really like? What do we really know about the way they lived and the practices they followed?
Scholars of the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes may be less forgiving than me, but I think it’s important to recognize that minor deviations are always less disruptive than broad deviations. The Last Kingdom would be a completely different show if it simply ignored the known battles, the details of Alfred’s probable illness, etc. Indeed, ignoring the history entirely doesn’t make for a better story; rather, as I’ll discuss next, it tends to produce a dysfunctional narrative far less interesting than the reality it supposedly represents.
Knightfall
Alas, my praise of The Last Kingdom does not hold true for Knightfall, which tells the story of (at least for one season) the Knights Templar search for the Holy Grail and the conflict between the Catholic Church and Philip IV. Much like The Last Kingdom, the story is framed through the experiences of a fictional character: Landry, a Templar. Yet, unlike The Last Kingdom, Knightfall violates all of my “rules” for historical accuracy.
For one, the show’s context requires that its treatment of historical detail remain fixed to the actual history (within reason). While most of the Templar figures are fictional or mythical, the overarching political narrative they are a part of is not. Philip IV was real. His work to dismantle the Templar and challenge Pope Boniface VIII did happen. There were fights and conflicts and heretic burnings and Luciferians throughout the period. All of these things are part of the story we’re being told about Landry. You cannot extricate his Templar story from his relationship to Philip IV or from the context of Philip IV’s attack on the power of the Church. They are intertwined.
Yet, the show routinely violates the history it imagines with gross inaccuracies, most of them deliberate fabrications included for dramatic effect. Here’s an incomplete list of Knightfall‘s most egregious errors:
None of this should be surprising, though. Knightfall is produced by the History Channel, where historical accuracy has long been a rotting corpse. Dan Jones, the show’s history consultant, gave an interview about his involvement to History Extra back in 2018, and I think it’s quite telling that almost all of it focuses on the Templar and their mythology and not the other aspects that are clearly central to the plot. It’s clear from the interview and from his body of work that his interest lies in the Templar and their history, not the specifics of Philip IV or Joan I or Isabella of France.
If Knightfall were simply a story of the Templar pursuit of the Holy Grail featuring assassins, scheming priests, and secret organizations, it would likely not suffer so much from an almost pathological obsession with hyperdrama. Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. It punts historical accuracy as far as it can, deviating almost entirely for sensationalism despite the fact that many of the show’s real characters lived extraordinary lives. Do we need imagined cousins, family murders, and affairs to make this story work? I’d argue that we don’t. The real history is sufficient on its own.
In the end, watching shows like these has convinced me that my approach to historical accuracy deserves nuance. Not all shows will stay true to reality in all respects, but some will replace historical drama with hyperdrama solely for titillation in much the same way as shows like Game of Thrones rely on nudity and shock deaths for audience reaction. Yet, the deeper I look into the true histories, the more I realize that history is actually far more interesting than the sensationalist fictions some try to insert into the past. Those are the stories I want to see. Those are the stories that I think have something more to say. Those are the stories that make me want to read a book.
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