First, thank you SO MUCH for all the fic recs you’ve been blessing us with! I really appreciate all the time and effort you’ve put into making these. Second, could you recommend some historical AUs? Thank you and I hope you have a lovely day :D
Thank you so much for the kind words anon. It’s so good to hear that you guys like these recs. I really enjoy creating these lists and finding fics that are both well-loved but also those who are underrated in the fandom.
I have a LOT of historical AU fics so I hope there are some you haven’t read before. The fics are, more or less, in chronological order, so it starts with Ancient Rome, moves on to the Middle Ages, then to Regency era, etc. etc. This should make it a tad easier to find fics from different eras. Enjoy!
Cherik Historical AU Fic Recs
History Repeating – winterhill
Summary: From a kinkmeme prompt, this is a series of vignettes about Charles and Erik throughout the ages. Each chapter is written as a self-contained era.
Wanton in the Air – Rosie_Rues
Summary: In which Charles rescues a gladiator from the arena and soon becomes somewhat disconcerted by this handsome new slave and his sharksome grin.
Summary: In the year 96 AD, all Rome is aware that their gods have begun to Mark certain people with their gifts – the healing power of Apollo, the metal control of Vulcan, the deathly touch of Pluto, or the mental powers of Minerva. When those gifts fall to slaves or barbarians instead of the Romans themselves, strict control is necessary.
Then a gladiator from Judea meets an enslaved scribe from Britannia, and the repercussions will shake the Empire itself.
Taken By His Majesty – Pookaseraph
Summary: Erik’s mission was simple, sneak into the Celtic pretender king’s tent, assassinate him, and return to Rome with his father’s honor restored. Unfortunately, he didn’t count on Charles. When the prince chooses to take him as his personal slave, Erik feared the worst, and his concerns weren’t entirely unwarranted. The worst, however, turns out to be falling in love with the greatest enemy of Rome’s primacy in Briton. A historical romance set during the early days of Rome’s occupation of Briton.
Terrible with the brightness of gold – brawlingdiscontent
Summary: The war is lost.
With the futures of his people and his children at stake, former Crown consort Charles of Normandy awaits the arrival of England’s new master, the fearsome Viking warrior, Erik Lehnsherr. (Inspired by 11th century historical events)
“For who could look upon the lions of the foe, terrible with the brightness of gold, who upon the men of metal, menacing with golden face, … who upon the bulls on the ships threatening death, their horns shining with gold, without feeling any fear for the king of such a force?” - Encomium Emmae Reginae
Burn Your Kingdom Down – spicedpiano
Summary: Erik’s people were brutally massacred when the Crusaders took Jerusalem. The sole survivor, Erik fled to northern Europe, only then to be captured as a thrall by Viking raiders. Since that day he has fought his way up to leading a group of Vikings on an invasion of the Christian mainland, killing every Crusader he can find. But when he captures a thrall of his own, a young witch who gives his name only as Charles, he discovers that there is a darker magic than his at work - and the fate of the known world may rest in his hands.
More Than All The World (The Werewolf’s Tale) – Luninosity
Summary: An Erik/Charles story very loosely based on Marie de France’s 12th-century French werewolf tale, in which Erik is the man transformed into a wolf (he’ll get changed back by the end, it’s not that kind of story, though they very definitely do fall in love) and Charles is a king and eventually there’s a happy ending. Also, a villain’s nose gets bitten off.
The Conspirator’s Gift – kaydeefalls
Summary: Medieval mystery AU. In the aftermath of a bloody siege during the 12th-century English Anarchy, the monk Henry and tradesman Erik discover evidence of murder: one corpse too many hidden among the fallen rebels. To see justice done, Erik must tread carefully through the conflicting and treacherous loyalties of civil war, as well as the potentially dangerous schemes of the enigmatic young Lord Xavier.
As Dark Longs For Day – Yahtzee
Summary: A daring young thief escapes from the wicked bishop’s dungeons, thinking herself free – until she encounters a rider with a black horse, a tame hawk and a dark secret. And who is this mysterious young man who only appears at night, accompanied by a protective wolf?
No Longer in Silence – Black_Betty
Summary: It has been eight years since Charles has seen Erik. Eight years since they parted under unkind circumstances and Erik went off to sea. The boy he once knew is Captain Lehnsherr now and they are as known to one another as strangers, and yet–Charles finds that eight years has done nothing to diminish the feelings he had when he was 16 and in love. It’s unfortunate then that Erik doesn’t feel the same way. (Persuasion AU)
Dance With Me – wallhaditcoming (uvcatastrophe)
Summary: After his most recent tour, Erik Lehnsherr has finally earned the rank of Captain and a commission on a vessel all his own. With the prize money he has collected and this new rank, he finally feels secure enough in his future to propose to the man he has loved for years. He just prays that Charles is willing to have him.
