Romance, in the popular sense, could not be excluded, but there were few women mentioned in the despatches of the intendant . The other is the villainous of the book, the infamous Ch telaine de S vres, who plays a major role in the intelligence network of the intendant , and uses her charms to identify and betray the leaders of the revolt. Audijos himself has a brief affair with her before he discovers her machinations. The third important female character was a real person, Jeanne-Marie Dubourdieu, Audijos's childhood sweetheart. Inventing fictional characters, and endowing real people with characteristics unmentioned in the record, suggest the issue I mentioned earlier - the betrayal of one's profession.
Most academic historians are a little shamefaced about liking historical novels.
There seems to be an eternal conflict between historian and novelist, fact and fiction, imagination and reality. But, you know, historians have to use their imagination. If you want to assess the motives people had for their actions in the past, you have to use imagination to try to grasp the mentality of those about whom you are writing. The Romantic period in the nineteenth century marked a truce, if not an alliance, between novelist and historian, although there were some, such as Balzac, who did not share this attitude. For the most part historians at this time admired, and at times were inspired by, the better historical novels of the age.