Historical Relationship Overhaul

When writers create Historical Fiction, it's often tempting to change a few things from how they were in real life. Perhaps they just follow Rule of Drama, Rule of Cool, Rule of Funny, Rule of Romantic, or maybe Rule of Sexy.

A major change they can make is to how two historical domain characters were connected to each other, or how they interacted with each other based on their relationship, by altering the nature or dynamic of said relationship.

A common is variant is to make people romantic partners, even though they weren't in Real Life. This can also happen in more Downplayed versions, such as to have two characters have sex with each other, but not make them romantic partners, or have one of them lust or have a crush for the other, even though this usually ends in unrequited love, and, as said before, there is no real basis for these people ever having such thoughts. Maybe these people were in a romantic relationship in real life too, but a work portrays them much more loving and affectionate toward each other than in reality. Conversely, real-life romantic partners may be portrayed as less loving than they really were, or even not romantically involved at all.

Some works change the sexuality of a character completely, making people who were straight in real life gay or bisexual, or vice versa. This may result in the character taking lovers that they wouldn't have in reality.

Writers can also change how characters are related: maybe Alice was Bob's aunt in Real Life, but a piece of Historical Fiction makes her his cousin, or they aren't related at all.

Writers may also make people friends even though they actually hated each other or had no relationship at all. The opposite is also common, making people into enemies who had no hatred for each other in real life.

See Adaptational Relationship Overhaul, Promoted to Love Interest, Adaptational Romance Downgrade, Unrelated in the Adaptation, Related in the Adaptation, Team Member in the Adaptation, Adaptational Sexuality and Related Differently in the Adaptation for fictional cases.

See Historical Badass Upgrade, Historical Beauty Update, Historical Hero Upgrade, Historical Downgrade, Historical Ugliness Update, Historical Villain Downgrade, Historical Gender Flip and Historical Villain Upgrade for other changes a historical person can receive in fiction.

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Example subpages:

• Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Requiem of the Rose King: In this epic manga by Aya Kanno, Richard III and Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham are portrayed as lovers, while in real life both were heterosexuals.

Fan Works

• Codex Equus: Elvis Presley married Priscilla Presley, both to fulfill a promise made to her father and because Tom Parker believed it wouldn't be good PR if a bachelor like Elvis lived together with a fourteen-year-old girl. Their marriage deteriorated due to Elvis' philandering, drug abuse, and abusive behavior, and they ultimately divorced. Here, Blue Suede Heartstrings' relationship with Venerable Grace is much more amicable, if a bit rocky due to the circumstances involved — Blue Suede was publicly outed as gay by Hollow Note as punishment for resisting his Blackmail and married Venerable Grace for PR reasons. While he loved Venerable Grace, he didn't love her romantically and deeply regretted this. For her part, Venerable Grace sympathized with and wholeheartedly supported Blue Suede knowing he was being abused by Hollow Note. They still divorced, but it's because Venerable Grace wanted Blue Suede to be happy with his male lover even if that meant she would never find love for herself.
• The True History of the Blackfyre Rebellion: An In-Universe example occurrs in the form of a Shakespeare-style play authored by an Original Character a while after the events it describes. Daemon Blackfyre and his half-sister Daenerys are portrayed as Star-Crossed Lovers, one of the signs that the author was a Blackfyre sympathizer. Canonically, there is no evidence to back it up; Daemon and Daenerys, by all accounts, were Happily Married to other people.

