
Simply put, it's taking a well-known person from Real Life history and using this person as a character in a work. This does mean any work of that kind, whether it's Historical Fiction, a Hollywood History story, or a well researched and accurate biopic of events. Needless to say, there isn't necessarily any similarity in personality between the real person and the character in the story. They may even be classical composers who were secretly sleeper agents for extraterrestrials. Whatever works.
Naturally this covers a lot of works (save for non-fiction), but given how often people can disagree about real history and our present, it would be hard to draw a line between which fictional works would fit and which fictional works wouldn't. Thus all are included.
Note that despite "Historical" in the name, present people are included. Please remove troping in these people's pages as you browse.
Compare Public-Domain Character, Anonymous Ringer, Roman à Clef, Real-Person Fic, Characterization Tropes.
Related tropes
- Allohistorical Allusion
- Archived Army
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy
- The Dead Rise to Advertise
- Historical Badass Upgrade
- Historical Beauty Update
- Historical Character's Fictional Relative
- Historical Downgrade
- Historical Hero Upgrade
- Historical Hilarity
- Historical In-Joke
- Historical Person Punchline
- Historical Villain Downgrade
- Historical Villain Upgrade
- History's Crime Wave
- In the Past, Everyone Will Be Famous
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed
- Real Person Cameo
- Richard Nixon the Used Car Salesman
- Young Future Famous People
Common historical characters
NOTE: All individual people listed here should be sorted in alphabetical order, by their family name if applicable.noteMilitary/political organizations
- The 47 Ronin
- The Crusading Orders:
- The Hashshashin
- The Illuminati
- The Shinsengumi
National/political leaders (monarchs and royalty)
- The British Monarchy
- Chinese Imperial Dynasties
- Prussian Kings
- Roman Emperors
- Russian Tsars
- Swedish Kings
- Other Royal Families
National/political leaders (non-monarchs)
- John Adams
- John Quincy Adams
- Aeschylus
- Aesop
- Æthelflæd
- Julius Agricola
- Akechi Mitsuhide
- Louisa May Alcott
- Pope Alexander VI (AKA Rodrigo Borgia)
- Alexander the Great
- Alfred the Great
- Akhenaten
- Muhammad Ali (AKA Cassius Clay)
- Dante Alighieri
- Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias
- Idi Amin
- Hans Christian Andersen
- Johnny Appleseed
- Aristophanes
- Aristotle
- Louis Armstrong
- François-Marie "Voltaire" Arouet
- Chester A. Arthur
- Herbert Henry Asquith
- Attila the Hun
- Clement Attlee
- Julie d'Aubigny
- Augustus
B
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Ralph Bagnold
- Josephine Baker
- Stanley Baldwin
- Arthur Balfour
- Lucille Ball
- Honoré de Balzac
- Henry Campbell-Bannerman
- Roland Barthes
- Elizabeth Báthory
- Fulgencio Batista
- Flavius Belisarius
- Thomas Becket
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- David Ben-Gurion
- Götz von Berlichingen
- Hector Berlioz
- Osama bin Laden
- Otto von Bismarck
- Eric "George Orwell" Blair
- Tony Blair
- William Blake
- Giovanni Boccaccio
- Anne Boleyn
- Simón Bolívar
