The following characters are listed in historical order although with at least one divergent timeline:
Harald Hardrada, King of Norway
Sherlock Holmes, private investigator
James Bond, secret agent
Manson Everard, Time Patrolman
Nicholas van Rijn, Master Merchant, Polesotechnic League
David Falkayn, MMPL
Dominic Flandry, secret agent
(As an appendix to this list, Anderson also created several strong "proto-series" characters: Manuel Argos; Diana Crowfeather; Roan Tom; Daven Laure.)
An exercise for a reader of fiction is to try to construct a series character's biography. First, the series itself recounts at least one period of the character's life although a central character's death is not usually recorded. (Two exceptions: Poirot; Morse.) Concerning the above listed characters, we are informed only of Hardrada's time and place of death but those are matters of historical record in any case.
Secondly, a series often refers to earlier events in a character's life, thus providing clues for a fictional biographer. Thirdly, the biographer can simply invent details for periods that the author has not covered although I think that such an approach is to be frowned upon. We should aim at a minimalist, not a speculative, biography.
Persis d'Io discovers that the nineteen-year old Dominic Flandry is already sexually experienced and confident. James Bond lost his virginity and his notecase in Paris at the age of sixteen. We have a place and an age for Bond but not for Flandry. That is all.
(This post is occasioned by the facts that we are rereading Bond and that Fleming's novels present two minimal but also mutually incompatible biographies which might become the subject-matter of a post on another blog.)
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