history is just a fable that people consider true

Idk if I ever really liked a historical figure, like as a person, but I would probably have to say John Laurens based on what I thought about him from the Hamilton musical fandom’s interpretation of him (soft uwu turtle boi. just. no.) and then when I read his actual biography and learned more about him as a person. Not saying that I don’t like him anymore or think that he was a bad person (certainly not if we’re comparing him to other South Carolinians of the time) but he’s definitely a complex person to figure out (and honestly? that’s what I love about learning about him and practically all other historical figures) and at times made some questionable moral decisions.

2. Historical figure you love to hate

Ooh! Marquis de Sade! He was a truly fucked up individual but intensely interesting. Absolutely insane that he spent a total of 32 years in prison and just kept writing really violent porn throughout it. I think that he was Not a good person and I can’t ethically agree with most of his philosophies, but I think that he deserves to be seen as a philosopher in his own right like all those other guys you probably know more than me about because (and now we’re just going straight into philosophy instead of history) those are some really interesting ideas. Basically I hate him personally, but I love him as a historical figure.

4. Historical figure everyone should collectively stop talking about

This one’s hard. Henry VIII? Maybe I’m just saying this because my mom watched The Tudors a few too many times and now brings Henry VIII up whenever I talk about history (and my kind of history is never related to late medieval English monarchy (ok except for the fact that under Henry VIII England made buggery a crime and that does actually relate to what I study))

5. Historical figure we should talk more about

OH BOY let me introduce you to a person named George/Mary/Charles Hamilton because they actually used all three of these names (no relation to the other Hamilton). He was born Mary Hamilton in England, and then at fourteen dressed as a boy and under the name George and began training to be a doctor. Later in life, he ended up actually marrying a woman, but a few months later the woman reported George and since there was no actual crime on the books befitting what George did, they charged him with fraud, for supposedly tricking the woman into marrying them. We don’t know if there was a trick, or if the woman knew she was marrying a biological woman and just got angry enough for some other reason to tell the authorities, but George ended up being whipped for fraud. Henry Fielding, Just Some Guy™ , wrote a fictionalized version of Hamilton’s life and story under the title The Female Husband, popularizing this version of events in which George married 14 different women and defrauded them (this did not happen). This was in 1746, and Hamilton drops off the radar in England. Then, a couple decades later in Philadelphia I think it was, there’s a man named Charles Hamilton going around doctoring and I think may have been living with another woman (I can find the source for this if you want me to I’m just lazy). There’s no direct link that George and Charles Hamilton were the same person, but the timeline lands right and everything is a very perfect coincidence if that’s what it actually was. The Wikipedia page for Mary Hamilton is in my opinion trash and unnecessarily disparaging and that’s probably due to the fact that the most cited source in it was written in the 50s. I’m sure you can imagine why that’s not ideal. But anyway, one of the most interesting life stories i think and no one knows about it.

19. Which historical kingmaker / hand behind the throne kinda person would you gladly be a puppet of?

Ooh this is a hard one. I don’t actually know that much about stuff like this. I’d maybe say Ivarr, Ubba, and Halfdan Ragnarsson? They did a bunch of stuff with the Great Heathen Army in the 800s and were pretty cool. Like all of the kings of England were just paying them and saying ‘please don’t attack us look money and horses.’ Idk much about them except from what I learned playing Assassins Creed Valhalla

24. What made you fall in love with history?