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fannish5Not that easy to narrow it down, since history is one of my passions. But let me clarify: I'll exclude anything that strikes me as mainly fantasy, which means anything myth-based, so, for example, no Merlin and no Fireking or any other Arthurian lore based novels/tv shows/movies), but also fandoms like Pirates of the Carribean which do use some historical elements, like the East India Trading Company, but only give you a headache once you start trying to date any of the events in them due to being as generous as the Elizabethans in their dramas with using fashions, laws and customes from completely different eras.
This being said, I arrive at:
1.) 18th Dynasty Egypt. The first historical novel I ever read, excluding anything by Karl May which for him was, err, contemporary fantasy, was Mika Waltari's The Egyptian, so you could say that left a mark. But really, the 18th Dynasty has the most fascinating female ruler of Egypt (sorry, Cleopatra), Hatshepsut, early on and it has the most intriguing male ruler as well, Amenophis IV aka Akhenaten, at its end. And the various novels about them are such a great commentary on their respective times of origin, too. (Hatshepsut can be an evil stepmother or a feminist heroine, Akhenaten a brave and idealistic revolutionary going up against a corrupt priesthood hierarchy or an incestous Ayatollah persecuting others.) Also I had the ultimate fannish experience of watching Aida performed in front of Deir-el-Bahri (Hatshepsut's temple), so there.
2.) The Late Roman Republic and Early Empire. We have so much material from the era, from gossippy letters to cookbook recipes, blazingly vivid characters (not always vividly captured, but there you go), male and female, and also, any fandom which has both Shakespeare and Monty Python writing for it just wins. Also![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vaznetti wrote the funniest post ever, "Roman Politics as a Fandom", which is beyond wonderful.
3.) 12th and 13th century Europe. The Plantagenets are one of my favourite dysfunctional royal families, but the Angevin Empire wasn't the only part which makes this era fascinating to me. There's my favourite emperor of them all, Frederick II (not to be confused with the Prussian king of the same name a few centuries later), stupor mundi, a Renaissance man in the middle ages (and the only one who ever pulled off a crusade without a single battle, getting what he wanted with peaceful negotiations; he was excommunicated while doing so, too) with all the virtues and flaws of one (he was multilingual, endlessly curious, a poet and a scientist; he was also incredibly ruthless and brutal to his enemies). There's the fact that you have women able to study medicine in Salerno. Abaelard and Heloise. Poetry exploding everywhere. Muslim Spain. In short: so my fandom.
4.) Age of Revolution (i.e. later half of the 18th and early 19th century). I find this a better term than "age of sails", not least because while I did read the Hornblower novels as a child, the navy really isn't my main interest in the era. It's the excitement of ideas again, the fact that certainties everywhere got challenged, and while that didn't always end well, to put it mildly (those early female French revolutionaries quickly discovered that fraternité was a male word indeed - then again, could Mary Wollstonecraft have written her Vindication of the Rights of Women in any previous era?), it still changed so much that really needed changing. I also appreciate that there are shades of grey everywhere, in every country. There were no white hats and black hats. And, of local interest: a lot of German literary canon got written during that period, so you could say it shaped my mind in more ways than one.
5.) The 1960s. I was born in the last year of them, but I'd still say anything set in them by now qualifies as historical. It seems to be the favourite period to hate for American conservative politicians, but its interest to me predates that. Musicwise, film-wise, politics wise (from the long overdue confrontation with the past which my parents' generation did with their parents to the Prague Spring to the anti war protests everywhere), characters-wise, it remains incredibly compelling to me.
This being said, I arrive at:
1.) 18th Dynasty Egypt. The first historical novel I ever read, excluding anything by Karl May which for him was, err, contemporary fantasy, was Mika Waltari's The Egyptian, so you could say that left a mark. But really, the 18th Dynasty has the most fascinating female ruler of Egypt (sorry, Cleopatra), Hatshepsut, early on and it has the most intriguing male ruler as well, Amenophis IV aka Akhenaten, at its end. And the various novels about them are such a great commentary on their respective times of origin, too. (Hatshepsut can be an evil stepmother or a feminist heroine, Akhenaten a brave and idealistic revolutionary going up against a corrupt priesthood hierarchy or an incestous Ayatollah persecuting others.) Also I had the ultimate fannish experience of watching Aida performed in front of Deir-el-Bahri (Hatshepsut's temple), so there.
2.) The Late Roman Republic and Early Empire. We have so much material from the era, from gossippy letters to cookbook recipes, blazingly vivid characters (not always vividly captured, but there you go), male and female, and also, any fandom which has both Shakespeare and Monty Python writing for it just wins. Also
vaznetti wrote the funniest post ever, "Roman Politics as a Fandom", which is beyond wonderful. 3.) 12th and 13th century Europe. The Plantagenets are one of my favourite dysfunctional royal families, but the Angevin Empire wasn't the only part which makes this era fascinating to me. There's my favourite emperor of them all, Frederick II (not to be confused with the Prussian king of the same name a few centuries later), stupor mundi, a Renaissance man in the middle ages (and the only one who ever pulled off a crusade without a single battle, getting what he wanted with peaceful negotiations; he was excommunicated while doing so, too) with all the virtues and flaws of one (he was multilingual, endlessly curious, a poet and a scientist; he was also incredibly ruthless and brutal to his enemies). There's the fact that you have women able to study medicine in Salerno. Abaelard and Heloise. Poetry exploding everywhere. Muslim Spain. In short: so my fandom.
4.) Age of Revolution (i.e. later half of the 18th and early 19th century). I find this a better term than "age of sails", not least because while I did read the Hornblower novels as a child, the navy really isn't my main interest in the era. It's the excitement of ideas again, the fact that certainties everywhere got challenged, and while that didn't always end well, to put it mildly (those early female French revolutionaries quickly discovered that fraternité was a male word indeed - then again, could Mary Wollstonecraft have written her Vindication of the Rights of Women in any previous era?), it still changed so much that really needed changing. I also appreciate that there are shades of grey everywhere, in every country. There were no white hats and black hats. And, of local interest: a lot of German literary canon got written during that period, so you could say it shaped my mind in more ways than one.
5.) The 1960s. I was born in the last year of them, but I'd still say anything set in them by now qualifies as historical. It seems to be the favourite period to hate for American conservative politicians, but its interest to me predates that. Musicwise, film-wise, politics wise (from the long overdue confrontation with the past which my parents' generation did with their parents to the Prague Spring to the anti war protests everywhere), characters-wise, it remains incredibly compelling to me.