Films — Live-Action

• Agora: The real Hypatia was apparently married (presumably in a Neoplatonist, celibate way) to another philosopher named Isidorus. This character is Adapted Out of the film, whose version of Hypatia claims to have never loved romantically.
• American Gangster: The real-life Richie and his first wife never had a child together, meaning the film's Establishing Character Moment (being revealed to have an ongoing bitter custody battle with his wife, which is influencing his work-life balance) was completely fabricated for the film. Roberts would later go on to tell the New York Post in an interview years later that the portrayal of his life was "offensive".
• Ammonite depicts 19th century paleontologist Mary Anning and geologist Charlotte Murchison as being in a lesbian relationship; while Anning was unmarried throughout her life Murchison was married to fellow geologist Roderick Impey Murchison. In addition, the film makes Anning older than Murchison though the reverse was true in real life.
• A Beautiful Mind: The marriage of John Nash and Alicia Larde is presented as a constant, stabilizing influence on Nash as he descends into schizophrenia, and the ending has him publicly dedicate his Nobel Prize to her in 1994. In reality, Nash and Larde divorced in 1963 and did not renew their relationship until 1994. They didn't remarry until 2001, the same year the movie came out.
• Bohemian Rhapsody: Paul Prenter's relationship with Freddie Mercury didn't end until after Live Aid. His big betrayal was a written interview with The Sun, which was published on May 4, 1987 and followed by thematic two-front covers about Mercury's homosexual relations with titles like "All the Queen's Men". These enraged Mercury, in part because he had never come out of the closet "officially". In the movie, this is changed to a TV interview before Live Aid, shown briefly and without much impact on the story or Mercury's character.
• Braveheart:
  • Robert the Bruce didn't betray Wallace. Everyone else, sure, but never Wallace, mostly because the two never met and Wallace never backed Bruce's claim to the throne; he preferred freeing John Balliol from English domination.
  • William Wallace and Isabella of France did not have an affair and he was not the father of her son because she was six years old and living in France at the time of his execution.
• Bridge of Spies: The Real Life Frederic Pryor has noted that his movie counterpart's romance with a German girl was created out of whole cloth.
• Cromwell: One fact the movie never touches on is that Ireton was Cromwell's son-in-law, having married his oldest daughter Bridget.
• The Death of Stalin: Molotov's vicious slandering of his wife behind her back is pure fiction: he never stopped loving her and her arrest deeply upset him, but he was powerless to help her and he knew it. Despite this, he frequently asked Beria about her condition and wrote to her whenever he could (thus putting his own life at risk), and would have his servants cook two meals each night as a personal reminder of her dilemma. Her release was also not arranged by Beria in order to gain leverage over her husband, but was in fact arranged by Molotov himself: at Stalin's funeral, which happened to take place on Molotov's birthday, Malenkov and Khrushchev asked Molotov what he would like for a present, to which he coldly replied, "Give me back Polina," and she was returned to him a week later.
• Dracula Untold: There's no mention whatsoever of Vlad Dracula's brother, Radu the Handsome. As boys, they were taken hostage together by the Turks. But unlike Vlad, Radu came to support them, converted to Islam, and led the invading army in the campaign roughly corresponding to the Sultan's invasion in the film. He seems to have been combined with the Sultan, who claims to be a former friend and calls Vlad his "brother".
• Elizabeth:
  • William Cecil was not even 40 by the time Elizabeth came to the throne, and she did not retire him by making him Lord Burghley: she ennobled him as a reward for his services and he remained her most loyal advisor until his death a few years before the queen's. Similarly, Francis Walsingham was only a few years older than Elizabeth. In the second film, Elizabeth visits him when he is dying. In real life she simply let him die in poverty and didn't go to see him.
  • Henri of Anjou was probably not a crossdresser and he wasn't homosexual — the number of his female mistresses is almost uncountable; in addition, he and Elizabeth never met.
    • Also, Marie of Guise died of dropsy (in June 1560, after realizing she had it the previous April) rather than foul play by Francis Walsingham; this was confirmed by autopsy the day after her death. It is highly unlikely that the two of them were in a sexual relationship.