- Jair Bolsonaro
- Napoleon Bonaparte
- Anne Bonny
- Lizzie Borden
- Hieronymus Bosch
- Boudica
- Johannes Brahms
- Leonid Brezhnev
- Gordon Brown
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder
- Marcus Junius Brutus
- James Buchanan
- Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
- Michelangelo Buonarroti
- Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Wilhelm Busch
- George H.W. Bush
- George W. Bush
- Lord George Byron
C
- Julius Caesar
- Caligula
- James Callaghan
- Cab Calloway
- David Cameron
- George Canning
- Al Capone
- Carolus Rex
- Jimmy Carter
- Giacomo Casanova
- Fidel Castro
- Catherine of Aragon
- Catherine the Great
- Neville Chamberlain
- Coco Chanel
- Charlie Chaplin
- Charlemagne
- Charles I
- Charles II
- Chiang Kai-shek
- Geoffrey Chaucer
- Hugo Chávez
- Fryderyk Chopin
- Winston Churchill
- Cicero
- Claudius
- Henry Clay
- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
- Cleopatra VII
- Grover Cleveland
- Bill Clinton
- Hillary Clinton
- William "Buffalo Bill" Cody
- Christopher Columbus
- Calvin Coolidge
- Confucius (AKA Kong Fuzi)
- Hernán Cortés
- Jacques Cousteau
- Davy Crockett
- Oliver Cromwell
- Aleister Crowley (AKA Edward Crowley)
- Marie Curie (AKA Maria Sklodowska)
- Cyrus the Great
D
- Date Masamune
- Claude Debussy
- Jacques Derrida
- Charles Dickens
- Walt Disney
- Benjamin Disraeli
- Gustave Doré
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Black Douglas
- Alec Douglas-Home
E
- Amelia Earhart
- Anthony Eden
- Thomas Edison
- Edward I
- Albert Einstein
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Eleanor Of Aquitaine
- Edward Elgar
- Elizabeth I
- Elizabeth II
- Edward "Duke" Ellington
- Euripides
F
- Muammar Gaddafi
- Yuri Gagarin
- Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi
- James A Garfield
- Charles de Gaulle
- Genghis Khan (AKA Temujin)
- David Lloyd George
- Einar Gerhardsen
- William Gladstone
- Vincent van Gogh
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- James Graham Marquis Of Montrose
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey
- Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
- Guan Yu
- Che Guevara
- Johannes Gutenberg
H
- Alexander Hamilton
- George Hamilton-Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen
- George Frederic Handel
- Warren G Harding
- Benjamin Harrison
- William Henry Harrison
- Hattori Hanzo
- Joseph Haydn
- Rutherford B. Hayes
- Simo Häyhä
- Henry VIII
- Edward Heath
- Herodotus
- Hesiod
- Reinhard Heydrich
- Adolf Hitler
- Charles "Buddy" Holly
- Homer
- Honda Tadakatsu
- Herbert Hoover
- Harry Houdini
- Lafayette Ronald "L. Ron" Hubbard
- Howard Hughes
- Victor Hugo
- Saddam Hussein
I
J
- Jack the Ripper
- Andrew Jackson
- Michael Jackson
- Grand Vizier Jafar
- James I
- James II
- Jesse James
- Sidney James
- Janosik
- Thomas Jefferson
- Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool
- Jesus Christ
- Joan of Arc
- King John of England
- Andrew Johnson
- Lyndon Johnson
- Samuel Johnson
- Jim Jones
- James Joyce
- Pope Julius II (AKA Giuliano Rovere)
- Carl Jung
- Decimus Junius "Juvenal" Juvenalis
K
- Franz Kafka
- Ned Kelly
- John F. Kennedy
- Robert F. Kennedy
- Jack Kerouac
- Nikita Khrushchev
- Martin Luther King Jr.
