“The Borgias” vs. “Borgia: Faith and Fear” (accuracy in historical fiction) – Ex Urbe
Excellent blast from the past about the dilemmas in “historically accurate” fiction.
Envision a scene in which two Renaissance men are hanging out in a bar in Bologna with a prostitute. Watching this scene, I, with my professional knowledge of the place and period, notice that there are implausibly too many candles burning, way more than this pub could afford, plus what they paid for that meal is about what the landlord probably earns in a month, and the prostitute isn’t wearing the mandatory blue veil required for prostitutes by Bologna’s sumptuary laws. But if I showed it to twenty other historians they would notice other things: that style of candlestick wasn’t possible with Italian metalwork of the day, that fabric pattern was Flemish, that window wouldn’t have had curtains, that dish they’re eating is a period dish but from Genoa, not Bologna, and no Genoese cook would be in Bologna because feud bla bla bla. So much we know. But a person from the period would notice a thousand other things: that nobody made candles in that exact diameter, or they butchered animals differently so that cut of steak is the wrong shape, or no bar of the era would have been without the indispensable who-knows-what: a hat-cleaning lady, a box of kittens, a special shape of bread. All historical scenes are wrong, as wrong as a scene set now would be which had a classy couple go to a formal steakhouse with paper menus and an all-you-can-eat steak buffet. All the details are right, but the mix is wrong.That’s a good way to put it, and moreover I agree with her on the failure modes of getting too attached to historical accuracy.
Scorcese’s a big American history fan and loves using it as material (like I say I think the natural successor is Rockstar’s open world vidya) and Gangs of New York was basically a series of “hey didja know?” Easter eggs.
Didja know that NYC was an anti-Lincoln town? Didja know that playwrights’ texts didn’t used to be so sacred and directors would insert topical material and run fix fic endings? Didja know that moral reformers would try to co-opt the demimonde of saloon prostitution towards good Christian living and the demimonde would co-opt them right back?
I did know, and I got it, and loved it. I got the ending, “aah, the point is these quirks were never so much resolved as obviated by the modernizing nationalism brought on by the Civil War!” But even I thought there wasn’t enough connective tissue to hold it all together and other people I talked to were like “what the HELL was going on”