"How “historically accurate” is the Dragon Temeraire series?" Topic

The dragon parts notwithstanding. 🙄
It's Napoleonic, sort of. How much of that does Naomi Novik get right?

Most importantly, has anyone actually gamed the hot dragon on dragon action?
How about dragons vs sailing ships?

Briefly heard about the series a while back, but didn't dip my toes in.

I have never read them, in spite of the urging of brother Phil, but he loves them. But he is no expert on Napoleonic warfare.

John and others, you might enjoy A DIFFERENT DRAGON ENTIRELY, author Philip McBride, on Amazon. Giant flying Texas horned toad, and a Texas girl, dealing with the Comanche great raid that ended at Plum Creek. (Phil lives in Lockhart, basically on the Plum Creek battlefield.)

Horny toads are lizards, and they can shoot blood from their eyes. Really.

There are significant changes in the history, as having dragons as air support would produce.
Naomi does know her period naval technology and operations, but the dragons quickly take center stage (as you'd expect), so it's not like she's counting marlinspikes.
The thrust of the war is largely the same— Napoleon is out to conquer Europe— but the dragons affect the outcome of his campaigns, sometimes in completely non-historical ways.

There's a strong through-line as the English hero comes to terms with how his government treats the human-like intelligent dragons as little more than high-value "war materiel" at best, or even as slaves. This makes the question of who will win the fight both less certain and less a cut-and-dried preference for the reader. Despite being a despot, Napoleon is more egalitarian towards dragons— though of course in a tyranny, everybody just winds up equally oppressed.

I enjoyed the series despite the turn from warfare to personal conflicts. As I remember, the dragon "Temeraire's" broadside was considerably stronger than the ship of the line's. The one part disliked was that she made Nelson even more of a jerk than he was in history.

I'm told by those who read them that an honest effort was made to imitate the post-Jena reforms of the Prussian army, with the Prussians being conservative in the use of their dragons early on and much more aggressive in later campaigns--which is not quite linear warfare to columns, but…

I frankly avoid anything along those lines. I'm OK with honest high fantasy or "secret histories" in which magical creatures are real but hidden, or magic really does work, but people don't believe in it. But when I'm presented with, say, an 1870 in which Europe has an Elven kingdom--has always had an Elven kingdom--but somehow the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution all played out in an almost identical fashion, it drives me nuts.

robert, yes, it offends me as a historian too.