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?
It sucks more after class consciousness. But sometimes it’s still fun to read because you can become immersed in the setting even if you want to guillotine the characters. And there are a few about “people who work for these rich assholes,” or work against them. Off the top of my head -
Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy, about Bagoas, a eunuch beloved by Alexander the Great.
Captivity, by Gyorgy Spiros, a 1000-page bummer of a novel about a Jewish Roman around the time of Vespasian, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and by the end of the book it’s about to get worse.
My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk, set in a workshop of miniaturists in the Ottoman Empire. Also The White Castle, in which the narrator is a Venetian captured by the Ottomans.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s The Buru Quartet, in which the narrator is definitely privileged, the descendant of Javanese royalty, but he’s still oppressed by the Dutch, and soon he rejects the old hierarchies and becomes involved in the anti-colonial struggle.
The Water Margin, one of the original historical novels, where a bunch of outlaws during the Song Dynasty engage in Robin Hoodish activity.