An Anne by Any Other Name: What to Do When Historical Characters Share the Same Name

In the novel I am currently working on, this sentence:

François said to Charles, "Never cross Anne."

could mean sixteen different things.

Yes, you read that correctly. Sixteen.

You see, in this novel there are four François, two Charles and two Annes: four different subjects who could be counseling one of two characters against annoying either of two others. The King could be warning the emperor not to vex the royal mistress, or the court portraitist cautioning the prince not to betray the grand master, or perhaps it is the Arabic-speaking Italian painter tipping off the prince about the duchess... If I've done my math correctly, readers of my novel could understand the aforementioned sentence sixteen different ways.

Did I intend to confuse and confound them?

No. That's simply what happens when historical characters bear the same name.

At one point or another, most writers of historical fiction face the challenge of how to differentiate between historical characters who share identical given names. The task is not trivial, since readers will abandon a book if they are unable to keep its characters and their relationships straight. Writers of contemporary fiction avoid the danger by endowing their characters with unique and unusual names that distinguish them from every other member of the cast (and imaginary characters, unlike modern children, are not burdened with having to repeat and spell these original names aloud each they make a new acquaintance). Writers of historical fiction, however, are bound to respect the given names of their historical characters if they wish to remain true to the historical record. In early modern Europe, convention forced parents to choose baby names from a restricted roster of saints, historic figures, and ancestors; in some regions, the birth order of the child limited these options even further. Just as an author of historical fiction has little freedom in choosing which characters figure in the action of the historical events she recounts, she has even less leeway in deciding what to call those characters.

These circumstances can result in the author having to tell a tale involving, ahem, four François, two Charles, and two Annes, with a Catherine thrown in for good measure.

The problem becomes even more complicated when one takes into account other issues, such as the fact that historical figures are often referred to by different names in different countries and that what the characters call each other is not necessarily what the narrator must, or should, call them.

So what can an author do to prevent her reader from becoming hopelessly befuddled? Here are some of the strategies I've employed:

1) Provide contextual clues. 

It happens that one of my Annes is a man (the duc de Montmorency) and the other a woman (Anne d'Heilly, the duchesse d'Étampes). So if a passage describes the cut of Anne's gown or examines Anne's duties as Grand Constable of France, the reader should be able immediately to surmise which Anne is in question. Likewise, one of the four François is king, the other three artists; the king would probably not bemoan the laziness of apprentices, nor the artists debate the details of a peace treaty. Setting (boudoir versus council chamber, throne room versus studio), interlocutors, topic of conversation, actions and inner dialog should all offer clear indications as to the identity of the characters. If not, there is more wrong with the scene than faulty nomenclature.


2) Use honorary titles and/or place names instead of given names.

In my novel, I usually refer to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, as "the emperor," "Charles-Quint," or "le Hapsbourg" in order to distinguish him from the king's son, Charles, the duc d'Orléans. Since another duke figures prominently in the action, I cannot, except in precise circumstances, refer to the king's son as "the duke"; I must call him "Orléans" and the other duke "Montmorency."Anne d'Etampes, on the other hand, is the only duchess, so she enjoys the privilege of claiming that title and avoiding confusion with Anne de Montmorency. As two of the Italian artists are Francescos, one becomes Boulogne (French for the man's city of origin, Bologna), and the other goes by his last name, Pellegrino. Using honorary titles or designating characters by their place of origin avoids the problem of identical given names altogether.

3) Substitute nicknames.

Another way to simplify the problem is to invent or unearth nicknames for your characters. As King François's best friend and his lover are both Annes, I have him call his mistress by the diminutive form of the name, Annette. Anne d'Étampes and Orléans, when speaking of their common enemy Anne de Montmorency, refer to him by a private nickname known only to them--"l'Autre" (the "other" Anne). One of the artists, François Clouet, goes by the historically documented nickname Jamet. Both he and his father, Jean Clouet, used the nickname interchangeably throughout their careers (much to the chagrin of art historians). In the novel, I restrict use of the nickname to the son, thereby distinguishing him both from his father and from the other two artists named Francesco.