Summary: When Mr Lehnsherr of Thornfield first began seeking a tutor suited to educate his young daughter, he could hardly have expected the young gentleman who turned up at his door, nor the connection they would forge.
The Master of Charlton Park – Gerec
Summary: On the brink of losing his ancestral home, omega Charles Xavier agreed to do the unthinkable; he would sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of his family, and bear a child for a married alpha and his mate.
But Charles never expected that alpha to be Erik Lehnsherr, with whom he shared an impossible love and undeniable passion.
Summary: Erik Lehnsherr hates dancing, but has a very specific reason for throwing a ball…
To Turn and Look When Thou Hearest the Sound of My Name – lachatblanche
Summary: North and South AU.
Erik, the master of the Genosha steel mill in the north, has lived a hard life, building his industry from scratch with the aid of his adopted sibling, Emma. When Charles Xavier, a young, southern gentleman, takes up residence near the mill, Erik finds himself drawn to him, despite Charles making it very clear that he cares neither for the north nor for Erik.
Based on Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel (takes place about midway through the story).
Frost fairs and fair frosts – diner_drama
Summary: The social circles of the upper end of London were in uproar - not only had the Thames frozen over, but the atypical weather had also prompted the mysterious and uncanny Dr. Xavier and his peculiar young charges to make the journey all the way from his mansion in Chester.
Erik Lehnsherr was not entirely certain that he could countenance meeting another of Mrs. Frost’s high society friends without suffering a violent fit of apoplexy, but perhaps the charming country doctor could break through his iron defences.
What We All Long For – Nos4a2no9
Summary: Charles Xavier was heir to a vast fortune before his stepfather stole his birthright, his dignity, and his freedom. Forced to serve as Kurt Marko’s informant and as a sexual plaything for the wealthy men of Europe’s upper crust, Charles yearns for nothing more than a quiet life free from shame and abuse.
The death of his stepfather seems to offer a way out, but Charles is once again forced to serve the Markos when his stepbrother offers him up as collateral in a game of chance. Suddenly Charles becomes the property of Erik Lehnsherr, a mysterious gambler with a thirst for revenge.
When love between the two men begins to blossom, Charles finally discovers what is at the heart of Erik’s tragic story, and why he is set upon a devastating course of revenge that will endanger Erik, Charles, and everything they have longed for.
Roses & Cinnamon – TurtleTotem
Summary: Charles Xavier lost more than his leg in the war with Napoleon, and the man he’s just pulled out of the water has ghosts of his own – especially when Charles’s involuntary projected hallucinations prove catching. Raven, meanwhile, faces the choice of whether to marry respectably or run away with a carnival fortune-teller.
Ironwood Hall – wheel_pen
Summary: Erik and Emma are Alpha siblings living in an ancient house in the Victorian era… a house that has strong opinions about who its family should marry, that has dispatched unsuitable spouses in the past. The latest candidate? A creative young Omega named Charles Xavier.
Somewhere between Rage and Serenity – Hyperballad
Summary: Charles Xavier is Erik Lehnsherr’s servant in this fic, set in the late Victorian period. Although Charles was quietly enamored with his employer, he had no intimation that the other was equally infatuated with him. Only with the coming of a dark force in their lives would these feelings be brought to light and it will test the strength of their will. Would the raging lust win over a tranquil heart?
In a Compromising Position – Fireflydown (Hyperballad)
Summary: Erik Lehnsherr is Charles Xavier’s newly hired manservant in his Victorian Household. He may be cheeky at times and amiable towards his master but he holds a dangerous secret that would trigger the following events and it will change both their lives forever.
Better Outrun My Gun – Magnetism_bind
Summary: Erik is searching for the man who murdered his parents. Charles runs a saloon with his sisters.
Taming the Wild – Penguina
Summary: A Cherik Wild West AU: Mutants in the Wild West.
Charles Xavier finds himself crossing the entire ocean to America to find his sister Raven. However the task turns out to be more difficult than he expected because Raven is nowhere to be found.
In the meantime Charles settles in a small town where he starts a new life as a school teacher. There he meets Erik Lehnsherr - the town’s blacksmith. Although at first he believes Erik is the rudest person he’s ever met, the two start a friendship and Charles becomes a teacher to Erik’s kids.
However both Charles and Erik have their own little secrets that no one should ever uncover.
Would Charles find his beloved sister and is she still alright? Would Erik’s tragic past haunt him forever and prevent him from finding his happiness? Would Charles have the guts to admit that his feelings for his new friend are a bit past the line of friendship? This and more in Taming the Wild!
