Now that we’re in-between seasons in “Droughtlander,” it’s the perfect time to take a deeper dive into the show’s historical roots.(Want to watch Outlander Season 6 when it begins airing on Sunday, March 6? You can go to starz.com and sign up for $5.99 a month to watch every episode when they drop.We went right to the source and asked Outlander book author Diana Gabaldon—who, by the way, just finished the ninth book in the series, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone—what she thinks.
Is Outlander historically accurate?
Famous for her extensive research, Gabaldon first gave us a little background on the work she did for the novels. “The history/historical detail in the books is as accurate as history is—i.e., what people wrote down wasn’t always either complete or accurate, but they did write it down,” she tells Parade.com exclusively. “When I have to deviate from the historical record—rare, but it happens–or find that I’ve made a mistake or overlooked something, I’ll note that. The books have Author’s Notes at the back, and there are two Outlandish Companion books that provide additional material and commentary, as well.” So how does the show fare in comparison to her meticulous work on the books? “The show is a lot more…flexible, shall we say?” Gabaldon says. “That is, all of the designers, builders and props people are dedicated researchers and crafters; their work is beautiful, detailed and painstaking to the nth degree. The writers [are] good but not always accurate. Some of them are inclined to fall in love with a ‘visual’ and can’t resist doing it, no matter how improbable or inaccurate. Other things are accurate in every detail, but occasionally improbable—the Big House on Fraser’s Ridge, for example, which is stunningly beautiful, accurate in every detail—and more lavish than [North Carolina Governor] Tryon’s Palace.” That said, sometimes history has to be interpreted for the screen, as long as the broad strokes are true to life. “On the other hand, the story does have a strong fantasy element, and the fans are, for the most part, happy to enjoy that,” she tells us. “Historical accuracy is really not why most people watch historical shows, after all; I think most are looking for a transporting or immersive experience, and Outlander definitely provides that!” Let’s go back in time for a closer look at some of the historical elements of Outlander.
The clans of Scotland
Jamie is part of Clan Fraser and Clan MacKenzie (on his mother’s side) on Outlander, which accurately depicts this complex system of loyalty and allegiance from this time period. “The clan system was very tribal. It was composed of extensive family units, and as it grew larger, the clans became political entities,” Gabaldon told National Geographic. “And you didn’t have to be born to a clan, you could come in and swear allegiance to your clan chief, and you’d become a MacKenzie or a Grant or whatever, and then you’d change your surname…The level of the clan chieftain was different than the system in England—it wasn’t hereditary.” This is why Jamie could potentially be the next head of Clan MacKenzie.
Was Jamie Fraser real?
Historical figures appear on Outlander—everyone from Bonnie Prince Charlie to France’s King Louis XV to George Washington make an appearance. But the main characters are fictional…or are they? “I took Jamie from the name of a Dr. Who character who originally caused me to choose Scotland as my setting,” Gabaldon told National Geographic. But then, “I was reading a book for research called The Prince in the Heather, by Eric Linklater, which described what happened after [the Battle of] Culloden. It said that, following the battle, 19 wounded Jacobite officers took refuge in the farmhouse by the side of the field. There they lay for two days with their wounds, unattended in pain. At the end of that time they were taken out and shot, except one man, a Fraser of the Master of Lovet’s regiment, who survived the slaughter. And I was thinking that if I expect Jamie to survive Culloden then his last name better be Fraser.” And sure enough, in Outlander Jamie hides out in a farmhouse after being wounded in the battle, is captured by the British, and narrowly escapes being executed. Then in Season 3, fugitive Jamie takes refuge in a cave in the woods and becomes known as the “Dunbonnet”—who also was a real person. “The story of the laird who hid in the cave for seven years, whose tenants called him the Dunbonnet [is real],” Gabaldon wrote on her website. “His name? Ah…..James Fraser. Really.”
Jamie’s grandfather, the “Old Fox” Lord Lovat
So, Clan Fraser of Lovat was real; aspects of Jamie were real, and his grandfather, who Jamie reluctantly meets with in season 2, was also a real person. “Simon, Lord Lovat, a.k.a. ‘The Old Fox,’ was certainly a real person, and a very colorful one, too,” Gabaldon said on her website. “I made no alterations to his life or persona, save for grafting an illegitimate and totally fictional branch onto his family tree by making him Jamie Fraser’s grandfather. Given Old Simon’s persona as recorded, attributing an illegitimate son to him would in no way be character assassination.”