4) Provide a list of characters at the beginning of the book.

It is particularly helpful to include, for the reader's easy reference, all the titles and nicknames associated with each character throughout the story.

5) Ensure that the names of fictional characters are different from each other and dissimilar to the overused historical names.

When creating fictional characters to round out a historical setting, endow them with distinctive, memorable names. Like any good modern parent, I found obscure, yet historically documented, names for my fictional characters: Tiphaine, Agnolo, Sandro, Faustine. Little chance, I hope, of the reader confusing them with the more prominent Annes, Charles and François.

Final words of advice: once you, as author, decide how to distinguish between similarly-named characters, BE CONSISTENT in the terms you use. Don't refer to a character one way in the first chapter and a different way in the next. Of course, characters will refer to each other in varied ways, depending on their social status and degree of intimacy; again, decide how each character will address the others and do not stray from those conventions.

Your readers will not only thank you, but might even remember your name.

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Readers: How do you prefer to see an author handle this issue?

Authors: What devices do you use to avoid name confusion?

I'd love to hear your suggestions!

Fire and Ice

There's an interesting guest post over at the blog 1st Books by Kate Maloy, author of Every Last Cuckoo. I haven't read Ms. Maloy's book, but I found her discussion of the degree to which authors identify with their characters' emotions as they write, and the comment trail that follows the post, fascinating. Some writers, claims Maloy, have a "splinter of ice" at their core, which allows them to keep their characters at a distance. Maloy characterizes herself as this sort of writer: "I never cried when I was writing, no matter how sad the scene or how intense the anguish of my beloved character, 75-year-old Sarah Lucas." She contrasts this aloofness to writers like Joan Wilder of Romancing the Stone fame, who fully inhabit their characters, crying when they cry, laughing when they laugh, sharing fully in their discomforts and joys. Maloy views her "splinter of ice" as a valuable tool which allows her to focus on craft issues in order to create characters and stories that resonate fully with her readers. "If I had given myself over to Sarah, I'd have been like a surgeon trying to operate on her own child, unable to wield the scalpel for the trembling of her hands."

Commenters on Maloy's post seem split fifty-fifty between the two types of writers. I myself am like Maloy; I've never cried nor become too emotionally involved with my characters. I find this ironic, actually, because in real life I tear up easily and frequently. I think, for me, being in control of my characters and their destinies, choosing what happens to them, removes the sense of injustice or helplessness that causes me to cry in real life when I hear about a person's misfortunes. Like Maloy, I view writing a book as more of an intellectual than an emotional exercise, although, like her, I am striving to create an emotional experience for my readers. I am different from many of my writer friends as far as emotional identification goes; I have a friend who told me she did cry while writing the scene where her main character died, and I've heard of writers who find it difficult to write when a scene becomes too painful. I'm not at all claiming one way is better than the other, just different. It would be interesting to investigate to what degree the sense of author identification with the characters influences the speed or flow of the writing. I can see it working both ways: too much identification could make writing scenes where bad things happen to the character more difficult, yet identifying with the character otherwise might make the act of writing more engrossing and the writer more eager to write.

What are your thoughts on this matter? What kind of writer are you? If anyone's read Every Last Cuckoo, I'd love to hear how caught up you became in the lives of Maloy's characters. Her book, a top five BookSense and an Indiebound pick, won the American Library Association's Readers List Award for Women's Fiction, so she's obviously doing something right!

Character Charts

I came across a tool on the web today: the Fiction Writer's Character Chart by Rebecca Sinclair (html version here; pdf version here). I've never used such things in the past, but this time I thought I might give it a try. While writing my first novel, I had the leisure to get to know my characters gradually as the story unfolded. Now that I have a much tighter schedule for the second book, it might help to complete some of these charts in order to become familiar with my characters more quickly.