    • Nor was Marie of Guise his aunt, or related to him by blood — her daughter Mary I of Scotland was married to Henri's eldest brother, Francis II of France (married from 1558 until his death in 1560 — childless, in fact); in fact, Henri's family, the House of Valois, were long-time rivals with Mary's House of Guise, and Henri never even met Marie of Guise in his lifetime.
    • He is also a Composite Character: in Real Life, Elizabeth's French suitor was his younger brother, Hercule Francis, who became Duke of Anjou — but not until 1576. Henri became King Henri III of France after their brother, Charles IX died in 1574, and the duchy of Anjou went to Francis as a result. He courted Elizabeth in 1579, when he was 24 and she 46 (and still capable of bearing children). Although this didn't pan out due to the complex politics of the time (and fear that Elizabeth would be at risk if she tried to bear children at her age), she was by all accounts genuinely fond of him despite the age gap, and the match was given far more serious consideration than the film depicts (even reaching an actual betrothal at one point).
• The Favourite:
  • In real life, the relationship between Queen Anne and Sarah was already fraying before Abigail entered the picture. Though Sarah described Abigail as conniving and devious in her accounts of the events, it's seen as more likely that Queen Anne saw Abigail's sweet, even-tempered disposition as a welcome alternative to Sarah's forceful personality. Furthermore, Abigail never poisoned Sarah, and the rivalry between them had less to do with personal feelings about Anne than about being on opposite sides of the political aisle.
  • The idea of a sexual relationship between Abigail and Queen Anne is generally accepted as slanderous rumours started by a bitter Sarah Churchill, and the idea that Sarah herself was in such a relationship with Queen Anne is something that comes from reading some of their letters to one another out of their historical context as well as something that Sarah herself took care to deny. It also would have been difficult to have for various logistical reasons. Anne rarely left the bedside of her ailing husband, and she and Sarah fell out shortly after he died. Accusing monarchs and other royals of having same-sex relations with their closest confidant(e)s was fairly common slander in courts of the day, so there is no special reason to think that this was any different.
  • Prince George of Denmark, the husband of Queen Anne, is entirely absent from the movie, despite still being alive at the time the film is set and Anne spending years caring for him in his own ill health. One of the reasons for Sarah and Anne's falling out in Real Life was Sarah not bothering to mourn for his death and generally acting like she didn't care that he was dead at all, so him not being in the movie at all changes the real life story quite a bit.
• Gladiator:
  • The real Lucilla was married twice, both to high-ranking officers and personal friends of her father: Lucius Verus (d. 169 AD), and Pompeianus. Only Verus is named in the film as having passed and Lucilla being his widow, whereas by this time she would be already married to Pompeianus. Some of Pompeianus's traits are transferred to Maximus. She had a son named Lucius from her first marriage, but he died young along with a sister. Her son from her second marriage was named Pompeianus and he was about the same age as the film's Lucius. She also had a surviving daughter from her first marriage, Plautia.
  • She did grow concerned about Commodus early in his reign and did take part in a conspiracy to assassinate him with the support of the Senate (or claimed support, anyway), but instead of blackmailing her into incest, Commodus banished her to Capri and had her executed there by unknown means, along with Plautia and other alleged conspirators.
• Gotti (1996): Sammy Gravano is shown killing Nicholas Scibetta, an associate of the family, via ambushing him in a warehouse and using a weapon that repeatedly jams while Scibetta begs for his life. The real-life Gravano never killed Scibetta, based on the known reports (Gravano himself alleges two other hitman committed the deed), and was so angry about Castellano ordering the hit that he initially wanted to kill Castellano himself before being calmed down by Frank DeCicco. Scibetta was also Gravano's brother-in-law, a fact that is actually referenced towards the end of the film by Gotti during their conversation in the holding cell, but Gravano himself never displays any remorse about killing a relative.
• The Imitation Game:
  • Turing probably never met John Cairncross, the Soviet agent (who was a real person). And even if they met, it's highly unlikely they discovered each other's secrets.
  • The real Hugh was married to Enid Constance Crichton Neate.
