User:Francis Schonken/List of borderline fictional characters

This list is about people/characters that are neither completely "fictional", neither completely "real". This situation can occur while:

• Historical sources sometimes don't allow to discern or are not unanimous whether a character is a "fantasy" or a "historic figure" - e.g. Homer.
• Some people are obviously historical, but are attributed fantastical deeds - e.g. like some Roman emperors having ascended to heaven according to the tradition of the age they lived in.
• Pseudonyms: the pseudonymous figure may be part fictional: e.g. P. D. Q. Bach really "composes" (in capacity of being the pseudonym of Peter Schickele), while he is also a son of Johann Sebastian Bach (in his capacity of a fictional character).
• ...etc...: see subdivisions below

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items.

Characters in mythical, legendary and religion-founding tales

(this part of the list only for characters that have as well a proven historical reality^[1] as a proven fictionality^[2]!)

• The Amazons^[3]
• Laozi
• ...

Characters with historical exactitude issues

Antiquity and Middle Ages

• Homer; of whose works American humorist Mark Twain once wrote that they were not by Homer, but by another man by the same name.
• Lycurgus, the 9th century BC Spartan law-giver
• Alcibiades, regularly taken to be a woman in the Middle Ages, and anecdotes attributed to her.
• Claudia Procles – whether Pontius Pilate had a wife, is not the center of the debate, the biographical details (and names) this woman accumulated over time are more difficult to sort out in fictional/non-fictional.
• Kings of Britain listed by (among others) Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae, for a period starting at the Siege of Troy and ending 18 centuries later, more than a century after the death of Arthur: many of these listed kings are fictional without discussion, some are usually considered non-fictional (without all historical exactitude issues on these men being solved) — all other kings listed in these medieval lists are entirely in the fictional/non-fictional borderzone.
• Saint Sebastian
• Saint George
• The Eleven Thousand Virgins, companions of St. Ursula
• Rome's Thirty Tyrants – due to the notorious unreliability of the author(s) of the Historia Augusta, some of the listed thirtytwo pretenders to Rome's Imperial power are trapped in the fictional/non-fictional borderzone.
• Richard of Cirencester, a historical person of the Middle Ages whose name was borrowed in an 18c historical forgery by Charles Bertram

Renaissance and later

• (Beethoven's) Immortal Beloved
• Jack the Ripper
• Marquise de Créquy
• ...

Fictional characters (partly) identified with historical figures

See also: List of real people appearing in fictional context

• Hiram Abiff partly identified with Hiram I (and/or other biblical figures with the name Hiram)
• Bluebeard, partly identified with Gilles de Rais (and/or the Marquis de Laval)
• Claudius in I, Claudius (Robert Graves, the author of the original book by that name even leaves uncertainty whether he wanted to paint the 1st century emperor and his entourage as realistic as possible: at one side he denied allegations that the books would have been the result of his "vigorous fancy", by pointing to the many sources he used; on the other hand he is clear that he did more than just "run together" in a coherent story what he had found in historical sources)
• The Great Dictator, intended as a personification of Adolf Hitler by Charles Chaplin
• Gabriel Donizetti, in the movie Song of Freedom, presumably parallelling Gaetano Donizetti
• Dracula, (partly) identified with Vlad III Dracula
• Charles Foster Kane identified with William Randolph Hearst
• Mozart and Salieri (as themselves) in Amadeus
• Orlando, (partly) identified with the historical Roland
• Arturo Ui, intended as a personification of Hitler by Bertolt Brecht
• Virgil and Beatrice (as themselves) in La divina commedia
• ...

People who created a pseudonym or alter ego with fictional proportions for themselves

See also: List of real-life characters

• Ubu — Alfred Jarry
• P. D. Q. Bach — Peter Schickele
• Dogbert — Scott Adams like e.g. in the DNRC newsletters. Surprisingly, Scott Adams incarnates less as the Dilbert strip main character (there have however been some engineering topics on the Dilbert website managed by this character). Catbert activity seems to be limited to the Catbert salary calculator and the Performance review generator on the Dilbert website.
• Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) - Hunter S. Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta, respectively
• Captain Sudoku an alleged Sudoku game teacher, created and played by Nimrod Kamer
• Author(s) of the Historia Augusta – The manuscript mentions Aelius Spartianus, Iulius Capitolinus, Vulcacius Gallicanus, Aelius Lampridius, Trebellius Pollio and Flavius Vopiscus as authors: historians conjecture there was probably only a single author, living in the late 4th century; statistical analysis of the text did however not provide a final proof for that assumption, so apart from the creation of "alter ego(s)" (which is almost certain), the author(s) also has/have historical exactitude issues (not to mention the legion other historical exactitude issues touching this writing).
• Lemony Snicket - Daniel Handler
• S. Morgenstern - William Goldman
• Horselover Fat — Philip K. Dick
• Rrose Sélavy - Marcel Duchamp

Roman à clef characters

{{spoiler}}

• Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
  • Orlando/Vita Sackville-West
  • Princess Sasha/Violet Trefusis
  • Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine/Harold Nicolson
• Broderie Anglaise by Violet Trefusis
  • Alexa/Virginia Woolf
  • Jim/Leonard Woolf
  • Lord Shorne/Vita Sackville-West
  • Anne/Violet Trefusis
• Challenge by Vita Sackville-West (and Violet Trefusis)
  • Julian/Vita Sackville-West
  • Eve/Violet Trefusis
• ...

References