: Re: Is it okay to majorly distort historical facts while writing a fiction story? Suppose A is a famous historical character with a known history of emotional attachment with a particular set of

@BetL639

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History is a fluid thing. Even now, historians have different opinions about what exactly happened, and what motivations people had for their actions. So there is basically no way to write a historical novel that won't be considered inaccurate by someone.

But your question is "how much is too much". There is no clear answer to this.

Some stories take a historical character and completely change his story. "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" is one example. These stories tend to add obvious fictional elements, like adventures, fantasy creatures or other things that clearly aren't considered real history.

Other stories fall into the "alternate history" genre, where you deliberately change something in order to explore a story in this changed world. In this genre, you would generally point out the things you've changed: The plot summary might read "in a world where the Opium wars never happened, a young emperor tries to...". In this type of novel, your reader will assume that everything that was needed for the change, and everything caused by the change, is fiction.

If your novel is generally a realistic story about your character and his time, I feel like you have some responsibility towards your reader. Many people form their image of historical places and events by reading novels, so they will absorb whatever you write. Think of all the people who watched the great movie "Amadeus" and now believe that Salieri was Mozart's deadly enemy. He wasn't!
A little bit of distortion, like making some events happen closer together, or leaving out some minor characters, is necessary for most stories. But if you are going to change major things that would make the character appear very differently from what we know about him, it might be good to add an explanation of this difference in a postscript. This will also let your more historically informed readers know that your changes are deliberate.

As other answers have noted, if the character is relatively recent or is a revered figure somewhere, you might get some backlash about portraying him "wrong". In some cases, this might become a real problem for you. That's always worth considering.

But generally, just write the story you want, and if you make big changes, just point them out.

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