The Fact Is Fiction

History is far from certain. This is true whether you take cynical views or not. The further back one goes, the more one has to rely on opinions and guesses. Because history is either written by the winners (in which case it's prejudiced), the losers (in which case it's still prejudiced), an independent source (rarely, and who's to say the source is truly independent?) or it isn't written at all (in which case you can only guess).

The more accounts one looks to, the more clouded history becomes. Almost everyone seems to have their own beliefs to support, their own spin to put on the past, and the farther back something happened, the more people there were to muddy the waters. But the reverse is also true: the closer in time one gets to the actual event, the harder it is to see through one's cloud of personnel experiences and beliefs. And it takes time for all the facts to be gathered and come to light —if they ever do.

If this is true, then everything is clouded. Only a true scholar would be able to root through everything to find what little truth there is. And how does one tell a true scholar apart from writers with degrees merely following political or religious agendas, writers who only show you the part of the tapestry they want you to see (if they even bother looking at the full tapestry themselves)?

It's hard. I read as much as I can from as many different sources I can get my hands on, taking everything with a spoonful of salt. And I look at the sources that are referenced, and the sources of the sources if they have any. But still there's no guarantee that what I learn is the truth. It's a long and tedious process, and sometimes I wonder: is it worth it?

The cynic in me says: no, you'll never know the truth. But the writer in me says to look at all the story possibilities! History is riddled with interesting characters, cultures, and situations which can be used in fantasy even if I don't know the truth.

Go mbeannaí dia duit,
M. S.