The Gunpowder Files – Tawabids
Summary: In a 19th century Britain, the wealthy Xavier-Marko couple pay Erik, a hired killer, to put their disabled son Charles “out of his misery”. Instead, Erik saves Charles from dealing with those kind of parents ever again. Charles follows Erik back to London and eventually convinces the assassin to take him under his wing and teach him the trade. When their lives cross paths with a destructive opium cartel led by the shadowy Sebastian Shaw, they decide to take down the businessman down no matter the cost.
Steel Roses – Mikanskey, ximeria
Summary: The year is 1864. While unrest brews in Europe, Charles Xavier is finally able to start his research after spending years trying to find funding. Riding the tailcoats of Charles Darwin, he sets out into the British countryside to find out how much truth there is in folklore, how much of it that can be explained by his own kind, gifted humans with special abilities.
Little does he expect to find new friends, new challenges, a budding attraction both emotionally and physically. Not to mention an enemy with far more nefarious and sinister plans than he could have ever imagined.
Erik Lehnsherr is set with a good business, a manor and grounds, staff and acquaintances he can lean on if needed. However, having tracked down and killed the man who killed his parents, he feels adrift, wondering if this is where he’s supposed to end his life; a respectable man with a respectable business.
Dragging a drowning Englishman out of the river starts him down an entirely unforeseen, but not necessarily, unwelcome path.
They were Paris… – Mikanskey
Summary: Paris, at the end of the 19th century.
This is where Erik decided for a while to lay down his meager luggage.
This is where he hoped to find calm and inspiration for his art.
But instead this is where he found love…
With pulses that beat double – aesc
Summary: It has been thirteen years since Charles watched his beloved childhood companion walk out of his life. Now, in fin-de-siècle Paris, a chance overheard remark may lead them to each other’s sides once more.
The Body in the Bedroom – telperion_15
Summary: Autumn, 1909 – Viscount Charles Xavier has invited friends and acquaintances to spend the weekend, hoping for good company and interesting conversation. But he doesn’t bank on murder being committed under his roof, nor his growing interest in the enigmatic Erik Lehnsherr…
In which there is a country house party (what else?), murder most foul (of course), and almost everyone’s a suspect (naturally).
Your soul is a chosen country – aesc
Summary: He sends letters, of course, because out in the sticks there’s not much to do except tend to Westchester’s endless affairs. And, of course, avoid tending to those affairs by going on walks, riding, and writing letters that make him hard and thrill secretly when he hands the properly-sealed, addressed envelope to the butler.
I was in London the other day, and in a bookseller’s along The Strand I found the most interesting and instructive volume. Or rather, it would have proved instructive if we had not already worked our way through much of the repertoire.
Blue Skies – baehj2915, marourin
Summary: At the tail end of the 1920s, the Twentieth Century is finally changing for the better. When Charles and Erik meet, it seems like an appropriate expression of the zeitgeist–a confluence of passion, romance, and change. But the good times never last. Erik and Charles have to discover if they can weather the gray days together, or at all.
A September as Sunny as Spring – Black_Betty, ikeracity, keire_ke
Summary: Charles Xavier was part of a famous vaudeville act before an accident cost him his career and his ability to walk. He’s pulled together a new life as a musician in Hollywood, but is finding it difficult to navigate his feelings for his old friend and partner, Erik Lehnsherr, the most sought after matinee idol of their generation.
Famous film duo Frost and Lehnsherr are two of the most well-known and admired mutants in the public eye, having built their fame and fortune on silent film blockbusters.When the rise of the new “talking pictures” phenomenon threatens all their careers, they must band together to try to prove that their days of stardom are far from over.
Lay with Me Amongst the Grapevines – kageillusionz
Summary: Young Master Charles’ friend from Oxford comes to stay with him at Westchester House during their break. Their relationship changes over the course of Mr. Lehnsherr’s stay, warmed by the summer sunshine and their mutual affection.
The Eldest of the Gods – lapetitesinge
Summary: It’s 1928, and sixteen-year-old Charles Xavier is intrigued by the new boy joining him at Eton College. He’s thrilled to realize that they may be alike in more ways than one, but there’s more standing between them than he can possibly guess.
Summary: 1933. Bank robber AU.
The Bureau of Investigation are after Public Enemy Number Two, bank robber Erik Lehnsherr. Charles Xavier is fiancé to Special Agent Moira MacTaggart. A closet homosexual, Charles visits the Manhattan pansy club scene and meets Max Eisenhardt. Only as time goes on, Max Eisenhardt turns out to be Erik Lehnsherr. Public Enemy Number Two.
Charles learns exactly what happens when you accidentally fall in love with a male bank robber in 1930s America.
Sign of the Times – dsrobertson
Summary: Casablanca-ish AU.
