(no subject)

The current trend toward 'creative' historical writing is incredibly annoying. If you are going to write things like 'the gravel of [whatever town Boudica was attacking] should have crunched under the feet of its happy inhabitants,' or 'Theodora might have felt X way when she saw/heard about Y,' write historical fiction, dammit!


Similarly, if one of the sources you repeatedly quote is the sketchy "secret history" of a people with not much of a literary tradition about their semi-legendary founder, write historical fiction, dammit!


I mean, really. I thought we'd evolved past Herodotus.