Appreciated.

Thanks for sharing this. I recognise this even if I haven’t written a historic novel. Travel writing (especially if you write about a place you have left and you are a former science communicator who really want to find the truth behind tales rather than repeating them) has similar time-consuming phases. I check and double check every fact. The difference is that I can often stick to wikipedia and don’t have to go looking for hand-written letters in obscure libaries around the globe 🙂

My advice to you would be to give up on telling the exact truth all the time and start using your substantial knowledge and just make it up!!