Charles Xavier meets Erik Lehnsherr in Paris, 1937. They spend the next two years with one another, stupid in-love, until war comes heavy in September 1939. Erik leaves for Poland and the Resistance movement there, promising to return. Charles is left in Paris, where Nazi jackboots march in, Summer of 1940. He becomes a member of the underground French Resistance, publishing illegal newsletters, leaflets, until news comes through in February 1942: Erik is dead. Charles throws himself into more dangerous work, meeting with Communists, helping derail a German train, and he does too much, goes too far. His friends find him safe passage out of France, out across the Mediterranean, to Morocco, Casablanca. It is here he finds Erik, alive.
Alone No more – MacandLacy
Summary: Erik and Charles each thought that they were alone. When they meet as children and discover otherwise, it changes their lives. Set before and during World War II.
The footsteps of uprooted lovers – ninemoons42
Summary: Against a turbulent backdrop of artistic, social, and political upheaval, the playwright Charles Xavier and the photographer Erik Lehnsherr find themselves meeting under less-than-polite circumstances, but part rather more amicably than they’d met.
When they find each other again in a Barcelona that is falling inexorably toward war, they find themselves taking up arms, each in his own way, and together they join a struggle for freedom, for love, and for their very lives.
Theme and Variations: War – ninemoons42
Summary: Erik Lehnsherr is a musical prodigy and a man destined for great things and great stages. But his life is shattered by a terrible accident that leaves him blind and trying to find his way back to his life, his music, and his place in the world.
Then he meets Charles Xavier, an agent of Section 8 of the Military Intelligence Directorate of Providence, and he finds himself listening in to clandestine radio transmissions and clicking Morse code, and these sounds are part and parcel of a war that can only take place in the shadows and the hidden places of history.
Hier steh ich an Marken meiner Tage – MonstrousRegiment
Summary: Erik Lehnsherr is a spy in the SS, and his British liaison is strategist Charles Xavier. Their relationship from the moment they meet to a year after the end of the war.
“You’re the only person in the world who knows what I am.”
A fish hook; an open eye – fabeld
Summary: Charles Xavier’s wealth protects him from mandatory service in the British Armed Forces, but he refuses to sit idly by when his telepathy can be used to assist the Allied Powers. As a British spy, Charles gains the Nazi Party’s trust and is sent to Paris to complete one last mission. His plan is disrupted when he runs into someone he never thought he would see again.
WWII AU with nods to Atonement.
A Light That Never Goes Out – R_Cookie
Summary: It was meant to be the war to end all wars; these two men were never supposed to meet. One a German Jew, the other a British surgeon. The odds that their paths should cross were next to none - but War defies the expected. It always has, and always will.
From the beaches of Dunkirk to the treacherous slopes of Monte Cassino - this is their story.
Xmas in Connecticut – Yahtzee
Summary: In December 1944, the entire nation loves Rebecca Lawrence - “America’s Most Beloved Homemaker.” Her columns about leading the ideal life in the country help lift people’s spirits on the home front during World War II. But when her publisher asks her to host a war hero for Christmas dinner, the world is in danger of learning the truth … which is that “Rebecca Lawrence” is imaginary. Really, she’s a combination of Raven’s snappy writing and Charles’ knowhow in the kitchen.
However, this war hero, Erik Lehnsherr, is headed to Connecticut, so Raven and Charles have no choice but to find a way to make the imaginary real - at least,
Summary: In the aftermath of the Second World War, Erik Lehnsherr – survivor of Dachau, former resistance fighter in Occupied Europe – joins forces with US intelligence to hunt down escaped Nazis. A sensitive mission in Rio de Janeiro calls for Erik to recruit a new operative … one nobody is sure whether to trust. Charles Xavier is the stepson of convicted Nazi spy Kurt Marko, a rapidly worsening drunkard and a homosexual who hardly even bothers to hide his predilections. Hardly ideal.
But Charles is the only person with any chance of getting close to Sebastian Shaw. The one man who might allow them to complete the mission.
And although Erik’s business is keeping secrets, Charles brings something out in him that he’s worked desperately to hide –
What Dreams May Come – AnnaMcb24
Summary: Erik is a holocaust survivor who has recently lost his wife–the only person in his life who kept him sane. He continues to suffer in his dreams–facing the same agonies that plagued him in his early life–until one day he dreams of a young boy who endeavours to free Erik from his subconscious prison. However, the boy holds a great many secrets and, while he works to save Erik, Erik works to reveal his saviour’s identity.
Meanwhile, young Raven Xavier has lost her mother and is slowly uncovering the secrets of her family home–secrets that will lead her directly to one Erik Lehnsherr.
By Faint Indirections - kianspo
Summary: Erik is in his ~50s, and lonely and bitter. He survived the Holocaust and was only ~14 when the war ended; and even ~40 years later, living in a country that helped to end WW2 and the Third Reich, homosexuality is still a taboo topic. Then one day, he stumbles over Charles, who is young(early 20s) and bright and smart and cheeky and full of energy and beautiful. And moving in the same street where Erik lives.
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