I hated history until one professor I had in college. He would teach the “real stories” and not gloss over it like it had to be done in high school when everyone was underage.

It is the “fact” behind the history that attracts me to historical romance/fiction. Which is why I grow irritated with wallpaper historicals. Real life is so much more interesting that the alternate universe so many authors have substituted for the scandalous, passionate, dreary and sober world of history. It’s also a cop-out for people to focus narrowly on hygiene, snobbery, etc as “historical accuracy”. I strive to make my characters human, but also express their particular setting and the very things that would shape them.

If a writer captures what’s true about being human, the rest is just backdrop. IMO.

They’re not. No one really knows what goes on behind closed doors. And you can interpret history based on the conventions of the time, etc., but the fact remains that people don’t always behave rationally, that the truth is often stranger than fiction.

One interpretation is as close to good as another. We’re never really going to KNOW for sure the details. All we know is she lived, she was Queen, she was beheaded. We don’t know which sister was the elder. We don’t know if Mary’s kids are Henry’s or not. We can’t ever know. We can make educated interpretations, but a probability is not The Way It Was.

Not that I have strong feelings on the subject.