What Historical Fiction Cliches Would You Put In Room 101?

aruna said:

I have that one in my first novel! Hah!

Whenever a young woman vomits, I immediately know she's pregnant - and that's for contemporary as well as historical fiction.

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Haha, I have that in both my MS and WIP. Now I do try disguise it in my MS with a boat trip. She thinks she's seasick until a street wise tavern maid says, "Hey you're pregnant."

In the WIP, the girl is just a dunce. Once again her ladies maid is like, "Hey when are you're going to tell the Earl? I do know a lot about your bodily functions."

gothicangel said:

The MC is always a handsome, smarter than his superiors, athletic/master swordsman, heroic, centurion/soldier who single-handly saves the Roman Empire from certain collapse . . . from a small rowdy bunch tribesmen.

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Can I add to the list anything that involves "the Civilized Folks" versus "the Barbarian Horde"? The barbarians are, of course, always dirty, smelly, vicious, illiterate, have silly beliefs, etc. While I think there is a certain amount of importance in terms of getting inside the characters' heads, when I feel like the author is paying into that mindset, it drives me crazy. Especially when "barbarianism" is portrayed as dirty and illiterate.

gothicangel said:

I have identified the male version of the in Roman military fiction. The MC is always a handsome, smarter than his superiors, athletic/master swordsman, heroic, centurion/soldier who single-handly saves the Roman Empire from certain collapse . . . from a small rowdy bunch tribesmen.

If that isn't male wish-fulfilment, I'll eat my stola.

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Ah yes, the Gary Sue. No matter the gender, the preturnaturally gifted, beautiful, and anachronistic character is a guaranteed bore.j

Mayqueen, I have been mucking around amongst the "Barbarians" for a good bit now, and know them for the sandalwood and ivory comb using, hygenic, engineering and strategic smarties they were. Barbarian laws were in some ways more to the humanistic taste of the modern mind, and the stereotypes are tiresome indeed.

Hand in hand with the dirty-Barbarian trope is the Dark Ages cliche', in which people were all mouth-breathing idiots, incapable of human behavior, thought, nor accomplishment due to the dung fires and absence of Classical literature. The fact is, dried dung burns beautifully - and there are arguments to be made that written literature has destroyed the nimble and capacious memory of a verbal lore-based society. As an author, I would hardly argue against writing and literature - but even my limited personal experience correlates to the theories that documentation provides the excuse for limited memory (and, thus, in some ways, even certain types of learning - consider the sneering attitude we have toward "learning by rote" these days).

The idea that humanity lost its ability to think, invent, reason, and question completely, for the span of as many as ten centuries, is even stupider than our cartoon reduction of the period itself.

Agreed about the Dark Ages cliche! And really any other cliche about an oral history society. It doesn't mean the people were ignorant and knew nothing. It means no one wrote it down. That's all.

I do what's called historical sociology in my regular life. We're constantly talking about how recorded history privileges certain accounts and how oral histories are important to collect.

My pet peeve (and honestly, I didn't know this was one until recently): when the author is careful to point out through every character action and dialogue that The World is Changing and We're Going a New Way Now.

Before I finished reading, I'd begun to feel like the characters were spouts for a history lesson instead of being their own entities. Sadly, the book was really rather well written. It just wasn't ... alive.

LOL! I'm with you on this one, LC. In my book that's coming out in September (973 Wales) I have a single character do this in a sort of accidental prophecy, and he immediately grabs himself up, gives himself an obvious mental shake and says out loud, "I never said that!"

Prophecy in a religious was frowned upon in these days, though it's fully described in the Bible. They just weren't supposed to be able to hear from God that way.

The historical novel as history lesson trope makes me wallbang any book. I look forward to the release of Gothic's Pictish/Roman story. Her posts here have me eager to give it a read.

angeliz2k said:

Girl rebels, doesn't want to be a housewife, has modern ideas about choosing for herself.

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Oops. Don't read my PEACEWEAVER when it releases this fall. My MC doesn't keep these ideas long-term, but bear in mind she's very young and not really keen on getting married, because she has this idea all young brides die in childbirth -- kind of a non-motivator in her eyes as it would be in mine.

Deb Kinnard said:

Oops. Don't read my PEACEWEAVER when it releases this fall. My MC doesn't keep these ideas long-term, but bear in mind she's very young and not really keen on getting married, because she has this idea all young brides die in childbirth -- kind of a non-motivator in her eyes as it would be in mine.

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Well, honestly, a young woman who just does whatever she is told wouldn't be interesting. Since misogyny is generally distasteful, that also makes the rebellious young woman more appealing to a modern reader. After all, we agree with her.

But . . . it seems like every young woman in every historical novel doesn't want to get married and just wants to be "free" (to do what for the rest of her life?). I would like to see a real examination of the other young women who made the best of things.

I'm sure you treat the subject very well in Peaceweaver! I wouldn't pass judgment on any particular work. For example, I just saw Brave, and really enjoyed the main character, Merida. It's the trend in general that gets old.

