
Secret history

A secret history (or shadow history) is a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or ignored by established scholars. "Secret history" is also used to describe an alternative interpretation of documented facts which portrays a drastically different motivation or history from established historical events.
Secret histories of the real world.
Originally, secret histories were designed as non-fictional, revealing or claiming to reveal the truth behind the "spin": one such example is "The Secret History of the Mongols". Secret histories can range from standard historical revisionism with proper critical reexamination of historical facts to negative historical revisionism wherein facts are deliberately omitted, suppressed or distorted.
The quintessential example secret history is the "Anecdota" of Procopius of Caesarea (known for centuries as the "Secret History"). It was discovered, centuries after it was written, in the Vatican Library and published in 1623, although its existence was already known from the "Suda", which referred to it as the "Anekdota" ("the unpublished composition"). The "Secret History" covers roughly the same years as the first seven books of the "History of Justinian's Wars" and appears to have been written after they were published. Current consensus generally dates it to 550 or 558, possibly as late as 562. It portrays the reign of the Roman Emperor Justinian I to the great disadvantage of the Emperor, the Emperor's wife, and some of his imperial court.
Fictional secret histories.
Secret history is sometimes used in a long-running science fiction or fantasy universe to preserve continuity with the present by reconciling paranormal, anachronistic, or otherwise notable but unrecorded events with what actually happened in known history; for instance, in the "Star Trek" universe, Greg Cox's novels "" cast the devastating Eugenics Wars of the 1990s (still well into the future when first mentioned in an episode from 1967) as shadow wars most people never knew about, in which such real-life events from that era as the Smiling Buddha nuclear test, the Yugoslav Wars during the 1990s, and the 1992 Los Angeles riots were all part of one wider conflict.
Secret history thrillers.
A certain type of thriller can be defined as secret history. In such novels, a daring spy, assassin or commando "nearly" carries out a coup which would have drastically changed history as we know it. Since this is not alternate history but a secret event in our own history, the reader knows in advance that this attempt would be foiled, that all persons in the know would be sworn to secrecy and all evidence be consigned to a top secret archive, where supposedly it still is. Nevertheless, the plot fascinates many readers who want to see how close history comes to being changed (usually very, very close) and exactly how the attempt would be foiled.
Two highly successful novels are considered to have started this subgenre:
These two novels set the framework for many later books: following step by step both the fiendishly clever, competent and ruthless perpetrator in carrying out his design and the equally clever and competent hunter, hot on his heels throughout the book, but who would catch up with him only at the very end. Typically, historical figures – including very famous ones – appear in some key scenes, but are not major actors.
Many other novels of this type followed, most of them with World War II backgrounds. Follet himself published at least two others:
Works of other writers fitting within this type include:
Different types of secret history thriller include:
Fictional "secret" versions of historical events.
Donna Tartt used the phrase for the title of her debut novel (The Secret History), which recounts the story of a group of Classics students at an elite college in New England who engage in ritual murder — and subsequently bury the story. The plot is told via unreliable narration and an inverted detective format.
Secret histories of fictional worlds.
"Retcon", alteration of the canonical account of past events in serial fiction, often employs aspects of secret history. A seeming continuity breach might be "revealed" to alter the truth of what readers were previously led to believe was a definitive story. A retcon might equally well convert an established history into a secret history. Such transformations occur with particular frequency in long-running superhero comic books.
Time travel secret histories.
The plots of some time travel books and stories make it possible to count them as secret histories as well – since they posit that the truth about various historical figures and events is quite different from what history books recount.
For example, Poul Anderson's story "Brave to be a King" asserts that King Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire, was, in fact, a twentieth-century American time traveler stranded in the past who became a king by strange circumstances. (However, this is "cancelled out" at the end of the story, when the real Cyrus is restored to the timeline, and the American goes home to his own century.) Another Anderson story, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth", asserts that also the Nordic god Odin/Wodan was a twentieth-century American time traveler, who sought to study the culture of the ancient Goths and ended up being regarded as a god and starting an enduring myth.
Paul Levinson's "The Plot to Save Socrates" claims (as its title suggests), that the philosopher Socrates did not drink hemlock, as history tells. Rather, a clone died in his place and the true Socrates lived some more years in twenty-first century America. Also according to the same book, the politician and general Alcibiades had a long life and many adventures after the moment when history records his death; Alcibiades' mistress Timandra and the famous fourth-century mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria were one and the same person, a time-traveling American woman; the inventor Hero of Alexandria was also an American time traveler; and finally, according to the same book, the nineteenth-century publisher William Henry Appleton had an extensive secret life as a time traveler, had visited Classical Greece and met some of the famous ancient Greek writers and philosophers whose works he published, and also several times visited the twenty-first century – but always found his own nineteenth-century milieu to be the most congenial.
According to David Drake's novel "Birds of Prey", the Roman Empire's Third Century Crisis was far more severe than modern historians realize, and the Empire was on the verge of final collapse and disintegration already then. The situation was saved by a time traveler from the very far future, endowed with telepathic and other superhuman powers. That traveler encountered a young junior Roman officer named Diocletian, realized his enormous potential and gave him the final push to eventually become a strong Emperor, revive and restructure the Roman Empire and give it another two hundred years of life (and much longer for its eastern portion). Diocletian himself was completely unaware of this crucial help to his career.
Ray Nelson's novel "Blake's Progress" assumes that the poet William Blake and his wife Kate were accomplished time travelers who had many adventures in past and future times and in various alternate timelines, their actions profoundly effecting the course of human history. They had a child never known to recorded history, since the child - also a time traveler - was born in the distant past and lived out his life in the distant future. While it is well-known that Blake revered the poetry of John Milton, the book discloses that the two of them often met personally - the century separating them being no hindrance since Milton, too, was a time traveler and both could travel freely over millions of years. William Blake's mythology is not fictional but features actual people - or beings - whom Blake met on his wanderings through time. The character Urizen was in fact Blake's own son, born of a relationship with a woman of the far future. In addition to all the above, the book makes the more mundane assertion that many of the engravings attributed to Blake were in fact made by Kate and that in fact she was the better engraver of the two.
According to Michael Moorcock's "Behold the Man", also Jesus Christ was a modern time traveler. His real name was Karl Glogauer, and he had a troubled life in 20th Century London, being obsessed with the character of Jesus and finally getting and taking a chance to board a time machine to Jesus' time. Finding the Virgin Mary to be a nymphomaniac and having sex with her, he discovers that her child Jesus is a profoundly intellectually disabled hunchback who incessantly repeats the only word he knows: "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" and could never have done any of the things attributed to the New Testament's Jesus Christ. Thereupon, he decides to take up the role himself, gathers disciples and enacts many of the acts attributed to Jesus, and finally ends up on the cross. In the pain of his last moments he cries out in English "It's a lie ... it's a lie ... it's a lie ..." which Aramaic-speaking listeners understand as the famous "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani".