Storytellers and those who read or listen to stories both expect stories to have a beginning, a narrative that tells the tale, and a more or less plausible ending. It’s too bad that that’s a fucking lie — stories are rarely that neat when they actually play out in real life.
There was a storyteller here a few months back that was telling her version of The Bloodied Kings, a story that is recorded in the Estate Annals from nearly a thousand years ago. The Annals doesn’t name either of the Kings but details their final battle against each other at the end of a battle that left nearly everyone dead save the skald that told the tale and (may) have written it down. So consider this — we don’t know who the Kings were, though we know roughly where they fought and died, and we might know where they might be buried though that is suspect as well. Messy, isn’t history?
Now our Storyteller took these threads, these small pieces of torn fabric, and wove a whole tapestry out of them. Nothing wrong with that but she went one step beyond that by adding in her conjectures about who they were (both Scots in her telling though it’s more likely one was Scandinavian), how they died (both from sword wounds though we know not what they were wielding for weapons), who buried them (though it’s more likely they left for the carrion birds to consume as the survivors likely were retreating fast to save their lives). Her Tale took those scant threads and brought them to life in the mind’s eye.
Was it a bad story? Not at all, but as our Librarian said stories always simplify what happen, be it based on something that actually happened or told from whole cloth, be it a story they created or borrowed from other sources.
