^ There are plenty of good historical novels I'm sure, but I suppose I was focusing on some modern novels that reach back furthur than they are convincingly able to convey. The Sarum book has a pic of Stonehenge on the cover, so perhaps unfairly, I imagined that it might feature dialogue that is in this kind of style:"Woman, fetch me my sheepskin that I may worship at the Henge which is of stone."
One tip for aspiring authors is "Write about what you know", and in the case of Tolstoy, he might have considered that when starting War And Peace:-
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The novel is set 60 years before Tolstoy's day, but he had spoken with people who lived through the 1812 French invasion of Russia.
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From our perspective, no-one is going to notice if Tolstoy's 1812 Russia is "blurred by presentism" of his 1865 Russia. TBH, I wouldn't have thought of it as a historical novel, though in the strict sense it is.
I'm not familiar with the other books you mention, but I take your point about "all history is in the ether" and is subject to mythologizing. Perhaps I should tone down he bottom line of my rant and say,
"Personally I've come across a lot of unconvincing historical novels and as a genre, now approach them with scepticism, expecting to be disappointed. None the less, there are many good ones* too."
* One that I really enjoyed about a year ago was Gore Vidal's Lincoln, for instance.