History UsefulNotes / TELawrence

* ColonelBadass: Lawrence himself, following his promotion to lieutenant colonel in January 1918. Although his most important contributions to the Arab Revolt were in terms of strategy and liaison with the British forces, he also participated personally in several military engagements; he was at one point seriously considered for a Victoria Cross.

For a few years in the late 1920s, he was stationed in British India to keep him out of the way of the press, but he was sent back to Britain after rumors spread about what a former adviser-to-rebels stationed in such a politically sensitive area might be up to [[note]] he actually had no such intentions -- he didn't speak any Indian languages, he didn't know the local culture well, and by that point in his life he was sick of political intrigue [[/note]], although he was more interested in working on his translation of ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' at the time. During his later years in the RAF, Lawrence became interested in air-sea rescue and was deeply involved in the development of high-speed motorboats for water rescues. While it doesn't often show up in media focused on the Arab Revolt, where there were more camels around than motor vehicles, Lawrence was rather a gearhead, and his love for acceleration was by no means limited to motorcycles.\\

By 1922, Lawrence was not doing at all well in terms of mental health. He'd been leapfrogging from stressful situation to stressful situation since 1916, and his work on ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom'' kept the war fresh in his mind. In the first chapter of ''The Mint'' he portrays himself at that point as a borderline NervousWreck. (With ThereAreNoTherapists having been in effect, it's impossible to know for sure, but untreated PTSD seems very plausible.) Lawrence quit the Colonial Office, and later that year enlisted in the Royal Air Force under an assumed name. If Lawrence had hoped to lead a quiet life away from the shadow of "Lawrence of Arabia," he was disappointed, because the press found out about his identity after less than a year and Lawrence was discharged. Lawrence joined the army Tank Corps under a different alias soon after, but he was not at all happy there and kept petitioning to be readmitted to the RAF. Lawrence got his way in 1925, and the more cheerful last section of ''The Mint'' was based on his experiences after his re-enlistment.\\

For a few years in the late 1920s, he was stationed in British India to keep him out of the way of the press, but he was sent back to Britain after rumors spread about what a former adviser-to-rebels stationed in such a politically sensitive area might be up to. (Lawrence had no such intentions: he didn't speak any Indian languages, he didn't know the local culture well, and by that point in his life he was sick of political intrigue.) During his later years in the RAF, Lawrence became interested in air-sea rescue and was deeply involved in the development of high-speed motorboats for water rescues. (While it doesn't often show up in media focused on the Arab Revolt, where there were more camels around than motor vehicles, Lawrence was rather a gearhead, and his love for acceleration was not limited to motorcycles.)\\

Lawrence left the RAF in March 1935, and died in May of the same year, a few days after sustaining a severe head injury in a motorcycle accident. (His death inspired Hugh Cairns, a neurologist who had attended him, to take a professional interest in motorcycle safety issues, which lead to the popularization of crash helmets.)\\

* DrillSergeantNasty: Stiffy in ''The Mint.'' He's technically a commissioned officer, but he was a sergeant in the Guards before he joined the RAF and he remains a drill sergeant in his heart.

* Appears as Lucia's maybe-boyfriend in ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts: Covenant''.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Lawrence shows signs of being a ShellShockedVeteran in ''The Mint''.

Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935) was a British archaeologist, military officer, diplomat, and writer, most famous for his activities as "Lawrence of Arabia" in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt Arab Revolt]] during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. He also wrote two autobiographical books during the post-war years: ''[[https://wikilivres.org/wiki/Seven_Pillars_of_Wisdom Seven Pillars of Wisdom]]'', about the Arab Revolt itself, and ''[[http://www.telstudies.org/writings/works/the_mint/contents.shtml The Mint]],'' about his life as an enlisted man in the Royal Air Force during the 1920s.

* LotsOfLuggage: Lawrence himself, in the "Rail Journey" chapter of ''The Mint'', much to his irritation. Lawrence wasn't a big guy, and full kit (complete with [[RantInducingSlight "two and a half pounds of lukewarm water"]]) was cumbersome enough without carrying his personal baggage in the bargain.

* KillTheCutie: Farraj and Daud, the PluckyComicRelief teenage sidekicks with a rather sweet [[RomanticTwoGirlFriendship Romantic Two Boy Friendship]], from ''Seven Pillars''. Neither of them survived the war.

* [[RomanticTwoGirlFriendship Romantic]] [[GenderInvertedTrope Two-Boy]] [[RomanticTwoGirlFriendship Friendship]]: Farraj and Daud, in ''Seven Pillars''.
->"They were an instance of the eastern boy and boy affection which the segregation of women made inevitable."

