I suspect that at least some authors who do this have some issues with the genre (historical novel, that is) and don't want to be called a historical novelist, in much the same vein as Kazuo Ishiguro when publishing Never Let Me Go insisted that it wasn't really Science Fiction (despite the clones), and Daniel Kehlmann in interviews about Die Vermessung der Welt said it wasn't really a historical novel because he'd used only indirect speech for all the characters. Head. Desk.

And I want the Friedrich show, too. Would you cast different actors for Friedrich in the various stages of his life, or would you trust one actor to play him both in his teens and as an old man? If the later, who?