Favorite historical character...

alex falstone, Sofia sounds fascinating.

My all-time favorite historical personage is Abraham Lincoln. Not original, I know, but I've always loved his intelligence, moral compass, and especially his way with words.

But I also love Jeanne de La Motte-Valois (the self-styled Comtesse de la Motte). She was this incredible woman living in pre-Revolutionary France. She was distantly related to the royal family; she came from a bastard line of the Valois family. In fact, she was the last of the Valois. But she grew up in poverty because her forebears squandered what money they had once had. She begged in the streets of Paris as a child. When she was older, she decided to put it around that she was a good friend of the queen, Marie Antoinette. She conned a Cardinal (Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan) into believing that she would help him get back into the queen's good graces. The "Queen" wrote letters to him asking for money. A little later, she found out about a fantastically expensive necklace of some 2800 carats that the jeweleres had been trying to sell to the Queen. Long story short: the necklace disappeared, the Cardinal was arrested, Jeanne was arrested, the Queen ended up the loser because her reputation was irreperably harmed. This was only a few years before the Revolution errupted. Such an amazing story. Incredible, eccentric characters. I wrote about Jeanne, though not from her own perspective.

Rain Gnome said:

I'm not even sure why it is, but for some reason William Dampier would be my favorite historical character. The guy wasn't an expert in any specific field of exploration or science, and was an extremely poor ship Captain. But he was like the Elvis Presley of explorers, in that he could do many things better than the average person. He traveled around the world on three different voyages (back when it meant something), and his accounts of his voyages defined the genre of adventure and travel stories. On the last leg of his final voyage he helped capture a Spanish treasure ship. His stories directly inspired Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and Treasure Island, and both Captain Cook and Charles Darwin considered him the most practical and valuable of all the explorers. And yet Dampier is totally forgotten.

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I'd never even heard of him before, but found a book on him (I think it was nonfiction) at the Salvation Army the other day. We have a branch of Dampiers in the genealogy I'm writing. That's why the name stuck out so much for me. I should go back and see if the book is still there. At the time I was broke.

If I had to pick just one, gosh it is hard. I would have to say Coronado since I love roads and trails. With him it would be a duel with the Native American groups of the region: i.e. Navajo, Hopi and Commanche

I am astounded at the lack of awesome Jack the Ripper novels, and I fell in love with the idea a few years ago. I've got the outline done, but I haven't gotten around to writing the first chapter, just playing with a few scenes. I was so worried it would have been over done, but there's just From Hell and some time travel series, which are both totally different from what I'm doing.

I'm also working on a twisted romance about Saint Lucia

Flight said:

but there's just From Hell and some time travel series, which are both totally different from what I'm doing.

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There's a Sherlock Holmes pastiche (The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibden) based on the Ripper. Wikipedia also offers Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson - a non-canonical Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Lyndsay Faye which pits Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper.

I started my novel, 'The White Rajah' mainly because I was so taken with James Brooke. If I have a hero, I guess that's him. I know he was involved in some terrible things but I still admire him and I think that he did more good than harm - but the contradictions in his character are what the book is about.

Sorry if this comes out as a plug but I think he really is my favourite historical character. (And good looking too - that's his portrait on my cover.)

Thomas Cromwell.

PorterStarrByrd said:

I've got many but I'd have to go with

Ned Buntline

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Love Ned Buntline! What a life! He's a minor character in my last novel (now in review), and wished I'd been able to use more of him. Go for it!

Good King Richard III.

Just finished Doc Holliday, working on Stede Bonnet, and looking foward to Chief McIntosh.

All it takes is a great character and a story well told!

Maxfield Parrish, Aubrey Beardsley, and Egon Schiele, all artists (two who died way too young), and of course, Mr. Oscar Wilde.

How could so much snarky, fantastic wit be crammed into one amazing human being?

Belle_91 said:

I have featured John Wilkes Booth and Louisa May Alcott in the current WIP that I am writing.

Louisa was very fun to write!!!! It was also espically neat to write about Orchard House where I had my mc go and call on her. She was a very interesting woman and a damn good writer

I also had the same MC see John Wilkes Booth in a play in Boston and then dance with him at a party. I tried to make him appear as sauve, confident, and charming as possible...I am portraying him before the Lincoln Assasination in 1862.

Another favorite historical woman is Abigail Adams! "Remember the ladies!"

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Re-read this post and just wanted to say that I don't necessarily like John Wilkes Booth...but I do think he was an interesting fellow.

