Agnes in Fiction
Until recent years, the image of Agnes perpetrated by Ernoul and William of Tyre has defined her treatment in history, especially of the 'popular' variety, the political agenda of these authors not being taken into account. This has affected her fictional portrayals. She has appeared in a number of novels dealing with twelfth-century Outremer - Zofia Kossak-Szczucka's Król trędowaty (The Leper King), Graham Shelby's The Knights of Dark Renown, and Cecelia Holland's Jerusalem - invariably as an aging harlot, her attractiveness varying from author to author. (Kossak depicts her as buxom and blowsy; Shelby, with particularly vicious misogyny, as a scrawny creature whom even Eraclius, whom he depicts as her lover, despises.)
Read more about this topic: Agnes Of Courtenay
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“We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)