Jamie’s kilt
Much ado has been made about the fact that Jamie’s Clan Fraser tartan kilt on the Outlander show has muted colors instead of the bright red, blue and green listed in the Scottish Register of Tartans—but, many of these “traditional” tartans were actually created during a craze over all things Scottish in the Victorian age. “There’s certainly a school of thought that says that tartans are actually something that was invented by the Victorians as sort of a romanticism of Scotland, that the clan tartans—and all those crazy colors—really isn’t accurate to the 18th century,” Outlander costume designer Terry Dresbach told Elle.com. “But we do have a romantic association with, ‘Oh, I’m clan MacKenzie’ or ‘I’m clan Fraser.’ And certainly our book fans have that, but the research doesn’t support it. So my job is to figure out: How do I handle with care people’s love of a piece of the story and be accurate?…I still get letters from people going, ‘Why isn’t he wearing the Fraser tartan that I bought when I went to visit Edinburgh and went to that gift shop?’” Because vibrant dyes would have been very expensive at the time, Dresbach took a different approach. “Historically, fabrics are created from the environment people live in,” she said. “So what we did was research all the plant life in the area of our story and basically came up with: What colors would we be able to produce living where they lived?”
Claire’s witch trial
This is one of those rare times where Gabaldon was inaccurate on purpose. “I wanted to have a witch trial, but looking into it, I could see that the last witch trial in Scotland took place in 1722,” she told National Geographic. The problem? Claire’s witch trial is in 1743. “So I was telling my husband that I’d really like a witch trial, but it doesn’t fit. He looked at me and said, ‘You start right off with a book in which you expect people to believe that Stonehenge is a time machine, and you’re worried that your witches are 20 years too late?’” Gabaldon says. “So I did stretch that point. I figured that possibly this witch trial was an ad hoc affair that didn’t make it into the record. That’s the only place where I can remember I deliberately moved something [in history] that I knew was not quite there.”
Craigh Na Dun
Speaking of those magic time-travel stones, is Craigh Na Dun a real place? No; but Gabaldon was inspired by similar ancient sites around Scotland, especially because the history of what the stones were really used for has been lost. “All the [research] texts speculate that nobody knows what the actual function of these stone circles was. And so I began thinking, ‘Well, I bet I can think of one,’” Gabaldon told National Geographic.
The French costumes were not exactly period-correct
One of the most memorable things about the show’s second season is the amazing fashion in the episodes set in the Parisian court. But some of the costumes weren’t totally 18th-century accurate—on purpose. Claire, after all, is a 20th century woman, so she would be dressing in ways that fit her modern sensibilities, rather than sticking straight to a single timer period. Case in point: The lovely brown flowered garden dress she wears in Season 2 episode 5. “It was a fabric that set off alarm bells across the Internet. People were like, ‘Wait a minute, that doesn’t look period correct!’” Dresbach toldHarper’s Bazaar. “It’s not supposed to be. We want to imagine that Claire goes into a dress salon in Paris in the 18th century and says, ‘Take this off! Move this! Why don’t we put the flowers down here like this?’ She is a modern woman. So the minute I saw that fabric I knew that it had a feel and a flavor to it that was inaccurate. We really made a choice to go there.”
The Battle of Culloden is accurate, but simplified
This uprising against England based on Bonnie Prince Charlie’s (Andrew Gower) claim to the English throne was accurately depicted on Outlander, although the conflict’s background was a bit simplified for the show—for example, not all Scots supported the prince. “The reality is a lot more complicated and the edges are blurred,” Outlander historical advisor Tony Pollard, a historian who specializes in the Jacobite uprisings, told British Heritage Travel. But, “I was pleased with the way the Outlander script dealt with the battle.” Pollard made sure it adhered as close as possible to the real thing. “I had a good chat with the armorer about swords,” Pollard said. “When I pointed out that the British army’s infantry at Culloden was not carrying the swords that were normal for the time, he was delighted as it saved him money!” Outlander’s Battle of Culloden must have looked real, because after it was shown, the production team was contacted to make sure they hadn’t snuck onto the real battlefield to shoot. “I received a call from National Trust for Scotland after it aired to check that we hadn’t filmed at the real Culloden site without permission,” supervising location manager Hugh Gourlay said on Starz’s behind-the-scenes website.
