Another biographical fiction! And now that I know it's a legitimate genre, I wasn't as bothered by all the made up stories about real people. EXCEPT for this minor detail: I can't find any internet evidence that the main character actually existed??
The story follows Pierre de Bayard, an orphan page who serves King Francois I during the early 1500s, and his life at court with the children of the King (Prince Francois, Prince Henri - future king of France, Prince Charles and Princess Magdaleine and Princess Marguerite). He is nephew of the famous knight Pierre de Bayard, student to the scholar and philosopher Master Fabri and he "owns" a little hunchback dwarf named Jac who is his dearest friend. They go on adventures, he butts heads with Prince Henri, he aspires to be a great knight but also longs to be a scholar like Fabri, he idolizes his Aunt Marguerite, he learns about humanism from Sir Thomas More, he almost gets kidnapped with Henri, then he actually gets kidnapped and gets freed by Native Americans that Cartier brings back from the New World. And the author writes a postscript about what happened with all the characters, including Pierre (who apparently became a famous scholar and mathematician). So I of course looked them all up to read their stories and everyone in the book is totally real - the king, the princes, the king's sister, Cartier the explorer, Thomas More, Pierre's famous uncle who he's named after - but I can't find anything about HIM.
So was the main character made up?
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