Are any of the fictional characters based on real historical figures?
There’s a “real” female witch (late 16th century) named Geilis Duncane in Daemonologie, a treatise on witches by King James of Scotland (later James I of England….)–the book is about the trial of a coven of witches whom James believed tried to assassinate him via black magic…..(You know how women are always teaming up with the devil to do things like that…). I figured anybody up on Scottish witchcraft would know the name, and for anyone who wasn’t, it didn’t matter. It is, of course, not Outlander’s witch’s real name–we meet her in Dragonfly under (what we suppose is) her original name of Gillian–she took Geillis deliberately as a name, because of the original, whom she of course was familiar with, owing to her researches into witchcraft. We’ll hear a bit more of this when Roger finds his ancestress’s grimoire. Jack Randall is not real–so far as I know. I add that proviso, because quite frequently in the writing of these books, I’ve written someone, presumably out of my head-
