Arthur and Robin Hood are so fictionalized that any details about the historical character (if he does exist) are completely lost. All there is about Arthur is that there may have been a Saxon leader by that name – and there is no dependable historical record to confirm that.
For Robin Hood, there might have been a highwayman named Robert or Robin Hood, but there were no merry men, he didn’t exist in the time frame the story gave, etc.
It’s akin to saying that Dr. Who is based on the historical John Smith because he gave that as his name in one of the episodes.
Not in this space-time continuum. Crockett was a real person. He was a frontiersman and also served in the legislature of the state of Tennessee as well as the U. S. Congress. Bio
There absolutely was a Betsy Ross, who had a very interesting life (getting booted from Meeting [Quakers] for supporting the revolution is interesting all by itself) and did contribute to the American Revolution. She was also certainly a seamstress at times. And the house you can visit here in Philadelphia was certainly hers (inhereted from one of 3 marriages.) We even have a bridge named after her, which is an honor even if it does take you to New Jersey.
Over at the house itself they use ambiguous language about the flag; I suppose their other option is hanging a sign which reads *“Although interesting things happened here and this is a genuine colonial home of a famous individual, we’d encourage you to turn around and not give us the admission fee because the flag thing is a 19th century crock.” *
The house is run by a private foundation, I imagine most people think it’s part of Indepedence National Park, but the feds never snapped up the property when they could have. I suspect that would have happened if there were more cred in the flag tale.
James Herriot of “All Creatures Great and Small” was a real Yorkshire veterinarian, James Alfred Wight, who wrote a series of books about his experiences.
Doubtful. Marie Duplessis was born Rose Alphonsine Plessis, a peasant of Normandy. Richelieu was a member of the minor nobility of Poitou. If they were related at all it was very distantly.
Although his ghistory as given by Shakespeare bears ionly a passing resemblance to reality.
I have a chart of the kings and queens of the British Isles, from which I learned that Lady Macbeth’s real name was Gruoch, which looks too much like “Grouch”, and had to sound bad, no matter how you pronounced it. If I were her, I’d want to be known as “Lady Macbeth”, too.
On the same chart is Cnut, who’s only one typo away from obscenity. Must be why they prefer “Canute”.
There really was an Egyptian official named Im-Ho-Tep, but he had nothing to do with ambulatory mummies, lost loves, or (of course) tana leaves.
An irony is that two of your books could be by the same author, Geoffrey Ashe, the granddaddy of historical Arthur research. For decades he subscribed to the theory of Arthur as “the Bear” described by Gildas, a late 5th/early 6th century warlord, then he completely about faced and proclaimed that Arthur was based on Riothamus who lived more than a century before and wrote books escoriating his own previous research as well as that of his colleagues. It was a pretty big blip in Arthur geek circles (which I fall in somewhere), rather as if Dumas Malone had written a book entitled American Scumbucket: Why I Hope Thomas Jefferson Burns in Hay-ull.
There is a theory that Osiris was real (not a god, but a person of that name who was mythologized) but I’m not sure what the basis of that is. Rob(ert) (Fitz)Roy (McGregor) was real.
Croesus (for whom “rich as…” was an allusion for many years) existed; though nowhere near as wealthy as the Persian emperor who conquered him (and who he went to work for), his name may be linked to riches due to the fact that his family (the royal family of Lydia) was among the first to coin money. (Precious metals had been made into round flat units for many centuries before them, but their habit of stamping their likeness on the disks as both a certification and propaganda was an innovation.)
Well, of course, that is why I said: “based” first.
And it was not just “might have been based” as you said! In a comic book biography of Herge (amusingly echoing Herge’s stile) Chang had to defend of charges of treason in communist China since he was in contact with Europeans. He pointed out that he was a dear friend of Herge and pointed out that Tchang (the French spelling) was himself to the communist authorities. (here, I am not sure, but IIRC he was in jail for political reasons) His eventual release, leaving china and then living in Europe was made possible thanks the efforts of Herge.
Of course Chang never encountered the yeti, but the true life of Chang was IMO stranger than fiction.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on Dr. Joseph Bell. Bell was a professor at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, where he impressed Conan Doyle with his ability to deduce an astonishing amount of information about his patients from his observations.
That’s where Flemming found the name - he wanted something boring and unremarkable but the ‘character’ wasn’t in any way based on the bird man, they were just namesakes is all.
“Might have been” in this use does not imply doubt as to truth. It means the same thing as if I had said “Regardless of whether he was based …” or “Although he was based …” or “Although he might have been based …”
Anyway, the point of the OP, it seems to me is characters who were meant to represent real people. It seems to me that a minimum requirement is that the character have the same name as the person and at least the implication that he had the same experiences as the real person. Characters “based on” real people could get into the thousands.
