Not every story can be accepted as the truth, however authentic it might sound.  If you’re doing historical research, you need to leave a trail of clues for other people to follow so that they can to check whether what you’ve said is accurate.  Historians don’t make any statement without a footnote giving the author, title, place of publication and date of the book they used.  Ideally, they track down the contemporary document rather than relying on modern, secondary sources.  They quote original material word-for-word and place it within quotation marks.  But sometimes you have to break the rules, and telling a story is about sharing your wisdom rather than your knowledge.  If you want to tell a story, grab your audience’s attention and go with the flow, and leave the footnotes for another day...