  • In the film Turing proposes to Joan while keeping his sexuality a secret, only confessing as an attempt to push her away months later. According to Joan Clarke he proposed, she said yes and he then immediately confessed to being a homosexual, "something that caused [her] some concern since she was pretty sure that that was not something that would go away." He then later broke up with her, not because of a noble wish to keep her out of Menzie's clutches, but because he simply realized that the whole "staying celibate and having a loving sex-less marriage" was not going to work, and it would be unfair to demand that from Joan while he would be having guys on the side.
• Ip Man 2: In real life, Ip Man and his wife Cheung Wing-sing were accidentally separated in 1951 due to the closure of borders between China and Hong Kong, and they effectively never saw each other again in their lives. In the film series, she remains to his side through their life until her death. Conversely, the real-life Ip Man had a mistress from Shanghai who conceived an illegitimate son, Ip Siu-wah, none of which happens in the films.
• I Shot Jesse James: The film shows Kelley and Ford meeting around the time of Jesse James' death, both trying to court Cynthy. There is no historical evidence to suggest that the two ever met each other outside of Creede, nor that they were involved in a love triangle with a woman. Oddly enough, the feud over the ring is based in reality, though it was a ring for Ford himself, not a Love Interest.
• Kingdom of Heaven:
  • The historical Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem was actually a close ally to Balian and his family and a selfless defender of the city, not an Obstructive Bureaucrat as portrayed in the film. He even absolved him for breaking his oath to Saladin, saying the needs of the city were more important than an oath made to a Muslim, and paid a lot of the city's defenders (and later ransoms) with his own money, even stripping the gold and silver from the Holy Sepulchre to raise the money.
  • While her marriage was arranged, Sybilla and Guy actually loved each other in real life, and Balian was her political enemy.
• The Man in the Iron Mask:
  • Louis XIV is depicted as unmarried, but in 1662 when the film is set, he'd already been married for two years.
  • The real D'Artagnan was too young to have served Louis XIII and most certainly never had an affair with Queen Anne and was absolutely not the real father of Louis XIV.
• Night and Day (1946): The biopic of Cole Porter portrays his marriage to Linda as a normal, heterosexual marriage when the truth was that he was gay and she knew it. They were just friends in a marriage of convenience.
• The Other Boleyn Girl:
  • There is zero evidence that either of Mary's children were Henry's, and in fact it's extremely unlikely they were as Henry was known to never sleep with married women.
  • Mary Boleyn did not take in and raise the future Queen Elizabeth as the movie suggests; in fact, they never met after Mary was banished.
• In Richard Jewell, real-life journalist Kathy Scruggs is portrayed as sleeping with fictional FBI Agent Tom Shaw in order to glean information about the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. No such affair ever happened.
• The plot of RRR (2022) is a What If? scenario where Indian revolutionaries Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem (who never had any known interaction with one another) met and formed a friendship.
• The Social Network: Mark Zuckerberg is shown to have an ex-girlfriend, Erica, who breaks up with him in the first scene of the film and for whom he still harbors feelings. In reality, he was in a relationship with Priscilla Chan at the time, who he went on to marry (and to whom he's still married today).
• The Three Musketeers (1993): This version of the story is set in 1625, and portrays Louis XIII and Queen Anne like two awkward teenagers with a mutual crush. In real life, Louis and Anne were both 24 years old in 1625; Anne had already suffered two miscarriages by then and their marriage, which was mostly unhappy from the start, permanently soured following the second one in 1622.
• Young Guns: The subplot regarding Doc Spurlock's budding romance with Yen Sun, a Chinese immigrant who was forcibly taken as Murphy's mistress and later falls in love with Doc (risking her life to stay with him during the ending siege) is completely fabricated for the film, though the situation could be seen as an apocryphal view of the (very real) prostitution of young Chinese girls in the era the film takes place. In real life, Doc was married to a Hispanic woman, Maria (Antonia) Herrera, before the war started, and there is no known historical evidence that Murphy (who, as noted above, was dying of cancer at the time the film takes place) ever had a mistress working for him.

