When histories are written, someone writes them. The biography of King Steven might have been paid for by King Steven, and the point is to convince us what a great guy he was, how he defeated all his enemies in battle. He was wise and just and a great lawgiver. Or the intent of the history might be to teach children a certain lesson, so the historian goes looking for a list of kings, or saints or other important people and chooses one to illustrate his point. Children, you should be like this. The facts can be bent - things that other kings or saints did can be swapped in. Because history is not the point. The lesson is the point.
So also with describing the excellent behavior of kings in the past. The historian's actual goal is to tell the current king "This is how a good kind acts." So the list of kings in history is consulted and a suitable candidate is selected. At no point is anyone thinking "Let me tell you how it really went down." That is what makes works like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle important. They actually do want to tell you what happened in 878.
We still snigger at this when we encounter someone like Gildas, who is telling a morality tale about letting some of the barbarians in to gain power because the British wanted to repel the Northern European invasions generally. It is from Gildas that we get the idea of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, which turns out to be only partly true. He would not have given a fig about that. Whether it was Frisians or Jutes is of great importance to us now, but to him it was a detail, a distraction.
Given the continual inaccuracy of accurate histories, it is worth asking whether we should look down our noses quite so much.
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