The Dark Side of Historical Fiction

I'd like to draw your attention to Moses. We all know that he was shipped down the Nile in a basket, then picked up by a royal Egyptian woman. Common knowledge, right? ... I think common knowledge has got it wrong. I mean, look at this.

The verse clearly says the following: "And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it."

Perhaps the placement was strategic?

Now look back at that picture of the Nile and tell me this: Was Moses doing any floating, anywhere? I think not. I mean, look at those "flags" (it's papyrus in this picture, actually, according to where I stole it from). Think about any reeds on the edge of rivers you have seen. Was he taken to the middle of the river? No. He was placed in a place where the water pretty much doesn't move, surrounded by plants that also kept him from going much of anywhere (did the pitch make the basket stick to the plants, too? Something to ponder if you feel like).

So there goes every retelling of the story of Moses I am familiar with.

I have no idea where everyone got the idea that Moses went floating downriver, but it seems to be an accepted fact now. I blame it on historical fiction.

It's hard to draw the line between retellings and historical fiction sometimes. I'm sure people don't consciously think of The Ten Commandments as historical fiction, even though it adds a mess load of stuff that isn't in the Bible. Whole characters and storylines are added. So I'm going to call it historical fiction and we'll all know what I'm talking about.

The dark side of historical fiction: We sometimes let it come to define history.

This is definitely what the Middle Ages looked like. I'm sure of it.

The best of historical fiction does this, actually. Characters that seem too real to be made up come to mind whenever we think about a period of history, tainting it with their presence. They make that period come alive, but they also make it their own, muddying the waters. Props, places, whole ideas go through the same process. King Arthur may be seen as a myth, but his court still helps define how everyone sees the Middle Ages. I imagine lancing tournaments happening with regularity, a lot of dirty people farming, royal women spending all their time sewing, and who knows what the men were doing if they weren't knights. I've got a mixture of King Arthur stories, A Knight's Tale, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and a lot of fantasy books going through my head when I think of the Middle Ages. You try imagining the Middle Ages without using fiction as a reference.

I read The Help a bit ago, and guess what? When I think of the South in the 60s, that's the main thing I have to draw on. That and a lot of photos I've mostly forgotten from the Civil Rights Movement, and the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. in my head saying, "I have a dream!" (and no, not just the words, but his voice, courtesy of listening to a recording of it).

Think about it. Historical fiction, if done well enough, can define history for the world.

No pressure, historical fiction writers.