Deb Kinnard said:

Oops. Don't read my PEACEWEAVER when it releases this fall. My MC doesn't keep these ideas long-term, but bear in mind she's very young and not really keen on getting married, because she has this idea all young brides die in childbirth -- kind of a non-motivator in her eyes as it would be in mine.

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I think that trait in your character is entirely historically believable. Before the Civil War the number of young women who witnessed older sisters, aunts and even mothers die in childbirth was very high. Watched, not sat outside in an emergency room waiting area. I've often wondered just how many women were truly frightened for their lives during each of their pregnancies.

bulldoggerel said:

I think that trait in your character is entirely historically believable. Before the Civil War the number of young women who witnessed older sisters, aunts and even mothers die in childbirth was very high. Watched, not sat outside in an emergency room waiting area. I've often wondered just how many women were truly frightened for their lives during each of their pregnancies.

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Agreed.

For what it's worth, Libbie from here on AW did an amazing job with that in The Sekhmet Bed, an ancient Egyptian historical. Very well done, very realistic, and the character is never unsympathetic or weak as a result of it, and it's not an insignificant part of the story either.

thethinker42 said:

Agreed.

For what it's worth, Libbie from here on AW did an amazing job with that in The Sekhmet Bed, an ancient Egyptian historical. Very well done, very realistic, and the character is never unsympathetic or weak as a result of it, and it's not an insignificant part of the story either.

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Sounds good, I will check it out. I have done a fair amount of genealogical research for stories and once while I was delving into early French Canadian family trees noticed how many younger sisters in large family household became nuns. Now doing Protestant new England treees from the same era- that option was not open to Protestant women. I don't know, but always wondered how many of these younger sisters had witnessed awful childbirths, and were just generally sick of caring for their elder sisters children and even their mother's youngest childrenn before they themselves had even left childhood and used the nunnery as a way out. It was almost never an eldest sister who became a nun.

I'm not sure that carries over into the tradition of the second or third son taking up the cloth. IIRC at least partly it was because splitting up the family farm too much over too many generations meant no one got enough to live on.

With the girls, maybe partly tradition, partly 'Thank god I'll never have to go through that!' because not everyone will decide not to (and even older sisters would see aunts etc) . Or we wouldn't be here

Yeah, now I know who to blame. Damn great great great great grandmother who didn't get herself to the nunnery.

angeliz2k said:

Well, honestly, a young woman who just does whatever she is told wouldn't be interesting. Since misogyny is generally distasteful, that also makes the rebellious young woman more appealing to a modern reader. After all, we agree with her.

But . . . it seems like every young woman in every historical novel doesn't want to get married and just wants to be "free" (to do what for the rest of her life?). I would like to see a real examination of the other young women who made the best of things.

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Agreed. It's hard to read historical fiction sometimes when I'm fully aware that I'm reading a time period when beating your wife was encouraged, etc.

I really enjoyed Cecelia Holland's Great Maria for a portrayal of a woman who doesn't necessarily want to get married to the man she does but ends up making the best of it. Even though her husband sometimes beats her and she doesn't have much freedom, I found her character really interesting and compelling.

angeliz2k said:

Well, honestly, a young woman who just does whatever she is told wouldn't be interesting. Since misogyny is generally distasteful, that also makes the rebellious young woman more appealing to a modern reader. After all, we agree with her.

But . . . it seems like every young woman in every historical novel doesn't want to get married and just wants to be "free" (to do what for the rest of her life?). I would like to see a real examination of the other young women who made the best of things.

I'm sure you treat the subject very well in Peaceweaver! I wouldn't pass judgment on any particular work. For example, I just saw Brave, and really enjoyed the main character, Merida. It's the trend in general that gets old.

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Frankly, I wish misogyny really WERE generally distasteful - it appears, in our current culture, all too appealing to all too many. But that's another thread.

In my first novel, there are two significant marriages, and two scenes involving the prospective brides' acceptance of their arrangements. In the first case, I wrote the character as seeing her marriage as a sort of dynastic opportunity - a role to which she not only had been raised, but had aspired personally. She is eager to fulfill a certain type of feminine glory, queen to a great husband, and she sees a clear potential to become mother of a dynasty. The second case is a more prominent character, who comes to her marriage out of faith, a sense of fate, and a certain amount of attraction to both the role and the husband. The relationship is developed pretty deeply, and is loving, difficult, committed in a way modern people don't always understand, and fruitful (also in a way modern people don't always understand).

In the WIP, the main character is a princess who is clearly physically uncompelling. She cultivates her intellect and personality, and she also uses her position to make up for the idea that those around her find her ugly. She marries very young and against all the rules, and watches her husband pay for this sin. She seeks power through the channels available to her, and eventually herself pays for her heterodoxy, pride, and ambition. (Her story, by the way, is not fictional.)

(So stay tuned - you might like my work, angeliz2k!)

DianeL said:

Frankly, I wish misogyny really WERE generally distasteful - it appears, in our current culture, all too appealing to all too many. But that's another thread.

