Harald Hardrada in Poul Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy;
Saints Corentine, Patrick and Martin in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy;
Croesus and Hiram in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.
In Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, Prince Rupert of the Rhine becomes a fictional character in an alternative history.
This process began in the Bible where a historical book, 2 Kings, refers to a prophet Jonah (14:25) who was later adapted as the central character of a fictional narrative, Jonah. See "In The Belly Of The Whale."
2 comments:
Prominent figures tend to attract accretions of myth. As Poul noted in THE WAR OF THE GODS, they also tend to get other, lesser heroes shoehorned into their stories -- the way the Danish king Hrolf Kraki did, or Arthur in England.
Kaor, Paul
Ditto, what Mr. Stirling said. And Charlemagne, in the Carolingian legends, also attracted other heroes around him, such as Holger Danske.
And I think of the book of Jonah not as literal history, but as a midrash, composed by an author using an obscure figure around which to build an edifying story.
Ad astra! Sean
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