In Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, there is Prince Rupert of the Rhine. See here. Also, by implication, there is the William Shakespeare who was not the Great Dramatist but the Great Historian.
SM Stirling's Black Chamber has, among others, alternative versions of Theodore Roosevelt and Colonel Nicolai. The author must keep such characters consistent with their real life counterparts while at the same time presenting their responses to altered histories.
This is essentially the same procedure as when one author writes another's character, e.g., Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series features not only Cyrus the Great and Hiram of Troy but also Sherlock Holmes.
Action-adventure fiction is endless. We accept not only new stories of old characters but also new characters like Stirling's Luz who kills men and spies on Nicolai's war preparations. The World Wars are endlessly re-fought in memory, recorded history, historical fiction and alternative history. Will the German's secret weapon be deployed against American cities?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Practically everything would have been different if the Sarajevo assassination had not occurred or had been prevented! That is one of my favorite "what ifs" of history. Or what if WW I had merely been delayed due to the Austro-Hungarian military commander in chief, Conrad von Hotzendorf, urging that war not be declared as a result of the exposure of Col. Redl's treason? Because von Hotzendorf might have concluded the Dual Monarchy would have needed time to repair the damage caused by Redl's treachery.
Redl's treachery reminded me of the almost equally catastrophic damage caused by Kim Philby's betrayal of the UK.
Sean
WIth historical characters, one way of maintaining continuity is to let them get into position to -do- things they indicated by word or deed they very much wanted to do.
Eg., Roosevelt was very unambiguous about wanting to intervene in the Mexican civil war after many Americans were attacked and the US border was violated. It's congruent with his entire career, too.
Likewise, he repeatedly tried to set up a national police/espionage/counter-espionage force based on the Secret Service while he -was- President, but Congress frustrated it. (Not least because they strongly suspected he'd use it to expose the gross corruption common at the time.)
In both cases, after 1912 in BLACK CHAMBER he gets to do what he obviously wanted to do.
Colonel Nicolai and General Ludendorff are similar cases. You can trace their careers and stated intentions and beliefs, and then imagine what they'd do if they'd had more power to affect events.
Coincidence also works in more subtle ways. Eg., nerve gasses were discovered due to a laboratory accident during research on insecticides -- Sarin and its successors are basically DDT for people.
If Germany had been doing more research on insecticides before 1914, it's entirely possible that the accident would have happened earlier; the fundamental chemical discoveries date from the 1890's.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And I'm not at all sure an invasion and conquest of Mexico of the sort advocated by Theodore Roosevelt would have been good for the US. I strongly suspect it would have become a hopeless quagmire devouring American lives and resources to no good purpose. My belief is that Mexico was and is too big and different to be successfully ruled by the US. Unless, of course, the US was willing to be as ruthless as the Romans!
And I'll be certainly interested to read of how you speculatively developed the lives and goals of Col. Nikolai and Gen. Ludendorff.
I've already read about the "May" attack on Paris, in 1916, in BLACK CHAMBER. Ludendorff and Nikolai would have done well to reflect that whey had done to others could well be inflicted on an even larger scale on Germany. Even in war it's simply wise and prudent to avoid going TOO far.
Sean
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