I just picked up a book from the library called Sinners about a woman in 16th century Rome that hates her dad and wants to kill him.
But she’s a daughter in a rich family so she might as well be a Disney princess. There is also all the other tropes like this guy she can’t help being attracted to even though she doesn’t want to.
My biggest issue reading this book is I’m just like, “you’re rich, what’s your fucking problem. Boo hoo you hate your dad. You made it to adulthood in the 16th century in a comfortable existence.”
These stories are never about the peasants or people who work for these rich assholes. It’s always some wealthy woman that likes reading as if to be a stand in for the reader. It really goes to shoe what a bourgeois medium the novel is
Is all historical fiction like this or have I just picked up a generic example?
Writers who write about feudal times but want their characters to have agency in a regimented society just make them come from a merchant or aristocrat family, so at the very least the genre ends up inadvertently reifying the primacy of the rich experience
Rly the big issue is few people who write fiction have rly studied history in depth. Peasants had tons of agency! Even serfs had as much or more agency than your average joe today, considering that (until stone castles became common) they had a considerably better shot at burning their exploiters houses down, and generally did that if he pissed them off too much.
But understanding medieval society is hard, so its easier to reskin modernity with some faux medieval aesthetics, and write a merchant or noble character who has more in common with the author, who usually lives in the global north, i.e. in global economic terms the aristocracy and urbanites (bourgeois)