Bonnie Prince Charlie
Was the prince really as flighty and foolish as he’s portrayed in Outlander? Scottish historical group the 1745 Association took issue with the way he was depicted on the show. “Whatever you may think of the Prince’s abilities or otherwise as a military commander, these portrayals are a travesty of the man he must have been,” the group’s chairman Michael Nevin toldThe Scotsman. But, actors still do some interpretation when portraying real people. “His whole history reading it, I could have played it in so many different ways, and actually I think it really fueled the scripts that I was given from the Outlander team,” Gower told the National Museum of Scotland. “Then there comes a point when you’re researching a character when you kind of leave it all behind and you have to focus on the scripts.”
Fraser’s Ridge
Many Scottish people did in fact settle in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Blowing Rock, North Carolina, in the colonial time period, as Jamie and Claire do in Season 4 of Outlander. But, not everything on the show about colonial life in North Carolina—even geography—was accurate. “[Show writers] actually invented a town called Willow’s Creek. They wanted there to be civilization there, a thriving town where Jamie could conceivably have intended to start a printing press,” Gabaldon told The Fayetteville Observer. “But I said, ‘No. There wasn’t anything there in the 18th century. There’s not anything there now.’ This went on for quite a long time. But it was like, ‘We need a town for our plot to work.’” Instead, they settled on the real town of Cross Creek—around 200 miles away from Fraser’s Ridge. “People who say the travel back and forth [to Cross Creek] is unrealistic? I’d say they’re dead right,” Gabaldon said. “But you do have to suspend some disbelief, and I think people do.”
The Regulators
The Regulators, the group Jamie’s godfather, Murtagh (Duncan Lacroix), was a part of that was opposed unfair taxation and other practices, was real during this time period. Their activities culminated in a fight against Governor Tryon’s militia at the 1771 Battle of Alamance, one of the first skirmishes that would lead to the American Revolution, and which was shown in Season 5. “I will say that the show does the Battle of Alamance very well,” Gabaldon told The Fayetteville Observer. “They did a great job with that.”
River Run
But Outlander’s depiction of other aspects of the colonial period have been criticized—such as slavery, which fell into tropes of Black characters existing only to forward white characters’ development. Even the appearance of the plantation of River Run itself, where “benevolent” slave owner Aunt Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy) lives, isn’t exactly accurate. “We had…a fabulous designer. He’s very lavish. He does beautiful details and wonderful sets,” Gabaldon told The Fayetteville Observer. “They’re glorious to look at but they are not what you’d call really historical. So we sort of take a deep breath and say, ‘That’s lovely,’ which it is,” Gabaldon said. In the book, River Run’s interiors are described as airy and simple, but on the show they are dark and heavier. “River Run as seen in the show is not a whole lot like it would have been in the 18th century," Gabaldon said. “But it’s done for a television show which is, by definition, fantasy because it involves time travel and so forth.” Production designer Jon Gary Steele talked about the reason for some of these changes to the Los Angeles Times: “A lot of the plantations had very pale walls and pale colors. When we started doing samples, it didn’t look like ‘Outlander’ to me. It wasn’t rich. So I switched it. I wanted to make River Run more in line with the colors of Outlander.”
Native Americans
Outlander ran into similar difficulty as with slavery when portraying the Frasers’ interactions with the indigenous Cherokee and Mohawk tribes, with characters that aren’t fully fleshed out and whose stories are told from the shows’ white characters’ perspectives. However, “every department, from production design to costume and hair and makeup does a huge amount of research to ensure we create a world that feels authentic to the time and place,” Outlander’s executive producer Matthew B. Roberts told Radio Times. “To build our Native American world, they have learned traditional techniques, from canoe building to hand weaving and, to populate that world, we have welcomed a great team from Canada to play both the speaking and supporting roles of the Cherokee and Mohawk Nations in Outlander season four.” (Because of union regulations, actors from the U.S. couldn’t play the parts.) The traditional costumes presented a challenge, because when Dresbach talked to someone from the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, she found out there’s not a lot to go on. “She finally just said, ‘You know what? The bottom line is that we just don’t know. What little information that there was, was burned to the ground in the libraries during the Civil War.’ And I just remember this heart-sinking feeling,” Dresbach toldTown and Country. “There is just so little information because we’re talking about genocide and cultural genocide as well.” Ultimately, whether on the page or screen, historical fiction is just that—a blend of the real and the fantasy. And even with some inconsistencies, no other show has done it as well as Outlander. Viewers will get to see more of the Outlander world, as Season 6 is currently filming, and Season 7 was just given the green light. Dying to know more behind-the-scenes Outlander scoop? Check out our curated list of 50 surprising Outlander facts.