Literature

• Africanus Trilogy:
  • Scipio is explicitly described as a faithful husband in contrast to most other Roman noblemen, and only in the third book he has an affair with the slave Arete, which is presented as due to troubled circumstances. This particular incident is only mentioned by Valerius Maximus, possibly as anti-Scipionic propaganda, but even then, the novel doesn't adhere fully to this text, which presents Scipio as a massive womanizer from the start.
  • In real life, Quintus Fabius Maximus didn't die "alone and without and heir" as it is claimed, presumably out of Rule of Drama, in the second book. Aside from the Fabius junior featured in the books, he also had a second son (or a son of his or his brother) was who adopted Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus as mentioned above.
• Alexander Trilogy:
  • In the books, Alexander and Memnon meet for the first time in the Persian empire. In real life, the two actually knew each other since Alexander's childhood, as Memnon passed several years in Philip's court due to having been exiled from Persia for supporting a revolution. The reason Memnon was later so skilled at countering Macedonian strategies (as well as the reason of Alexander's own knowledge of Persian military) was precisely the time they passed together, in which Memnon had even played somewhat of a mentor role to the seven years old Alexander. The same goes with Barsine, who lived with Memnon in Philip's court around the same time.
  • In this story, presumibly for Rule of Drama, Himilce is the daughter of the chieftain Orissus. In real life, Himilce's father was another chieftain named Mucrus, and nothing indicates she and Orissus were closely related in any way other than both being Oretani aristocrats.
• Philippa Gregory's The Cousins' War Series does this a couple of times, as does its TV adaptations.
  • It portrays Richard III and Elizabeth of York as having been in love and having a sexual affair before his death. There were rumors that he wanted to marry her, but he denied this.
  • Anthony Woodville and Jane Shore, again portrayed as having a sexual relationship, were not known to have one in real life.
  • Margaret Beaufort and Jasper Tudor were not in love, merely family by marriage united in concern for her son and his nephew, Henry Tudor.
• The Legend of Anne Bonny: As part of a Historical Badass Upgrade, the eponymous pirate scuffles with several historical men from The Golden Age of Piracy she recordedly never met. She serves Governor Charles Eden as a Sexy Secretary and gets away with stealing from Blackbeard after he forces her to serve onboard the Queen Anne's Revenge as a marksman teacher in male disguise. Most importantly, Robert Maynard is made her Arch-Enemy as the executioner of her uncle as well as her Abhorrent Admirer and rapist before she kills him during a raid. It's also Governor Woodes Rogers who marries Anne and James Bonny, though the latter does work for Rogers like in real life.

