I'm not a huge fan of "what ifs" either unless it's really clear what has changed and that it is an AU.
I'm actually reasonably OK with the whitewashing, just as I can see it being really hard to identify with a protagonist who is a sexist, racist, homophobic twit. (As he/she probably would be in most historical worlds. And I far prefer pretending that these issues don't exist than acknowledging that they do, but that your super special little snowflake isn't a sexist, racist twit because, you know, he/she magically got hit with the PC wand.)
I will admit, though, to a certain fondness for novels that paint the past as a less than glowing place. But I can see the reason as to why a lot of stories don't go there and it doesn't particularly bother me, really. If a story is really a romance or soap opera set in Rome, I'm not sure that I need to see the hero freeing elderly slaves so he didn't have to support them now that they were useless (as historically happened on a regular basis), nor do I need a treatise on the evils of gladiatorial combat. I'm fine with it just being fluffy escapism with bits of history dabbed in. But that's obviously a huge YMMV kind of thing. (And I'll admit that one of the things I loved about the mini-series Rome was that it definitely showed a world that had very different standards and values than our modern era.)
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I'm actually reasonably OK with the whitewashing, just as I can see it being really hard to identify with a protagonist who is a sexist, racist, homophobic twit. (As he/she probably would be in most historical worlds. And I far prefer pretending that these issues don't exist than acknowledging that they do, but that your super special little snowflake isn't a sexist, racist twit because, you know, he/she magically got hit with the PC wand.)
I will admit, though, to a certain fondness for novels that paint the past as a less than glowing place. But I can see the reason as to why a lot of stories don't go there and it doesn't particularly bother me, really. If a story is really a romance or soap opera set in Rome, I'm not sure that I need to see the hero freeing elderly slaves so he didn't have to support them now that they were useless (as historically happened on a regular basis), nor do I need a treatise on the evils of gladiatorial combat. I'm fine with it just being fluffy escapism with bits of history dabbed in. But that's obviously a huge YMMV kind of thing. (And I'll admit that one of the things I loved about the mini-series Rome was that it definitely showed a world that had very different standards and values than our modern era.)