You can't really know a character until he/she starts to reveal him/herself in the actual writing: in his responses to events, in the actions that he undertakes, in the details that surface through his interaction with other characters and with his environment. In one sense, spending time filling out a chart about the characters' likes and dislikes, habits and strengths, might better be spent writing actual scenes. However, filling out the charts will cause me to think in a focused way about each character; it might make writing some scenes a little easier, in that I won't have to stop and create every reaction, gesture and thought from scratch. Sinclair's questionnaire seems to be a good one, in that it doesn't dwell solely on superficial issues. She asks you to delve deeply into the character's psyche: for example, how does the character think others perceive her? How does she react to problems? If she could change something about herself, what would it be? Thinking about some of these things ahead of time might make for richer scenes with more psychological depth.

Would my characters in TMOS have been different if I'd thought about some of these issues beforehand? Perhaps, in small ways. At the very least, the questionnaire might have prompted scenes that were never written into the book as it now stands. Now, the beginning of a new project, is the time to stretch myself and try a different approach. My great fear as I embark on this second novel is that I'll wind up rewriting the same book in a different wrapping. If I spend some serious time with these character worksheets before I jump into the story, I will at least be able to ensure that the new book's characters are thoroughly different people than Jollande et al.

Have you ever used character worksheets or something similar? What was the result?

An Historico-Fictional Hybrid

My last post introduced you to Louise Labé, the first middle-class woman to publish under her own name in sixteenth-century France. Captivated by Louise's courage and accomplishments yet hesitant to write a fictionalized biography of her, I decided to use her as a model for Jollande Carlet, the main character of my novel The Measure of Silence.

From the early days of my graduate studies, I knew I wanted to write a tribute to the talented women who were reduced to silence by the conventions and mores of the sixteenth century. I considered presenting Louise's story as a novel, but two things gave me pause: my own uneasiness with using an historical figure as a main character and the fact that little is known with certainty about Louise's life, other than a few names and dates and some minor details gleaned from her last will and testament. Since by necessity I would find myself imagining large portions of her story, I decided to abandon the constraints of biography and create an entirely fictional character based upon her.

Many points of overlap connect the real and fictional women. For one, they share a similar economic status: Jollande, the daughter of a draper (fabric merchant), marries the son of a felt manufacturer; Louise hailed from a family of rope makers and married into another. As girls, both Jollande and Louise received an extensive classical education, extraordinary for women of their time and status. No one is certain how Louise came by her education; I explain Jollande's as the gift of her rich godfather, who allows her to share the tutors he hires for his own daughter. Jollande displays the courage, feistiness and determination I imagine characterized Louise, for like Louise, her literary pursuits brand her as a loose woman and she constantly has to deflect, diffuse or ignore the scornful judgments of strangers.

I chose to set Jollande's story in Lyon, the city with which Louise identified so strongly, because sixteenth-century Lyon was a center of print culture and home to a renowned group of poets. Other details of Louise's life come out in the novel, subtly transformed: the Italian banker with whom Louise spent the last years of her life becomes Marsilio, the Genoan business partner of Jollande's father; Clément Marot, the court poet some sources claim was young Louise's lover (and whose poetry appears in the novel) becomes Gabriel Orland, the published poet who infiltrates the printing shop as a spy for the queen. Finally, like Louise, who saw many of her family members convert to Protestantism yet remained Catholic herself, Jollande must decide whether or not to follow her own loved ones into the Calvinist fold.

Creating a character who shares some biographical traits with the historical Louise yet is not tied to her particular personality and chronology allowed me the artistic freedom necessary to tell what I hope is an engaging and aesthetically satisfying story. Grounded in reality yet free to pick and choose and embellish, I constructed a triad of tightly interwoven subplots that investigate important literary, religious and social issues of the time, some of which affected the historical Louise in only the most general of terms. Broadening the milieu beyond Louise's shop and study allowed me to incorporate a wider range of period detail and historical happenstance (for example, no evidence links Louise to a printing establishment, yet I was able to place Jollande in one and thereby introduce the printing subculture to the reader). The creative freedom this approach to character provided was both exhilarating and intellectually challenging--and okay, I'll admit it--much more fun than striving to color within the lines of Louise's official literary portrait.

