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In life as it’s lived, there is no obvious plot; the arc of the past is visible only in hindsight.

But in historical fiction, the aim is to capture a story, so fidelity to literal facts and timelines is not always the goal. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that: “Authenticity is not just what happened,” Min Jin Lee explained in 2017. “It’s about emotional truth too.”

“Successful historical fiction makes past events come alive in a more inviting or personal way than textbooks can,”

The reopening of these cases represents a shift for the government, the first acknowledgment that prosecutors are coming to terms with the limitations of how they punish bank misdeeds. Typically, when banks have repeatedly run afoul of the law, they have returned to business as usual with little or no additional penalty — a stark contrast to how prosecutors mete out justice for the average criminal.

The decision to revisit the cases also draws attention to consulting firms that helped shape the original settlements. When determining the extent of wrongdoing at a bank, the government often relies on assessments from consultants that are handpicked and paid by the same bank.

Even now that prosecutors are examining repeat offenses on Wall Street, they are likely to seek punishments more symbolic than sweeping. Top executives are not expected to land in prison, nor are any problem banks in jeopardy of shutting down.

In truth, we are all now subjected to infinite information and able to – indeed, keen to – broadcast our immediate responses to it. What we are, essentially, is a herd of ravenous political cats almost too numerous and various to corral.

In religion, Elizabeth skillfully maintained peace in England while much of Europe was embroiled in religious wars. She did this by grafting moderate Protestant theology onto Catholic style ritual and organization.  She also blunted the ferocity of the religiously radical Puritans (Calvinists) by incorporating many of them into the hierarchy of the Church of England.  However, this put many Puritans into positions of authority where they could demand more sweeping reforms beyond the Queen's lukewarm Protestantism.  In addition, many of these Puritans were also members of the gentry (lower nobles) and middle classes who controlled the House of Commons in Parliament and voted on taxes.  Thus the issues of religion and money became even more tangled.

Religious wars, which threatened everyone's peace and security, and inflation, which made maintaining armies too expensive for rebellious nobles, also combined to help with the rise of absolutism in Europe.  This rising tide of absolutism would influence the Stuart kings of England to try to establish absolutism in their own realm in spite of popular opinion.  A less skillful and diplomatic ruler than Elizabeth would have trouble dealing with these new forces rising up in England.  Such an undiplomatic ruler succeeded Elizabeth in the person of James I (1603-1625).

While Elizabeth had so skillfully kept the issues of money and religion in check, James' absolutist beliefs and abrasive personality brought them to the surface.  As far as religion went, James fought the largely Puritan Parliament to keep the Church of England's Catholic style ritual, decorations, and hierarchy of clergy, over which he as king had control.  In money matters, king and Parliament clashed over James' growing requests for money to support his lavish lifestyle.  He also angered the middle class by raising customs duties, one of his main sources of revenue, to keep pace with inflation.  While James and Parliament never completely broke with one another over these issues, their constant squabbling did set the stage for the revolution that was to follow.

At Worcester on Wednesday, September 3rd, the Roundheads under Oliver Cromwell routed Charles II and his Scots. The young king – he was twenty-one – slipped away on horseback with a few trusted companions

Shropshire, 40 miles from Worcester

George Penderel

Their reigns were crucial for the solid establishment of the constitutional and political conventions and practices known as the Revolution Settlement after James II and VII’s replacement by William III in 1689. The legislation that made it up (which included the 1701 Act of Settlement enshrining the claim to the British throne of Sophia of Hanover, mother of the future George I was passed from 1689, but much of the political settlement was not solidified until after 1714

Although the consequences of this new polity were less dramatic than those stemming from the personal union of England and Scotland under James VI and I in 1603, this had been by no means clear when the new dynastic personal union was created

Both George I and George II sought to use British resources to help secure gains for Hanover. George I sought to win territories  from the partition of the Swedish empire and to place a westward limit on the expansion of Russian power under Peter the Great. George II pursued Hanoverian territorial interests in neighbouring principalities, especially in Mecklenburg, East Friesland and Osnabrück

Shakespeare's later Tudor view of Henry VII changed very little between the first study of the reign by Francis Bacon in 1622 and Henry's last academic biography, by Stanley Chrimes, in 1973

Henry Tudor could not understand the problems he faced, and was essentially a bad medieval king. He could only have changed their policies after he had learned how to be an effective king. However, this interpretation takes little account of Henry's particular circumstances in 1485. It was precisely because of his unique upbringing and disconnection from England that Henry Tudor was able to bring new ways of doing things to his kingdom. Between about 1480 and 1520 England was certainly transformed from what Nicholas Pronay described as the 'merry but unstable England ruled by Edward IV to the tame, sullen and tense land inherited by Henry VIII'

It was control of personal relationships and mental attitudes among the people who represented the king that Henry VII saw as the key to forcing change upon the medieval ruling structures he inherited

That the restoration of the Bourbons was a re-enactment of the Restoration of the Stewarts was not only a widespread belief at the time, but one that was, in itself, an important historical fact. If the French Restoration went the way of the English, it was partly because it was expected to do so. The parallel was formally close: Louis XVI and Charles I; Napoleon and Cromwell; Charles X and James II; Louis-Philippe and William III. All went roughly according to the historical plan, except that, in England, there was no 1848, no Second Republic, no Second Empire—which underlines the truth that not every country that needs Whigs gets them

The shock of the Revolution produced among the exiles many different schools of thought. Some attributed the course of events to the decline of religious faith (and so there was an attempt to beat Satan at his own game by the foundation of societies such as the Chevaliers de la foi). Some, like the Comte d’Artois, attributed all to the initial feebleness of Louis XVI. Obsta principiis was their motto and policy, one to which Charles X clung in the last fatal year of his reign, 1829-30.

In so far as there was any enthusiasm for the Bourbons, it was based upon the belief that they would bring peace—and peace on easy terms. The terms of the first Peace of Paris were easy

Neither the Protestants nor Catholics won that war between the faiths: The instrumentalists did, the Machiavellians, the Westerners who wanted political and economic life set free from the meddling of troublesome priests and turbulent prophets

, it’s their propaganda that deserves the most scrutiny, the most skepticism, the strongest doubts.

At the heart of that propaganda is a simple story about authority and the individual. First, this story goes, Protestantism replaced the authority of the church with the authority of the Bible. Then, once it became clear that nobody could agree on what the Bible meant, the authority of conscience became pre-eminent — and from there we entered naturally (if with some bloody resistance from various reactionary forces) into the age of liberty, democracy and human rights.

We have gone from rightly defending the minority to wrongly problematizing the majority. It should surprise no one that, at some point, the majority will find all of this, as Josh Barro recently explained, “annoying.”

I say this as someone happily in the minority — and who believes strongly in the right to subvert or adapt traditional gender roles.

But you can’t subvert something that you simultaneously argue doesn’t exist.