In a stoy set back in time you like it to have more history than story or have a story thats just crazy?
You can combine both to get historical rainbow powahs
The problem with introducing any kind of inaccuracy to historical narrative is the fact that story-worlds tend to run on internal logic, and everything was the way it was in historical settings for a reason. If you inject something crazy which would have been absolutely impossible, you basically can’t rely on internal consistence to carry your setting anymore. You either have to declare it as running entirely on rule of cool (See: Sengoku Basara) or essentially create a new logic which ties it all together.
Fortunately, history is full of extraordinary examples to prove that the “historically possible” isn’t quite as restrictive as you’d think: a black general fought for Revolutionary France, a Breton noblewoman led a pirate navy in the 14th century, 20 Sikhs once died to the last man holding an outpost against 10 000 attackers.
Before you write off something as “too crazy for history”, you might wanna do some looking first, history was pretty crazy.
@grimreaper21 It depends on the setting of the story I guess. Not many people would like to wade through lines of historical text unless they fancy the subject. So a mix of history and fantasy would be ideal to keep the reader interested. And like @cataphrak said, history is full of surprises so you can have a story that is crazy and historical at the same time.
If your aim is for Historical then the facts should be real and accurate as @Cataphrak and @assassinsat stated.
Take this example in Egypt the God “Anubis” was not associated with the jackal, but with the desert dog. (Fact information) Then add information like “were-wolfs” are descendants of the Egypt the God “Anubis” (Fictitious information) because they appear as a wolf on top and human body, and so-on-so-on.
So if history make sure it is all true or people will start to correct/question the reason behind the history, but you can get away with it if you put history then fantasy(Fictitious information) in it since no one can question that because that’s your realm now lols
Generally in historically-inspired settings which are supposed to be internally consistent and have a relatively low proliferation of the physics-breaking and the supernatural, I’d prefer authors to do their research.
As a writer and a student of history, having say, a pirate story where the ship sails directly into the wind, cannon fire every three seconds and the crew are fed and watered and healthy without resupply for months on end without any actual explanation kind of makes me cry a little.
I have little to add to what @Cataphrak has said except that, regardless of whether something is partially historical or entirely fictional, an author should be prepared to justify whatever they do. If there is no factual basis or internal coherence which can be appealed to so as to account for a possibility, then your setting is flawed.