Thanks for reading all that; I'm afraid I wrote you something of a mini-essay. I'll try to be brief this time.
What I was trying to get at regarding the "Robespierre vs. Danton" mythos and how that's drawn on in fiction, is first, quite simply, that I'm tired of it because it seems like all anyone ever writes/makes films about. This doesn't mean that it's categorically impossible for someone to write something about it that I would enjoy, since I never rule anything out. Second, the lack of self-awareness on the part of authors that use this trope annoys me. They usualy don't seem to realize that they're drawing on a myth that's been being constructed in literature and history going back to the 19th century. Indeed, this dichotomy is frequently presented as self-evident.
Now, I understand that topoi are important in fiction. However, with rare exceptions, I don't want to read about Danton and Robespierre the literary characters, grounded more in their mythology than in primary sources. Perhaps I'm too much of a historian in this, but if I'm going to read/watch a work of fiction in which Robespierre and Danton are the main characters, I would like one that challenges the audience's assumptions, preferably by going back and re-examining the sources (though of course the worst of all possible worlds is when a work claims to be doing that just repeats the same old myth anyway). And yes, that is the same thing I appreciate in a work of non-fiction, but so be it. I've already explained how the approaches differ, even when it happens that both have the same goal of creating a plausible reconstruction. Because of this, I don't see them as the same, but I understand how it would be possible to argue that I don't appreciate literature for what it is and just want to make it a handmaiden to history. Which is actually pretty true. *shrugs* That's probably why I study history and not literature.
Besides, I believe we owe a certain respect to the dead. For me, part of that respect means that if we're going to represent them, we have a duty to represent them not as they would have wanted to be represented, but as much as we possibly can, as they appear to us based on surviving evidence. The dead are not literary characters or puppets, but real people, and perhaps it's superstitious, but it feels almost sacrilegious to me, if one is going to portray them, in fiction or otherwise, not to make a sincere effort to understand and represent them as they were, or as closely as we can reconstruct it.*
*That may mean our judgment of them is ultimately negative and we represent them accordingly, but if that's the case we're ultimately weakening and not strengthening our case if we feel the need to embellish. And I don't mean filling in plausible, or at least not implausible, details. I mean, there's plenty of reason to dislike Fouché and there are plently of places in the historical record where we can't prove he was involved in some kind of intrigue and yet where he likely was. It's not disrespectful to his memory to portray him as involved in an intrigue at a moment when it could well have happened but we have no record of it, because we do have a great deal of evidence that Fouché was an intriguer. But there is, as far as I know, no good reason to suppose that Fouché enjoyed torturing small animals. Thus, it would be doing an equal disservice to his memory (not to mention the intended audience) to represent him as an entirely upright and innocent individual and to represent him as a torturer of small animals, because neither representation shows an equitable judgment of Fouché based on available evidence.
Re: Part 4 (oops.)
What I was trying to get at regarding the "Robespierre vs. Danton" mythos and how that's drawn on in fiction, is first, quite simply, that I'm tired of it because it seems like all anyone ever writes/makes films about. This doesn't mean that it's categorically impossible for someone to write something about it that I would enjoy, since I never rule anything out. Second, the lack of self-awareness on the part of authors that use this trope annoys me. They usualy don't seem to realize that they're drawing on a myth that's been being constructed in literature and history going back to the 19th century. Indeed, this dichotomy is frequently presented as self-evident.
Now, I understand that topoi are important in fiction. However, with rare exceptions, I don't want to read about Danton and Robespierre the literary characters, grounded more in their mythology than in primary sources. Perhaps I'm too much of a historian in this, but if I'm going to read/watch a work of fiction in which Robespierre and Danton are the main characters, I would like one that challenges the audience's assumptions, preferably by going back and re-examining the sources (though of course the worst of all possible worlds is when a work claims to be doing that just repeats the same old myth anyway). And yes, that is the same thing I appreciate in a work of non-fiction, but so be it. I've already explained how the approaches differ, even when it happens that both have the same goal of creating a plausible reconstruction. Because of this, I don't see them as the same, but I understand how it would be possible to argue that I don't appreciate literature for what it is and just want to make it a handmaiden to history. Which is actually pretty true. *shrugs* That's probably why I study history and not literature.
Besides, I believe we owe a certain respect to the dead. For me, part of that respect means that if we're going to represent them, we have a duty to represent them not as they would have wanted to be represented, but as much as we possibly can, as they appear to us based on surviving evidence. The dead are not literary characters or puppets, but real people, and perhaps it's superstitious, but it feels almost sacrilegious to me, if one is going to portray them, in fiction or otherwise, not to make a sincere effort to understand and represent them as they were, or as closely as we can reconstruct it.*
*That may mean our judgment of them is ultimately negative and we represent them accordingly, but if that's the case we're ultimately weakening and not strengthening our case if we feel the need to embellish. And I don't mean filling in plausible, or at least not implausible, details. I mean, there's plenty of reason to dislike Fouché and there are plently of places in the historical record where we can't prove he was involved in some kind of intrigue and yet where he likely was. It's not disrespectful to his memory to portray him as involved in an intrigue at a moment when it could well have happened but we have no record of it, because we do have a great deal of evidence that Fouché was an intriguer. But there is, as far as I know, no good reason to suppose that Fouché enjoyed torturing small animals. Thus, it would be doing an equal disservice to his memory (not to mention the intended audience) to represent him as an entirely upright and innocent individual and to represent him as a torturer of small animals, because neither representation shows an equitable judgment of Fouché based on available evidence.