* AmbiguouslyGay: Most famously in the 1962 movie, where he's an outright AgentPeacock but his sexuality is never directly addressed. Lawrence's historical sexuality is controversial - the most common interpretations are that he liked men or [[{{Asexuality}} nobody]].

* {{Music/Sabaton}} song "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" (2019), from ''The Great War'' (a ConceptAlbum about UsefulNotes/WorldWarI), is about Lawrence's involvement with the Arab Revolt and takes its name from his book.

* The {{Music/Sabaton}} song "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" (2019), from ''The Great War'' (a ConceptAlbum about UsefulNotes/WorldWarI), is about Lawrence's involvement with the Arab Revolt and takes its name from his book.

* Lawrence is a minor recurring character in ''Series/YoungIndianaJones'' (1992-1996), where he is played by two different actors (Joseph Bennett and Douglas Henshall). He befriended a 9-year-old [[Franchise/IndianaJones Henry Jones Jr.]] in Egypt in 1908. The two later meet again when both of them are fighting in the Middle East during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. They later cross paths again one last time while both attending the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

* ThereAreNoTherapists: In ''The Mint'': the doctors notice the state of Lawrence's nerves during his RAF induction physical in the first chapter, and are not unsympathetic, but neither of them suggest anything he might do about it. Nor did anyone bring up that the military might not be the best place for someone who already shows signs of PTSD.
** In a later chapter, Lawrence recalls that during his very unhappy time in the Tank Corps, he was [[TalkingInYourSleep talking in his sleep]] half the night from stress-induced BadDreams, but again, nobody raised the possibility of professional help.

* ''[[Film/ADangerousManLawrenceAfterArabia A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia]]'' (1992), a historical-political TV movie set during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Stars a very young and {{Bishounen}} Creator/RalphFiennes as Lawrence, and a pre-''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' Creator/AlexanderSiddig as Prince Faisal.

* An AlternateHistory version of Lawrence who did ''not'' die in a motorcycle accident in 1935 appears as one of the many {{Historical Domain Character}}s in ''VideoGame/KaiserreichLegacyOfTheWeltkrieg'' (2016).

[[AC:Video Games]]

T.E. Lawrence was the second of five [[HeroicBastard illegitimate]] sons of Sir Thomas Chapman, an Anglo-Irish baronet, and Sarah Junner, [[InterClassRomance a governess]], who adopted the pseudonym of Lawrence when they began living together. The family moved around frequently during Lawrence's early childhood, before settling down in the city of Oxford in 1896. Lawrence, known as Ned to his family, was fascinated with archaeology and the Middle Ages and spent much of his adolescence exploring the city and its environs in search of anything of antiquarian interest. Lawrence read History at [[UsefulNotes/{{Oxbridge}} Oxford]] and wrote his thesis on Crusader castles, a subject that involved a lot of first-hand research in Europe and the Middle East.

In 1910, after graduation, Lawrence joined a British archaeological expedition at Carchemish, excavating the site of a ruined Hittite city near what is now the Syrian-Turkish border. As well as the archaeological achievements of the expedition, Lawrence gained a lot of useful experience with the local people and their language and culture that would prove essential in a few years.

Lawrence is most famous for his activities during the First World War. After the war broke out, Lawrence was stationed in Egypt working for the British Military Intelligence Department, where he became an expert on nationalist movements in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. In 1916, he was sent on a fact-finding mission to study Sherif Hussein of Mecca's rebellion against the Turks. This lead to a long-term role as a liaison officer with the Arab Revolt, serving with the forces led by Hussein's son Emir Feisal/[[SpellMyNameWithAnS Faisal]] (best known to western movie buffs for his portrayal by Creator/AlecGuinness in ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia''). He participated in, and lead, military activities against the Ottoman empire's forces (and their railway system), culminating in the capture of Damascus in 1918.

After Damascus, Lawrence hurried back to Britain, joined the Foreign Office, and switched from warfare to diplomacy and international politics. Working closely with Feisal, he advocated for Arab interests at the Paris Peace Conference, but these were sacrificed to imperialist ambitions and Britain's desire to maintain good relations with France (which had its own colonialist hopes in the Middle East). As an adviser to UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill in the Colonial Office, Lawrence presided over changes in British policy that put Prince Feisal on the throne of Iraq, established the Kingdom of the Trans-Jordan (modern-day Jordan), and gave both these regions a great deal more self-government. This helped assuage Lawrence's conscience regarding the political fate of his old Arab allies, which had been troubling him deeply.