Finally, modeling my character after an historical person offers me, as an author, a certain measure of protection. If any future critic complains that Jollande attempts things no sixteenth-century woman would dare contemplate, I can point to Louise and say, "Not true! Here is a woman who did just that, and succeeded most excellently!" {s}

Will the Real François Please Stand Up?

I’ve been preoccupied with the issue of historical versus fictional characters lately (as you well know!) and a recent reading experience confirms my fears. I’ve begun reading a historical novel set at the same time period as the new book I’m working and featuring a cast of characters pulled directly from history. I’m only two chapters in, but the book’s depiction of François I is so caricatured and sensational, such an exaggeration of the historical accounts, I’m ready to throw the book across the room!

François was a notorious womanizer; in addition to his two consecutive royal mistresses, Françoise de Foix, the Duchesse de Châteaubriant, and Anne de Pisseleu, Madame d’Etampes, he surrounded himself with a “petite bande” of beautiful noblewomen whom he showered with gifts of fine clothing, jewels and other marks of royal affection. Yes, he probably had amorous liaisons with some of these women, and yes, he most likely frequented the “filles de joye” on the royal payroll as well, but despite his appetites he was far from the ribald lecher the novel portrays him to be. He strove to refashion the French court according to Italian examples, where the art of conversation and rules of courtoisie ruled supreme. A well-educated amateur of poetry and the plastic arts, he surrounded himself with beautiful women and beautiful things, establishing the French court for a time as the apex of culture and refinement among the courts of Europe.

I was concerned when I began reading that this novel would cover too much of the same ground to make mine worthwhile. Not to worry; my François will be quite a different fellow. There are only so many sources on the Renaissance king that one can consult; how can two authors read the same things and create such different characters? Yet I’m sure we would both be surprised if we could discover where the real François fit into the spectrum of our creations!

A writer’s fictionalization of a real character always risks conflicting with the reader’s pre-formed image of the historical person. In order not to alienate the reader, the author can’t deviate too far from the accepted norms established by historical accounts. The challenge is to alter the norms just enough to make the characters interesting, engaging and amenable to the plot.

Characters: Fictional or Historical?

It’s funny how ideas the ideas come. My first book presented itself as a character. Having studied in literature courses how difficult and scandalous it was for women of the sixteenth century to publish under their own names, I knew I had to write a book about one who did. At that stage of my writing career, I wasn’t comfortable writing a fictionalized biography, so I took Louise Labé, the first non-noble woman in France to publish poetry under her own name, as a model and created a fictional character. I began with this character and built a story around her struggles and successes. Only one historical person has a speaking role in the book; the rest of the characters, as well as the events the story narrates, are completely fabricated.

This time, for my second book, things are different. The events of a two-year period in a particular setting are begging to be told; historical figures insist on taking prominent roles in the account. Though the majority of the characters will be historical personages, I still want the freedom that creating a main character from scratch provides. Finding this character is proving to be a great challenge, for not only must this created person link the real characters’ histories, but her imagined story must be substantial enough to compete with and in a sense “carry” the historical record. Her story can’t just be a framework for historical events; it must catalyze them, or there is no sense in having her there at all. Having to dovetail the real with the fictional is much more difficult than creating with abandon, though in the end it might prove more rewarding. Who knows? {s} Perhaps by my third book I’ll rise to the challenge of taking a historical person as my viewpoint character.

This leads me to ask: to what extent do you prefer historical people to populate your historical fiction? If the setting is authentic and the events plausible, do you mind reading about fictional characters, or do you want the cast list pulled directly from the Who’s Who of whatever century?