Some Legends Aren’t Exaggerated by Time — They’re Buried by It
I still remember my American History AP course in high school—though, at this point, that was so long ago it’s practically history itself.
John Hancock wasn’t mentioned.
Not once.
Maybe that’s changed since then. I hope it has. But for my generation, at least, we knew next to nothing real about him. He was a punchline. A joke about handwriting. A name reduced to a flourish at the bottom of a page.
And today? Some kids don’t even recognize the name at all.
That loss matters more than we realize.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of declaring American independence, I found myself asking a simple question: How did someone so central to the Revolution become so easy to forget? And more importantly—what kind of story fills that silence?
John Hancock, Dragon Rider is a fantasy retelling, yes. But it also comes from something deeper: a desire to bring an important figure back into the light.
I think Hancock would have been perfectly happy to be remembered as an epic dragon rider. At least, I hope so.
Along the way, I’ll be layering in real history—true stories, real people, and the forgotten tensions and choices that shaped the world around him.
Over the coming months, as we move toward the launch of this new series, I’ll be sharing essays and social posts exploring Hancock’s leadership, his reputation, and the forces that shaped how history remembers him.
But most of all, I want to tell his story at human scale: not as a footnote, not as a symbol, but as a man standing at the center of impossible choices.
This new fantasy series is my way of reclaiming the scale, danger, and power of that era—and of restoring John Hancock to the light where he belongs.
Because some legends are not exaggerated by time.
They are buried by it.