L
- Marquis de La Fayette
- William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
- Laozi
- Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy
- Andrew Bonar Law
- Thomas Edward "T.E." Lawrence (AKA "Lawrence of Arabia")
- Bruce Lee
- Vladimir Lenin
- John Lennon
- Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis
- Abraham Lincoln
- Franz Liszt
- Louis XIII
- Louis XIV
- Louis XV
- Louis XVI
- Howard Phillips "H.P." Lovecraft
- Lü Bu
- Ludwig II of Bavaria
- Ramsay Mac Donald
- Niccolò Machiavelli
- Fitzroy Maclean
- Harold Macmillan
- James Madison
- René Magritte
- Gustav Mahler
- Léo Major
- Gustav Mannerheim
- Ferdinand Marcos
- Maria Theresa
- Marie Antoinette
- Christopher Marlowe
- Charles Manson
- Mao Zedong
- Marx Brothersnote
- Karl Marx
- Mary I
- Mary, Queen of Scots
- John Major
- Karl May
- Theresa May
- Henry "Billy the Kid" McCarthy
- Joseph McCarthy
- William McKinley
- Felix Mendelssohn
- Freddie Mercury (AKA Farrokh Bulsara)
- Angela Merkel
- Slobodan Milosevic
- Miyamoto Musashi
- Molière
- James Monroe
- Bernard Law Montgomery
- Thomas More
- Norma "Marilyn Monroe" Mortenson
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Muhammad
- Muramasa
- Audie Murphy
- Musashibo Benkei
- Benito Mussolini
- Modest Mussorgsky
N
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
- Nero
- Benjamin Netanyahu
- Isaac Newton
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Richard Nixon
- Lord Frederick North
- Nostradamus
- Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
O
P
- Thomas Paine
- Catherine Parr
- Pedro II
- Robert Peel
- Samuel Pepys
- Spencer Perceval
- Eva Peron
- Charles Perrault
- Peter the Great
- Pablo Picasso
- Franklin Pierce
- Augusto Pinochet
- William Pitt The Elder
- William Pitt The Younger
- Pope Pius XII (AKA Eugenio Pacelli)
- Plato
- Plautus
- Pocahontas
- Edgar Allan Poe
- James K. Polk
- Marco Polo
- Pompey the Great
- Cole Porter
- Beatrix Potter
- Elvis Presley
- Marcel Proust
- Giacomo Puccini
- Vladimir Putin
Q
R
- Sergei Rachmaninoff
- Ramses II
- Grigori Rasputin
- Maurice Ravel
- Ronald Reagan
- Richard the Lionheart
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Leni Riefenstahl
- Rembrandt van Rijn
- Robert the Bruce
- Maximilien Robespierre
- Frederick John Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich
- Norman Rockwell
- Erwin Rommel
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Theodore Roosevelt
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Gioachino Rossini
- Peter Paul Rubens
- John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
S
- Marquis de Sade
- Carl Sagan
- Antonio De Oliveira Salazar
- Sanada Yukimura
- Sappho
- Sasaki Kojiro
- Erik Satie
- Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud
- Franz Schubert
- Robert Schumann
- Jane Seymour
- Shaka Zulu
- William Shakespeare
- George Bernard Shaw
- William Tecumseh Sherman
- Virgulino "Lampião" da Silva
- Georges Simenon
- Skanderbeg
- Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby
- Socrates
- Sophocles
- Josef Stalin (AKA Iosif Dzhugashvili)
- Igor Stravinsky
- Suetonius Paulinus
- Arthur Sullivan
- Sun Tzu
- Jonathan Swift
- William Howard Taft
- Takeda Shingen
- Dom Justo Takayama
- Zachary Taylor
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Edward "Blackbeard" Teach
- Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- Nikola Tesla
- Margaret Thatcher
- Thucydides
- Timur the Lame (AKA Tamerlane)
- Josip Broz Tito
- Hideki Tojo
- Tokugawa Ieyasu
- Tokyo Rose
- John Ronald Reuel "J.R.R." Tolkien
- Leo Tolstoy
- Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec
- Toyotomi Hideyoshi
- Leon Trotsky
- Pierre Trudeau
- Harry Truman
- Donald Trump
- Harriet Tubman
- Alan Turing
- Tutankhamun
- John Tyler
U
V
- Martin Van Buren
- Giuseppe Verdi
- Publius Vergilius "Virgil" Maro
- Johannes Vermeer
- Jules Verne
- Queen Victoria
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Antonio Vivaldi
- Vlad "the Impaler" III (AKA Dracula)
W
- Richard Wagner
- Raoul Wallenberg
- Robert Walpole
- Andy Warhol
- George Washington
- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
- Herbert George "H.G." Wells
- Oscar Wilde
- Harold Wilson
- Woodrow Wilson
- Barbara Windsor
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Virginia Woolf
- Wong Fei-hung
- Wilbur and Orville Wright
- Wu Zetian
X
Y
Z
Examples in fiction
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Film
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Video Games
- Web Comics
- Western Animation
- Other