Live-Action TV

• In The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan is presented as having had affairs with Versace and Lee Miglin, who is portrayed as a closeted gay man. There has never been any evidence that Cunanan knew either man, nor is there any evidence that Miglin was gay.
• Becoming Elizabeth: Princess Elizabeth was thirteen and her stepfather Thomas Seymour was forty when they lived together, and his flirtatious behavior toward her was considered predatory and inappropriate at the time. The show not only ages Elizabeth up, it portrays them as falling in love after the death of his wife, Catherine Parr, and having a sexual affair. The real Elizabeth denied any involvement with Seymour, although it is believed he wanted to marry her for political reasons.
• Borgia:
  • Although rumours circulated about all kinds of incest among the The Borgias in Real Life, none of these have any credibility, and are mostly made up by a former husband of Lucrezia Borgia. However, in this series, Lucrezia and her brother, Cesare, are quite close to incest several times. One time, after Lucrezia admits to killing Juan with her lover, Perotto, Cesare wants to "make the rumours true" about them (of incest), and proceeds to kiss Lucrezia, who agrees, and they almost have sex, but Lucrezia's lover Perotto discovers them. Lucrezia's other brother, Juan, attempts to rape her once, and claims that he "loves her the most". And then, we have Lucrezia's father (Pope Alexander VI, AKA Rodrigo Borgia), who has lustful thoughts about his daughter, once going as far as masturbating to a description of her by her lover. Fortunately, he realizes his sinful thoughts and admits them to Lucrezia who quickly forgives him.
  • Della Rovere has several gay lovers in the series (and no female ones), particularly Fransesco. He wasn't gay in real life.
• The Borgias: Giovanni Sforza abuses and rapes Lucrezia, when he actually ignored her and only consummated the marriage fairly late into it in real life.
• El Cid:
  • Season 2 ends with tensions between Rodrigo and Sancho building until they can barely tolerate each other during the siege of Zamora, culminating with Sancho sending Rodrigo away. In Real Life, sources are unanimous that they got along perfectly and Rodrigo was in Zamora until the siege ended.
  • Flaín was the brother of Jimena's father and possibly also a distant relative of Diego Laínez. In the show they are unrelated and he arranges his son's marriage to Jimena with him. This didn't happen in Real Life.
• Escape at Dannemora depicts Tilly as having been in a sexual relationship with both Matt and Sweat while they were in prison; the real-life Tilly Mitchell has denied ever having been sexually involved with either man and found her portrayal in the series to be deeply offensive.
• The Good Wife: Used In-Universe in "Net Worth", where a social media executive named Patrick Edelstein sues a movie studio for defamation over a biopic about him, in part for inventing a dysfunctional relationship with a nonexistent girlfriend that caused problems between the real Edelstein and his mother, who apparently thought the relationship actually happened.
• The Great: In the series Peter III is portrayed as the son of Peter the Great, but in fact he was the grandson of Peter the Great.
• I, Claudius:
  • Caligula and his sister, Drusilla are married, and they even have a baby, whom Caligula, along with its mother, kills prematurely, and eats it akin to Jove. It's heavily disputed whether they had an incestous relationship in reality, and the latter part certainly didn't happen.
  • Agrippinilla (called Agrippina the Younger in Real Life), seduces her son, Nero, after his wife doesn't want to sleep with him. This didn't actually happen.
• Magnificent Century:
  • All of Süleyman's sisters are in the show daughters of Ay?e Hafsa; while she might've given birth to some them, most certainly not all — not the ones younger than Süleyman, anyway, since, as mentioned before, at the time is was customary for men of the dynasty to stop sleeping with a concubine once she has given birth to a son.
  • It's not known what relationship, if any, Hatice Sultan had with Ibrahim Pasha. They certainly weren't married — that myth was dispelled by modern historiography. Hatice sultan is correctly shown to have been a widow by the time show started, and it's not certain whether or not she was married a second time (it was either her or one of her sisters who married Çoban Mustafa Pasha). She had a daughter, Nefise, with her first husband, and might've had one or two sons with him too. Ibrahim was instead happily married to Muhsine, who was a noblewoman. This myth probably stems from the fact that Ibrahim and Muhsine's wedding included festivities that wouldn't be out of place during a wedding of a princess. This marriage and lavish festivities surrounding it were meant as a sign of sultan's favor, encouraging the old ottoman elites to accept lowborn Ibrahim into their ranks. Muhsine and Ibrahim had one child, son named Mehmed?ah, who died very young a few years after his father.
  • Fatma, Süleyman's other sister, was married three times — first to certain Mustafa pasha, then to Kara Mustafa, and lastly to Ibrahim pasha (not that one). Fatma is shown, at the beginning of season 4, to be unhappily married (in real life, Mustafa pasha was gay and neglected his wife)... which she shouldn't be. She was already divorced and marrying Kara Mustafa in 1522, which in the show was season 1! At the time, Fatma wasn't even in the show.
• Reign: Granted, this is a show which openly admits to being historically inaccurate on purpose, but in particular it drastically alters the reality of the marriage between Mary, Queen of Scots and her first husband, Francis II of France. In the show they are married as adults after spending several years apart; both are unfaithful to each other, and Francis fathers a child with another woman. In reality, Mary and Francis grew up together from the time that she was five years old; they were married in their early teens and, by all accounts, completely adored one another. The marriage may have never actually been consummated (some historians believe that his various health issues rendered young Francis impotent), but it was extremely happy. One aspect that the show did depict accurately was that Mary was genuinely devastated when Francis died only a few years into their marriage.