In my first novel, there are two significant marriages, and two scenes involving the prospective brides' acceptance of their arrangements. In the first case, I wrote the character as seeing her marriage as a sort of dynastic opportunity - a role to which she not only had been raised, but had aspired personally. She is eager to fulfill a certain type of feminine glory, queen to a great husband, and she sees a clear potential to become mother of a dynasty. The second case is a more prominent character, who comes to her marriage out of faith, a sense of fate, and a certain amount of attraction to both the role and the husband. The relationship is developed pretty deeply, and is loving, difficult, committed in a way modern people don't always understand, and fruitful (also in a way modern people don't always understand).

In the WIP, the main character is a princess who is clearly physically uncompelling. She cultivates her intellect and personality, and she also uses her position to make up for the idea that those around her find her ugly. She marries very young and against all the rules, and watches her husband pay for this sin. She seeks power through the channels available to her, and eventually herself pays for her heterodoxy, pride, and ambition. (Her story, by the way, is not fictional.)

(So stay tuned - you might like my work, angeliz2k!)

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Ah, see, I like that approach! Marriage as part of the social pecking order, and as a means of social mobility. That's what I mean about women taking what society threw their way and using it to their advantage.

gothicangel said:

Damn. My WIP has two young women getting married. One, choses my MC's love rival, and the other to escape her father's authority.

Why didn't someone tell me I was doing this wrong?

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Hm, sounds about right to me!

My opinions are not really reflected in my previous or current WIPs because of the stories I'm telling. One is the story of a [real life] prostitute whose matrimonial prospects are understandably limited. The other is the story of a young woman who has to learn to follow her instincts; one of her missteps is allowing herself to be tricked into marrying Harry Daniels.

angeliz2k said:

Ah, see, I like that approach! Marriage as part of the social pecking order, and as a means of social mobility. That's what I mean about women taking what society threw their way and using it to their advantage.

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angeliz2k, thank you - it feels right emotionally and socially, so I hope it does work.

gothicangel, my Gallo Roman queen was sainted precisely thanks to her ability to persuade a king to her religion. She pokes, she prods, he loves her, he hates her importunities, she wins ... and, thanks to that, so does he.

gothicangel, yours sounds much more creative than mine!

This part of the thread, by the way, inspired me to a post on my blog - angeliz, I hope you won't mind, I excerpted a part of what you said in quoting my own earlier post: http://dianelmajor.blogspot.com/2012/07/unexpectedly-in-defense-of-mary.html

mayqueen said:

I would say a naive young girl (usually pretty) who becomes the companion of a princess, queen, countess, etc, and comes of age. I would like to see a really creative spin on that cliche, but otherwise I'm pretty over it.

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Try Dong Yi. Korean drama, it has subs. You can watch it legally and for free on dramafever.

The maid grows up, is taken in by the women's division of what's basically the investigation department, and then attends the Queen as a Water maid, and then becomes the mother of the next Queen over the favorite concubine. (Effectively becoming Queen and Queen Mother).

I bet the real version, though was more interesting since the original said she was a water maid only and the King found her when she was crying for the murdered Queen. (He also had another concubine after her... but the Korean drama cut that out)

angeliz2k said:

But . . . it seems like every young woman in every historical novel doesn't want to get married and just wants to be "free" (to do what for the rest of her life?). I would like to see a real examination of the other young women who made the best of things.

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Doing a "Best of it" scenario with the current work, though the motivations seem a bit twisted at first.

Gods betroth the character. The character tries to go along with this because it's her fate. (Besides, the deal looks sweet--she gets upgraded to a Queen away from her parents) But the real reason is she hates doing the chores and thinks she should be treated better, being a princess. (A little whiny with a sister jealousy complex). She's thrown back (per the original story) goes through repentance (Learns her family loves her, all that Asian guilt value stuff), is sent on her way, thinking she's entitled again. (Things are going to be better because everything is under her control now as Queen.)

But she ends up not in a rich country, but one that's backwards in her eyes (just established), stuck in a marriage where her husband won't consummate with her, thus securing her position. (For 5 long years). And he won't take a concubine or another wife (Which could be advantageous to her because at least there would be an heir--so she wasn't blamed for the whole thing). So she has to not only overcome culture shock, but make the best of her marriage and her precarious position.

Unlike the Korean version of the story which was told from the man's POV, I'm doing it from the woman's and not making her virtuous at first, but has to learn how to be and how to navigate with what she has. She also has to learn that Hindu/Buddhist model of thinking and living in the present, instead of only the past and the future... constantly wanting more. Instead shaping the present to get a better future.

Most of the book the character is trying to conform to society and failing miserably.... which is a twist on the rebellious streak. She has a temper she can't quite control, she has complexes about her beauty (She's thin, which is no good) and she's constantly getting into trouble because she seems to not *get* it.

And not 13th century (with is Mughal and done a lot) but first century India. (Not done at all...) Epic. Fantasy. Women's POV. 100% sure it hasn't been done before.