During the war, Lawrence had encountered an American journalist named Lowell Thomas, who had visited the war in the Middle East in search of more interesting news than the [[WarIsHell frankly depressing]] Western Front provided. The Arab Revolt was much more picturesque and adventurous than the trenches of Europe, and after the war, Thomas incorporated his footage into a very successful multimedia edutainment event, which turned Lawrence from one leader in an obscure corner of a much larger war into a celebrity, "Lawrence of Arabia." At first, Lawrence welcomed the publicity as a possible source of greater public awareness and support for Arab independence, but later in life he would come to find fame much more troublesome than it was worth.

By 1922, Lawrence was not doing at all well in terms of mental health. He'd been leapfrogging from stressful situation to stressful situation since 1916, and his work on ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom'' kept the war fresh in his mind. In the first chapter of ''The Mint'' he portrays himself at that point as a borderline NervousWreck. (With ThereAreNoTherapists having been in effect, it's impossible to know for sure, but untreated PTSD seems very plausible.) Lawrence quit the Colonial Office, and later that year enlisted in the Royal Air Force under an assumed name. If Lawrence had hoped to lead a quiet life away from the shadow of "Lawrence of Arabia," he was disappointed, because the press found out about his identity after less than a year and Lawrence was discharged. Lawrence joined the army Tank Corps under a different alias soon after, but he was not at all happy there and kept petitioning to be readmitted to the RAF. Lawrence got his way in 1925, and the more cheerful last section of ''The Mint'' was based on his experiences after his re-enlistment. For a few years in the late 1920s, he was stationed in British India to keep him out of the way of the press, but he was sent back to Britain after rumors spread about what a former adviser-to-rebels stationed in such a politically sensitive area might be up to. (Lawrence had no such intentions: he didn't speak any Indian languages, he didn't know the local culture well, and by that point in his life he was sick of political intrigue.) During his later years in the RAF, Lawrence became interested in air-sea rescue and was deeply involved in the development of high-speed motorboats for water rescues. (While it doesn't often show up in media focused on the Arab Revolt, where there were more camels around than motor vehicles, Lawrence was rather a gearhead, and his love for acceleration was not limited to motorcycles.)

Lawrence left the RAF in March 1935, and died in May of the same year, a few days after sustaining a severe head injury in a motorcycle accident. (His death inspired Hugh Cairns, a neurologist who had attended him, to take a professional interest in motorcycle safety issues, which lead to the popularization of crash helmets.)

Lawrence was a complicated man, and his life and personality provide a notoriously fertile ground for AlternativeCharacterInterpretation, both in fiction and in serious scholarship. Issues ranging from his childhood, to his CharacterAlignment, his sexuality, his attitude toward fame, his reliability as a narrator, the true cause of his death, and whether he deserved his MemeticBadass reputation have all attracted controversy. Combine this with the usual artistic license of historical fiction and you get someone who can, and has, been portrayed in many different ways - contrast the flamboyance of Peter O'Toole's Lawrence with the shyness of Ralph Fiennes's.

Fortunately for fans and amateur historians, Lawrence was an avid correspondent, and many of his letters have survived and been published, so researchers today have access to the primary sources from which they can form their own opinions of his personality.

Not to be confused with Creator/DHLawrence, the author of ''Literature/LadyChatterleysLover''.

!! Tropes found in Lawrence's own works:

----
!! Tropes as portrayed in fiction:

----
!! Appearances in fiction:

%% Please sort new entries in chronological order.

* Lawrence himself doesn't appear directly, but David 8 in ''Film/{{Prometheus}}'' and ''Film/AlienCovenant'' is canonically a big T.E. Lawrence fan, particularly the 1962 movie version. He even copies his hairstyle.

[[AC:Music]]
* ''Music/{{Sabaton}}'': Their song "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" from ''The Great War'' ConceptAlbum about World War I, is about Lawrence and his fight with the Arab Revolt and takes its name from his book.

* An AlternateHistory version of Lawrence who did ''not'' die in a motorcycle accident in 1935 appears as one of the many {{Historical Domain Character}}s in ''VideoGame/KaiserreichLegacyOfTheWeltkrieg''.

* An AlternateHistory version of Lawrence who did ''not'' die in a motorcycle accident in 1935 appears as one of the many HistoricalDomainCharacters in ''VideoGame/KaiserreichLegacyOfTheWeltkrieg''.