• Rome:
  • Servilia, a (former) mistress of Julius Caesar, and Octavia become lovers. Octavia accidentally tells Servilia that her brother Octavian and Caesar might have been formerly lovers^note (which is a false rumour that was started after a servant heard strange noises coming from a room in which Octavian and Caesar were together, though in reality Caesar was having a seizure); she says that Octavian denies it and claims Caesar has a "serious affliction". Servilia then instructs Octavia to seduce Octavian and find out more about Caesar's affliction. Octavia does seduce Octavian (although he doesn't tell her anything after the incest). Neither Servilia's and Octavia's relationship nor Octavia's incest with Octavian ever actually happened.
  • Octavia also becomes the lover of her brother's friend, Marcus Agrippa, and might even have a child from him, all while she is married to Mark Antony. This also didn't happen. Real Life Octavia was the model matron of the early Roman Empire, and had no adulterous or controversial relationships. This kind of description better suits the real daughter of Octavian, Julia.
  • Unlike in the series, the real Servilia never turned against her lover Caesar, and she most likely knew nothing of the plot to assassinate him.
  • Although Titus Pullo did exist, he was much more insignificant in real life, so it's basically impossible he was ever the lover of Cleopatra VII and the father of her son Caesarion.
• Three Kingdoms:
  • During Guan Yu's failed Fancheng Campaign, he dispatches messengers to get support from Meng Da and Liu Feng, only for the messengers to return and state that they were actively chased out. Guan's advisors express disgust at this, noting that this was especially vile as Meng and Liu are members of Liu Bei's family and so ought to view Guan as family. Historically, while Liu Feng was indeed Liu Bei's adopted son ^note  he was adopted by Liu partially as part of an alliance with a powerful local family, and Liu at the time had no son of his own , Meng Da had no such relationship with the family at all. ^note  In addition, it wasn't so much they didn't want to send help as it was they couldn't, as Guan's failure had left their own territory vulnerable and they were bracing for an attack themselves.
  • Lu Meng is introduced as having an obsession with fulfilling the deceased Zhou Yu's desire to unify the Southlands under Sun Quan's rule, even being willing to ignore Sun's actual commands and desires. After he successfully kills Guan Yu (and deliberately avoided Sun's messengers who were trying to pass on orders that under no circumstances was Guan meant to be harmed), his next appearance is as a corpse with the implication Sun had him killed for his disobedience (Sun claims it was "illness") and Sun even expresses happiness at Lu's death. Historically, Lu was much closer to Sun Ce, Quan's older brother and predecessor, who gave him his big break. In addition, Lu was such a loyal and dependable subordinate that when Lu fell ill with what would eventually be his final illness, Sun did everything he could to try to cure him (to the point that when Lu seemed to be recovering, Sun would be so pleased he'd hold a feast to celebrate).
  • Sima Yi is portrayed as an advisor to Cao Cao, providing ideas and advice. Historically, Sima was one of Cao's protégés and adjutants (partially because Cao himself had been mentored by Sima's father Sima Fang), rather than an advisor.
  • In one of the most jarring and pointless examples of this, Sima Yi's son Sima Zhao is portrayed as his older son in place of his elder brother Sima Shi (who is Demoted to Extra). The reason this is so strange is because historically Sima Shi is the one who ensured the Sima clan maintained their importance following Yi's death, and Zhao only stepped into the role because Shi died fairly young. It's possible that this is because Zhao in the series acts as The Watson for Sima Yi, but even historically that role was taken up by Shi (with Zhao apparently considered so unreliable they didn't even inform him of the coup they were planning to launch until the actual day).
• The Tudors:
  • Margaret Tudor is actually based on Princess Mary Tudor. Henry VIII did have a sister named Margaret but she was married to the King of Scotland. Mary was the one who was married off to an elderly man, but he wasn't the King of Portugal but rather the King of France. The two sisters were basically compressed into one character, and given the name of Margaret so that viewers wouldn't confuse her with Henry's daughter Mary (who was in fact named after her aunt).
  • Mark Smeaton and George Boleyn were not known to be lovers, and it is only recently that people have been speculating about either's sexuality. Many historians assert the George was a womanizer and Mark had a crush on Anne.
  • Anne of Cleaves and Henry VIII almost certainly never had a one night stand after their amicable divorce.
• The White Queen:
  • The original and its sequel The White Princess portrays Richard III and his niece, Elizabeth of York as being in love and having had a sexual affair before his death. Rumors did spread he wanted to marry her, but he denied them and was negotiating foreign matches for himself and her.
  • The show portrays Anthony Woodville, the Queen's brother, has having an affair with Edward IV's mistress, Jane Shore. This did not happen, though Edward and his best friend Will Hastings were both thought to have been involved with Shore.
  • Margaret Beaufort and Jasper Tudor were not in love, merely close family relations by marriage.

