On the duelling thread Trike has mentioned the Oberyn v The Mountain fight from Game of Thrones.  On the whole I liked the TV series even the final season which a significant number of people loathed.  I appreciated that the dramatists were in something of an awkward spot in that Mr Martin hadn't delivered the final novels in the series as had been expected when the adaptation was given the go ahead. In the ASOIAF (A Song of Ice and Fire) novels I sometimes caught myself thinking of historical events which could have inspired happenings in the books.  Mr Martin has said that the idea for the books was Maurice Druon's Accursed Kings and the Wars of the Roses but threw magic in.  There's an episode in the books (and show) where the "Wildlings" from north of "The Wall" climb the said gigantic wall.  That reminded me of Alexander the Great's men climbing the Sogdian Rock.  There's also a back history given of one of the noble houses of Westeros (the fictional continent where ASOIAF is set) where a female warrior leader, upon arriving with her fleet in a foreign land, has all the ships burnt so that no-one thinks of running away.  That made me recall Hernan Cortes scuttling his ships when he and his followers landed on the coast of Vera Cruz (now part of Mexico).

Can anyone think of other instances from fictional works in general where somebody has taken inspiration from real history but changed it to make it something rather different but in an interesting way.  (I'm not thinking of cases where people write "historical" novels about people who actually live but the book story totally unlike what happened - not mentioning any names but there is a thread on this site from some years ago about such a novelist).

Canto V of the Purgatory section of Dante's Divine Comedy.


  Then said another: "Ah! so may the wish,
That takes thee o'er the mountain, be fulfill'd,
As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine.
Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I:
Giovanna nor none else have care for me,
Sorrowing with these I therefore go."  I thus:
"From Campaldino's field what force or chance
Drew thee, that ne'er thy sepulture was known?"
     "Oh!"  answer'd he, "at Casentino's foot
A stream there courseth, nam'd Archiano, sprung
In Apennine above the Hermit's seat.
E'en where its name is cancel'd, there came I,
Pierc'd in the heart, fleeing away on foot,
And bloodying the plain.  Here sight and speech
Fail'd me, and finishing with Mary's name
I fell, and tenantless my flesh remain'd.
I will report the truth; which thou again
Tell to the living.  Me God's angel took,
Whilst he of hell exclaim'd: "O thou from heav'n!
Say wherefore hast thou robb'd me?  Thou of him
Th' eternal portion bear'st with thee away
For one poor tear that he deprives me of.
But of the other, other rule I make."



Campaldino was a battle fought in June 1289 in which the 24 year old Dante Alighieri took part as a militiaman of the Florentine cavalry. 


Picture from the Osprey book about Campaldino by Graham Turner:


On the right Dante Aligheri contemplates the dead body of Buonconte di Montefeltro, while in the centre Sienese knight (and fellow poet) Cecco Angiolieri is more contemptuous. The horseman on the left,  a knight of the Frescobaldi family, a prominent Florentine banking family, is drinking from a fiasco of acquerello, a low alcohol wine made from crushing grapes more than twice:

Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan, c1611 -1673;  



The real life inspiration for the hero of Alexandre Dumas' "The Three Musketeers"

The supposed original of "Bluebeard".
Gilles de Rais