Thoughts about retelling classic legends:
Don’t get too hung up on details from other versions. Take the grounding, universal aspects that are laced through all of them, the spirit that makes it worth telling yet again. But don’t obsess over whether or not you should change things up in your version, on ensuring that the core points are still intact, and on providing a sense of continuity with the oral and written tradition.
Worry more about making things plausible as opposed to “accurate.” If you’re dealing with legendary figures, such as Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and the Sheriff of Nottingham, there is no such thing as accuracy. They are likely composite characters and archetypes that have been kneaded together over the centuries. You’ve got the cookie dough; now have fun with your cookie cutters, so long as the shapes you make are internally coherent.
Feel free to add original characters into fulfillment archetypes, and even switch some of those archetypes around, if it best fits your story structure. No one is going to sue you for challenging expectations, or indeed, for publishing those changes for hard, cold cash. That’s the beauty of working with “public domain” material. It’s got all the nostalgic feel and familiarity boosts of fan-fiction, but free of living author rants and copyright lawyer crashing.
Characters and archetypes grow and change through the years, and that’s a sign of their longevity. Feel free to show that in your stories. For example, Little John is shown as being something of an archetype of raw violence in various early ballads, but in my retelling is a strong man with a soft heart, while I also have an original character, Owain the Welshman, fulfill the raw violence archetype within Robin’s inner circle.
I do the same with the figure of Guy of Gisborne, who in the ballads is depicted as a ruthless bounty hunter out to catch Robin, and who is ultimately killed by Robin in a duel. In my version, like the BBC series, he’s the sheriff’s young deputy, capable of ruthlessness and redemption, who does have a duel with Robin but is a much more minor character in the story as a whole. The archetype of the ruthless hunter of the Hood falls to the story’s main villain, Rand Tindal.
Adding more depth and dimension to major characters is important to make them feel real and individualized, and to shatter expectations in the process is perfectly legit, so long as the core principles of “why we’re here” in the first place remain intact. Obviously, one can bend a thing so far it breaks (which I feel quite a few attempts at “grim-dark,” pseudo Game of Thrones retellings have done), but if you’re careful, that shouldn’t be a major issue.
For example, the Sheriff, in my story, is a much more morally gray character in many ways than his purely “baddie” depictions in story and on-screen; he has many personal flaws, is oblivious to the needs of the common man, and has a blinding grudge against Robin and his family. But digging deeper, he’s also a vulnerable man searching for love, and for that matter God, and is suffering over his apparent inability to find either.
Robin, too, differs from other retellings, but not in being more morally gray, but rather in focusing on his deeply religious nature, and the struggle within himself to reconcile his “pagan” side with his Christian side, as well as trying to maintain his ethics in an environment that often feels contrary. He is caught between the call of the wild and the appeal of order, the cry of vengeance, and the virtue of mercy. Ultimately, he has to make a choice about what kind of a “hero” he really wants to be, which sets him on the path to becoming a Christ figure.
If you include actual historical characters in your story, obviously, it requires a bit more research and a certain enhanced responsibility. Bringing to the script larger than life figures like Saladin and Richard the Lionheart is always a tricky business, but you’ll never be able to get it perfect, so don’t stress too much. Do the research on their basic personalities and behaviors, and then just make them seem as real as you possibly can. That’s the most important thing: that they come off as human, not cardboard cut-outs.
Really, perhaps that’s the key point here: a large part of storytelling is about reflecting upon the human condition and its many facets through characters who fulfill different archetypal functions in a plot-line. But hopefully, at the end of the day, they also wind up reminding us of real people we run into in our daily lives, and most importantly, perhaps they teach us a little something about ourselves and the moral decisions and complexities that are a part of our human story.