I recently enjoyed following a discussion among historical fiction authors about accuracy and research. Probably my favorite thing I learned is that the food the ton eats in regency novels is often inaccurate to real life. I learned that bacon and eggs was a lower-class breakfast, and chocolate wasn’t a commonly accepted dessert yet. And when authors make such errors, readers who are educated in the time period they love are going to get upset. 

To be honest, learning that didn’t turn me off to any of the regency novels or authors I’ve read that have been inaccurate. As a high school history teacher, I don’t teach what type of food a specific socioeconomic class ate in a specific time period. I teach the impact people, events, and movements had on society and progress. And so it is those details that I’m hyper aware of when I read historical fiction. And yet, other people clearly do care about the minute details, which is completely valid. So, how does an author decide how much fiction to put into historical fiction?

Let’s use my favorite historical fiction author, Philippa Gregory, as an example. Readers either love her or hate her. I am in the camp that loves her. She makes a lot of risky moves with her historical accuracy, but I don’t always agree with all of them even though I love reading her books. Let’s take a look at The Other Boleyn Girl as our main example. (Mainly because I know both the book and historical facts very well.)

In several interviews, Ms. Gregory has stated that when she writes a royal court story, she has a timeline up on her wall that shows the movement of the court, so that she can put the characters in the right geographical location in the right month/season. From there, depending on who you talk to, things can get murky. 

In The Other Boleyn Girl the 4 main deviants from other accepted sources are:

1. The birth order of the Boleyn children
2. The publicly known father(s) of Mary Carey’s children
3. Mary’s role in the court after her second marriage 
4. George Boleyn’s sexuality 

The birth order of the Boleyn children

Every historical source I have ever read puts Mary Boleyn as the oldest, Anne Boleyn as the middle child, and George Boleyn as the youngest. Philippa Gregory switches the characters around completely: George, Anne, Mary. I do understand why (I think) she did it. The relationship she created for the two sisters – Anne as a bossy bully and Mary as passively compliant (which she grows out of over twenty years) – works better for Anne being “the mean older sister”. Despite me understanding what is most likely her reasoning for doing this, it still bothers me.

Who fathered Mary’s children?

When Mary Boleyn became Henry VIII’s mistress, she was married to William Carey. She became pregnant during that time, and the court believed – as well as historians – that the king was the father of Mary’s oldest child, Catherine Carey. Surviving portraits of the oldest Carey child do hold similarities to other known Tudor children (according to those with the eye to see such details). According to historical sources, Henry had set Mary aside well before she became pregnant with her second child, Henry Carey. Historically, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that William Carey was the only possible father to baby Henry. Philippa Gregory, however, made the decision to keep Mary as the king’s mistress longer than is accurate, and to make the father of her second child Henry VIII. Once again, there is a method to her madness. Later on, Anne adopts Henry so that she would be the “mother” of a biological son of the king, so he would be more inclined to marry her. But once again, the inaccuracy doesn’t sit well with me. The rest of the plot can continue as normal without this change.

Mary’s role in court

After Henry VIII set Mary aside, she’s a background character in the main historical record. We know she gave birth to a boy named Henry, and her first husband, William Carey died during one of the sweat summers (a type of plague disease that killed thousands of people every year). At some point after Princess Elizabeth was born, and during Anne’s unsuccessful pregnancies, Mary married a man well below her station, William Stafford. She kept her marriage a secret until her third pregnancy became too noticeable to hide (or perhaps, they married because she became pregnant). Queen Anne banished her own sister from court, and Mary’s remaining family followed their queen and shunned her. Mary moved to Calais, and that’s where they were living when Anne was beheaded for false accusations of adultery. 

In The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory condenses Mary’s banishment to less than twelve months, and she’s back at court as the queen’s sister. How does Ms. Gregory justify this very obvious discrepancy? An actual primary source states that during Anne’s last miscarriage, she let no one in her chambers besides her mother and her sister. Now, this sister could have been Jane Parker, George’s wife. But it was also well known that Jane and Anne didn’t like each other. In fact, Jane and George didn’t like each other. But still, how can Mary be at court if the historical record puts her in Calais? Or was it a misunderstanding on who was actually in the room? (Especially since this is a time where false accusations of adultery were being prepared.) Either way, Philippa Gregory has one source to validate her decision to keep Mary at court for the story. 

And this is actually how she does it in all of her books. As long as one source records a guess, rumor, etc.; she can put it in her book and says that she is exploring what the story would look like if that source were true. Which, I think, is fine. Provided she justify it in her Q&A section she puts at the end of each book. And she does, most of the time.

George’s Sexuality

A major side plot in The Other Boleyn Girl is George Boleyn falling in love with Francis Weston, and embarking on a love affair with him. Once again, Philippa Gregory uses an obscure source that claims George’s pre-execution speech included an apology for sodomy. This claim can’t be combatted the way that the others were. Historians can’t discover the thoughts and feelings of long dead people. So, if a historical fiction author wants to make someone gay, they can do so. 

Any other Philippa Gregory book is going to have similar changes. She uses the lack of perfect records to fill in the blanks with her own imaginings. She uses the very real beliefs of the time in witches to include spells, curses, and fortune telling. And she finds obscure (but real) claims to further dramatize an already dramatic era. 

But even though she does her homework to justify the changes she makes, the real question is: Do you readers support these changes? Enough that she is still writing and selling books, and Starz is slowly turning her more popular books into mini-series. But the naysayers are still quite loud. 

So, at the end of the day, if you’re going to write historical fiction, just know that any changes you make will be noticed by some while unnoticed or ignored by others. It’s still your choice to make, but it will affect your readership. As for me, I’m going to continue to read regency romances regardless of what the upper class eats; and I’m going to continue to enjoy Tudor era stories – though I will grumble internally when things are too wrong for my taste. 

What’s your favorite time period for historical fiction? Let me know in the comments!