Romanticizing History

    As a people we do an interesting thing with our history, we often confuse it with romantic ideals of what we want to have been, rather than what was. An odd point to me, is in some cases we don’t realize which parts are nearly completely fictional and which are just romanticized history. Some people believe the three musketeers are as fictional as Arthur and his knights, or that the epics of Homer are as based in history as the Romance of The Three Kingdoms.

    Here’s a decent example of something so many of us romanticize, Pirates. We constantly romanticize pirates in popular fiction. We’ve distorted the idea of what pirates were, we’ve made them into heroes. From the Dread Pirate Roberts to Jack Sparrow to Guybrush Threepwood, we’ve made pirates into charming, roguish, good-natured ne'er do wells. In history, however, Pirates were very much not. They were criminals, oftentimes poor ones at that.

    We can talk about Edward Teach(Blackbeard) and his great exploits that lead, ultimately, to his untimely death when he got the attention of the governor of Virginia, but let’s talk about piracy in the Caribbean in general instead. There were many pirates in what we call “The Golden Age of Piracy” that are much closer to what our romanticized idea of pirates are, but they are still quite a bit distant. Some were more good-natured or well intentioned, some beleaguered or disenfranchised after the wars seeking to make back what they felt was theirs, or seeking their fortune. In some cases it was just easier and paid much better than good honest work was for a mariner of the time. The only downside, once the Royal Navy actually went after you, you likely didn’t live long. Piracy was not very “noble,” though a few notable pirates were noble born. Enough about pirates, I like the romanticized version and don’t want to knock it too much by thinking about the reality of it.

    Let’s move to a different subject, how about Dumas and the Musketeers, we could go into detail about how the characters come from a lesser known novel titled, Memoires de M. d’Artagnan, but currently that’s beside the point. In both cases the Novels or Novel series, in Dumas’ case, d’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers take center-stage as the main protagonists. Strangely as it’s a novel, people seem to be under the impression that d’Artagnan, and the Musketeers are fictional, which is simply not the case. Memoires de M. d’Artagnan was a semi-fictional novel based on the life of Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore, Comte d’Artagnan published just 27 years after his death. He was indeed a real person, but his semi-fictional portrayal in the novel led to Dumas writing(plagiarizing) his own novel The Three Musketeers of which d’Artagnan is the star character.

    We’ve reached a point in our society that the fictional form of d’Artagnan and the three musketeers are more recognized than their historical counterpart. Interesting when you think about it, even more so if you consider my next subject.

    Now everyone probably knows some portion of Arthurian legends, it’s even common for those among that group to believe there is some historical bases for the legends. Now, while Musketeers actually had a basis in reality, being inspired by real characters, and it taking place during real events, many of the events of Arthurian legends never happened, or, if they did, are vastly different from the reality of what happened. It’s why there’s so much debate between historians about who Arthur may have actually been. Many of you, as I originally was not, are unlikely to be aware that Lancelot wasn’t a real person at all, but a fictional character added on to the legends sometime later to try to give knights of the time a kind of “role model.” This is further complicated when we realize that we have no idea who Thomas Malory(Morte D’Arthur) even was, or if he was a real person at all.

    Verifiable information about Arthur in any real sense is almost completely nonexistent. Another and possibly more important is that the knights that are described in Arthurian legends do not have any real reflection of knight behavior in a historical sense. Also some people have said things that led me to believe they think of knight a military rank, or that a group of knights was a military force, most commonly confused with cavaliers. Knight was, and still is, a social rank, it just so happened that in the middle ages there was crossover between the two. Being a knight at times just meant you were part of a noble house, it never meant you were a good fighter, or even a decent commander. Even the terms nobility and chivalry seem to carry some prestige of honor nowadays, when it used to only mean you had rich parents.

    Also no one married for love in the middle ages, it was all for money, to form alliances, or to garner favor. Love was a luxury most women could never afford back then. Daughters were a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder, not sure what kind of chivalry that represents. It’s probably a good thing chivalry is dead.

    Now brings us to the next point in our journey, the Romance of The Three Kingdoms. Now RoTK is a chinese epic from the three kingdoms era of chinese history, that’s right, it’s based on fact. Most of the cast of characters were real people who lived real lives, and many of the events and battles in the story actually happened in some way. The story is part fiction, probably about as true as musketeers, if not more so, but mostly historical with a splash of mythical for good measure. I personally have not read it myself but I have played the Dynasty Warriors games which are heavily based on the story of RoTK, so I know a rough outline of the events, I’ve also seen Red Cliff, which is a movie about the battle of Red Cliff. It’s a great movie by the way and well worth the time if you have any interest in chinese history. I’ll get around to the story itself one day, but still have plenty of things on my plate before I get there.

    On to the next subject, Homer. Homer’s epics are some of the longest living texts from western civilization we have. It’s incredibly old, and as such is also mostly unknown about the true identity of the author. That’s right, we’re not exactly sure who Homer was, or if he was a real person. It is only in the last century that we have found evidence of where the city of Troy may have been, and given any evidence to a previously thought complete myth. The legend of a Trojan Horse is so well known I probably don’t even need to explain it for everyone reading this to immediately have pictured a wooden horse in their head from me merely typing the words Trojan Horse. Even though there is now evidence of a possible war that could have led to the fall of a city we believe might be Troy with dates that seem to be in the same ballpark as those pieced together by historians, we don’t have enough to verify that it actually was based, in any sense, on reality and not just us forming a connection that might not be there. That’s just how history works sometimes we might never find out enough to be absolutely sure, we might only find out enough to be close enough to be reasonably convinced that it might be true. It’s unlikely we’ll ever find a big neon sign, that say, “This was Troy,” or that such a sign would even be readable by us. Still there could be some truth, to Homer’s epics, even if he was not even a real person. Currently I’d put them on the same plate as Arthurian legends, might have some semblance of history there, but likely mostly myth.

   In closing, knights and pirates weren’t as we portray them in popular fiction. Whereas d’Artagnan and Guan Yu, are historical figures, Arthur and Achilles are likely fictional. Sometimes we like to remember things better than they were and romanticize it, this happens to our personal history as well. Sometimes we get so carried away we forget which parts are real. It’s good to have a reality check once in awhile.

   Also wikipedia is a great resource when you can’t remember names.