Historical Accuracy in Your Novel

How accurate does your historical novel need to be?

There was recently a discussion on the Regency Fiction Writers’ forum concerning historical accuracy. For a group whose courses mostly teach accurate historical detail (everything from architecture to dancing to cookery), there were a number of authors who commented that they didn’t believe a historical novel needed to be 100% accurate.

The discussion began with someone looking for a name for a Regency romance as lacking in accuracy as the Bridgerton television show. (In case you aren’t aware, the show is wildly inaccurate from costumes to the music — classic-fied 21st century pop and so much more.) The poster thought it might be Romantasy, but it was then pointed out that Romantasy is an entirely different genre that has its own rules. But her point was that since Bridgerton first aired on television, there have been an influx of Regency romances where it is painfully obvious the author did absolutely no research at all.

For those of us who have been writing historical novels for many years, this sort of disregard for historical accuracy is incredible. So many authors (including myself) have read original sources, visited the places we are writing about, taken courses, and have done everything we can to make our books as historically accurate as possible. And then these new authors…