Historical fact and historical fiction

There are two or three very well-known authors I can think of (and many more whose names don’t spring to mind right now!) who write what I call historical biographies. 

They select a known person from history and write as if they were them, or knew them; in other words, they write dialogue for them, tell us their thoughts, their emotions as well as the major points of their lives. This is fine, and I read a lot of them. But writing fiction about well-known  and well documented figures and events is one thing; writing about characters who once existed about whom little is known is problematical.

Readers ask me if the main character in my book Alba is Mine is really MacBeth. Well, the answer is partly yes and partly no; MacBeth started it all. Or rather, Shakespeare did when he made him a short reign villain when in actual fact he reigned successfully for seventeen years. 

I wanted to know more, but could regrettably find very little about the real MacBeth. Dunnett researched him for five years before she wrote King Hereafter and as a successful historical novelist she had access to all sorts of information sources that I, with nothing to my name, did not. So I contented myself with imagining a time period and its culture, clothes, poetry and weapons, added one or two historical characters and then leapt off into the realms of pure fiction, by which I mean I simply imagined everything.

Knowing how much was my imagination, I couldn’t bring myself to call my hero MacBeth, so I called him Finlay mac Ruaidhri, which wasn’t so far removed from the name most family trees gave his step-father. Dunnett’s conclusion was that MacBeth and Earl Thorfinn were one and the same person; Thorfinn was his Orkney name, and MacBeth his Christian name, but I made Thorfinn and Finlay half-brothers sharing the same mother. Since I was writing fiction I shamelessly telescoped events so that the book covers less than a year in the life of my hero – but it is a very eventful year!

Viking Scotland V

King Malcolm II

King Malcolm was for some time the most powerful man in the country. King Owen of the Britons of Strathclyde had died without issue, and Malcolm’s grandson, Duncan, was the rightful heir through marriage. The Four Kingdoms of Alba were finally united under one throne  -  and under Malcolm.

King Duncan I

Duncan was related to previous rulers through his mother Bethoc, daughter of Malcolm II. He became King in 1034. Defeated by the native English at Durham in 1040, he was a weak character and a poor leader. At a place called Bothganowan meaning "Blacksmith's Hut" in old Gaelic, (or Bothgofnane, Bothgofuane, or Bothgowan, today Pitgaveny near Elgin), his cousin, chief of the northern Scots defeated and killed Duncan, and took the kingship for himself.

King MacBeth

The Mormaer of Moray, MacBeth (Mac Bethad mac Findláich,) claimed the throne on his own behalf and that of his wife Grauch, and formed an alliance with his cousin the Earl of Orkney. Respected for his strong leadership qualities, MacBeth was a wise king who ruled successfully for 17 years from a fortified castle at Dunsinane north of Perth. His rule was secure enough for him to go on a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050.

Duncan’s son Malcolm had fled to Northumbria after the defeat of his father and had never given up his claim to the throne. In 1054 with the support of Earl Siward, he led an army against MacBeth, and defeated him at the battle of Dunsinnan. MacBeth remained king, and restored Malcolm’s lands to him, but in 1057 at Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire on 15th August, Malcolm finally killed MacBeth and took the crown. He also married MacBeth’s widow.

A little shameless

A little shameless self-promotion today - and why not? Looking back, Banners of Alba was a complex subject for a first book, but my heart was in it and I'm not telling porkies when I say it was a labour of love from start to finish.

Shakespeare was to blame, because he maligned the character of MacBeth for the sake of a play. It was a good play, but I decided to look into the story of the real MacBeth. There wasn't a lot of written history available to me, and so I had to use my imagination. Gradually the shadowy figure of the king who reigned for seventeen years and thought of Alba as one united country morphed into my version of what kind of man MacBeth might have been. Because it is fiction and not a biographical study (not at all!) I gave him a new name - one I could spell, and a Gaelic one whose spelling I had to check every time I used it.

If I wrote it today, I suspect it would be shorter, but it might just lose something in the process. Best to leave it as it is, I think.

All in the mind?

Authors inhabiting the minds and thinking processess of people long dead, or not so long dead, or even alive, is a new argument I have stumbled across this week. Beevor and Byatt seem to be against it, and this astonishes me. I think of all the historical novels I have read over the years and think how much poorer my personal book world would have been if all those famous authors of the past had not given us those kingly/queenly thoughts. There are many authors writing today who are very good at creating thought processes for historical characters. I was about to say that so far nothing of mine has included anything but fictional characters - and then I remembered Kings Malcolm and Duncan in Banners of Alba. It is hardly an excuse to claim that so little is known of them that one has to invent, but it is true. I remember Dunnett's King Hereafter and the relationship between Thorfinn/MacBeth and his wife Groa and realise how much of the author's imagination went into that, but I cannot be other than glad she did. The result was a joy to read. I sit here and wonder if at any point Dunnett gave us their actual thoughts, and realise I would have to go and check to be sure, but I feel that she did not. A good author's craft can convey many things without inhabiting thought processes. Is that allowable, I wonder? I must go back and re-read Byatt and Beevor!