Theatre

• Amadeus:
  • Mozart and Salieri were not mortal enemies as they are in the play, but rather friendly competitors in the same business.
  • Salieri was not celibate, and he was the father of eight children with his Adapted Out wife. The woman in the play whom he lusts after but denies himself, Caterina Cavalieri, was Salieri's mistress in real life.
• Giulio Cesare in Egitto:
  • Achillas and Ptolemy are in love with Pompey the Great's widow Cornelia, while there is no historical evidence for that.
  • Sextus Pompey becomes a staunch supporter of Caesar after the latter agrees to a peace. In Real Life, he remained Caesar's enemy (and later his chosen successor Octavian's enemy) for the rest of his life.
• Hamilton: The play presents Angelica Schuyler as only marrying her husband because she was expected to marry rich, while loving Alexander Hamilton instead, when in reality she ran away with him, suggesting she really did care for him at least at some point.
• The Lion in Winter: The play, based on speculation that was popular at the time it was written, portrays Richard I and Phillip II of France as having had a sexual affair, with the former being in love and the latter being a manipulator. Historians are split on Richard I's sexuality, but it is not thought this affair happened. It is actually far more likely that Richard's brother Geoffrey had the affair with Phillip, as they were much closer. In the play, Geoffrey and Phillip barely know each other.
• In Scanderbeg, an opera by Antonio Vivaldi, Sultan Murad II lusts after and tries to rape Skanderbeg's wife Donika Kastrioti (nee Arianiti). There is no evidence the two even met in Real Life, especially since Donika didn't marry Skanderbeg until several months after Murad's death.
• Six: Catherine of Aragon was Catherine Parr's godmother. This is never mentioned in the musical.
  • While the musical does mention that Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard were cousins, the fact that Jane Seymour was Anne's second cousin is never mentioned.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: Similarly to their depiction in other media, the rumors of Lucrezia and Cesare's incestuous relationship are played up despite the lack of credibility the accusations had in Real Life. The game takes it further though by upgrading them to full on Villainous Incest with at least one scene showing the two kissing, and implying that Lucrezia's son Giovanni is possibly Cesare's rather than Perotto's; the implication isn't helped in the slightest by Lucrezia's genuine romantic interest in her brother, although the feeling ultimately isn't mutual on Cesare's part. She later turns on Cesare's in part because of this.
• Dynasty Warriors:
  • A common plot in the series starting from the 5th game is depicting Ling Tong coming to forgive Gan Ning for killing his father, Ling Cao, and the two becoming Fire-Forged Friends. In real life, this was not the case, with Ling Tong taking his hatred to the grave.
  • Beginning from the 7th game, Xiahou Dun is portrayed as having a rivalry with Guan Yu (partially because Xiahou is The Dragon to Cao Cao, while Guan is played up as Liu Bei's greatest warrior). Historically, Guan Yu was too unimportant for Xiahou Dun to bother with personally, as he was often either on the front lines acting as Cao Cao's Mouth of Sauron or running the state (the historical Xiahou Dun was a physically powerful warrior, but only a competent Frontline General. His true skill was in logistics), while Guan at his peak was "merely" a governor of roughly half of Liu Bei's territory.
  • In a controversial move, 9 introduced Xiahouji, and has her in a Rescue Romance with Zhang Fei, when in real life, she was actually kidnapped by Zhang Fei when she was a young teenager, and forced to become his wife.
• Kessen II: While the story also takes numerous liberties with the source material, one insane twist is the reveal that Liu Bei and Cao Cao are somehow brothers. ^note Historically, Cao Cao was born as part of a prominent noble family, while Liu Bei was born to a completely ordinary family that claimed descent from the imperial line. In addition, they were both born in completely different parts of China.
• Samurai Warriors:
  • The second game portrays Saika Magoichi and Toyotomi Hideyoshi as old friends, and Magoichi assassinates Oda Nobunaga due to the latter attacking and destroying his Saika mercenary group. Historically, the Saika are only mentioned as being particularly skilled in use of guns, with an impressive intelligence network. They attempted to assist their allies the monks of Mount Hiei when the latter were besieged by Nobunaga, but this only brought his wrath down on them too. After Nobunaga's death, Hideyoshi also besieged the Saika as punishment for their opposition to Nobunaga. Historically, Magoichi was a title held by the leader of the Saika. Three people are known to have held the title, the series implying its Magoichi is specifically the second one, Suzuki Shigehide. In real life, Shigehide's only recorded interaction with Hideyoshi was after being defeated, where he asked Hideyoshi to spare his family, but didn't convince him.
  • Shima Sakon and Inahime are implied to have an attraction to each other following the former's introduction in the second game. Historically, it was unlikely they would have even met (while Sakon did serve under the Toyotomi, at that point in time the Toyotomi and Tokugawa are at odds and Ina had already met and was likely married to Sanada Nobuyuki). This plot point was completely dropped once Nobuyuki was added in the fourth game.
• In Sengoku Basara, Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura are depicted as having a rivalry on the battlefields. Historically, they likely only met once when Sanada Yukimura and his army engaged in a battle against Date Masamune's force during the Siege of Osaka.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons: Referenced in "Magical History Tour", which has Marge telling the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played by Bart) being sabotaged by Antonio Salieri (Lisa as "Sally Eri"). At the end, Lisa brings up that the two composers had a good relationship in real-life, and that Marge took the plot from Amadeus.
• The Venture Bros.:
  • Samuel Clemens is shown to be one of the founding members of The Guild of Calamitous Intent while Nikola Tesla is a rival to the group, being shown attacking them with a fleet of airships during a flashback. In real life, the two were close friends, with Clemens even famously visiting Tesla's lab◊.
  • Crossing over with Historical Villain Upgrade, The Saphrax Protocol reveals that the "first supervillain and henchman" were Saphrax and Alatheus, Greuthungi chieftains charged with protecting Vithericus, the young heir to the Gothic throne. In real life, the two stabbed Roman Emperor Flavius Valens to death in his tent, a major event in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In the show, the two spared Valens, one of many Points Of Divergence in the show's Alternate History.

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