I do like Abigail Adams and Louisa May Alcott who I got to have a scene with my MC in my current WIP. I'm also a HUGE Elizabeth I fan and of Katherine of Aragon.

Tom from UK said:

There's a Sherlock Holmes pastiche (The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibden) based on the Ripper. Wikipedia also offers Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson - a non-canonical Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Lyndsay Faye which pits Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper.

I started my novel, 'The White Rajah' mainly because I was so taken with James Brooke. If I have a hero, I guess that's him. I know he was involved in some terrible things but I still admire him and I think that he did more good than harm - but the contradictions in his character are what the book is about.

Sorry if this comes out as a plug but I think he really is my favourite historical character. (And good looking too - that's his portrait on my cover.)

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Touche.. I've always enjoyed the morally questionable people in history, the more mystery to it the better ^^

I know he's been over done but , Blackbeard (Mr. Teach). He was only a pirate captain for like 16 months but he still to this day is the most infamous pirate. He was quite a scoundrel and managed to pack quite a carrier into his short stint as captain of the Queen Ann's Revenge.

Blackbeard!

Another great character! We could use more good books about him. He's a secondary character in my new novel, leaning more on the political side of piracy. Having fun with him!

Shakesbear said:

Good King Richard III.

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I'm working on an alt-historical now in which he survives Bosworth and Tudor doesn't. The hardest part has been finding him a second queen--someone firmly historical whose removal from her actual life wouldn't disrupt what is known to be known.

I wrote about the Vikings but I didn;t choose an important historical character, I made my original characters. I mentioned, though, King Swen Estridsson, king Harald Hardrada, some members of the Byzantine emperor's family.

In another story of mine, the main character is a fan of the cause of Rigas Feraios http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigas_Feraios and following his successes or death.

In another, I mentioned Napoleon, La Fayette and some of the generals.

This is a great thread, it's not just food for thought, it's a regular feast!

I'll offer up one character, who might be a character, Alexander Gardner. Though many have doubted his tales, others have noted he knew some surprising details for a hoaxer. Born in Wisconsin in 1781, raised on the banks of the Colorado River in Mexico (Texas?), educated in Ireland, traveled to Egypt (c1818?), worked with his brother in Russia (c1820-23?), traveled across Central Asia, was a bandit chief, a mercenary for Habib Ullah Khan in Afghansitan, and later a general in the Sikh army, and senior commander for Gulab Singh, ruler of Kashmir. The last two gigs are extensively documented.

Switch-Phase said:

I am astounded at the lack of awesome Jack the Ripper novels, and I fell in love with the idea a few years ago. I've got the outline done, but I haven't gotten around to writing the first chapter, just playing with a few scenes. I was so worried it would have been over done, but there's just From Hell and some time travel series, which are both totally different from what I'm doing.

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There's also[FONT=&quot] The Whitechapel Horrors by Edward B. Hanna (mentioned in Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald A. Maass) (1993)[/FONT]

Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes by Bernard J. Schaffer (2011)

as well as Fiction search on The Casebook.


If you're writing Jack and you haven't found the Casebook, you're doing too much work.


Jack the Ripper fascinated me. My next planned MIP deals with the Autumn of Terror as well.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica][/FONT]Just two for now:

Williamina Paton Fleming

http://www.womanastronomer.com/wfleming.htm

The fun story (possibly apocryphal) is that Pickering, at Harvard, was SO irritated by his lax grad students' calculations about his astronomical observations, he said "my MAID could do better than this." And he brought her in and indeed she did and from then on, there were women "calculators" at Harvard. I think it'd be interesting to read a novelization of her life.

Clara Wieck fascinates me. Wieck's father, a bit of a nutjob, picked a wife to intentionally breed good musicians. With his two sons, he failed (and was pretty brutal to them when they turned out good but not great). With Clara, he scored; she was the greatest pianist of the 19th century. As a teen, she fell in love with her father's student Robert Schumann, her father forbade them to see each other, eventually she married Schumann, his brain rotted from probably syphilis, as a middle aged woman she had (something--an affair/a longing) with a very young and beautiful Brahms. Somewhere I have 100 pages of notes towards a novel about her, but I finally realized it was beyond me.

One is definitely Parmenion. There is so little known of him, yet he commanded the respect of not only Philip II of Macedonia, but his son Alexander--who had him murdered preemptively for fear of his wrath. Philip II's quote "I have found only one trustworthy general, Parmenion," has stayed with me since I first heard it.

I have not written about him.

The other two, though questionable whether they are real, would be Odysseus and Aeneas.