Historical accuracy
At the beginning of each episode in the first series, the viewer is informed that the series is "Based on a true story", and that "the events depicted which seem most unbelievable… are mostly true". In the second series the message was changed to "Inspired by true events... But be aware... This is NOT a history lesson."
Unlike the main trio of Stirling, Mayne, and Lewes, the character of Eve Mansour is fictional. Sofia Boutella notes, however, that her character is influenced by real-life female spies such as Noor Inayat Khan and Virginia Hall.
As military historian Antony Beevor noted, while events surrounding the creation of the SAS "certainly defy belief", it is true that "some liberties with the precise record" were taken – for example, in the scripting of a romantic association between David Stirling and Mansour, the French intelligence agent. However, his opinion was that these were "mainly additions, fleshing out characters and context", rather than being significant "distortions" of the facts.
Billy Foley, writing in The Irish News, was somewhat more critical of the artistic license employed, particularly in the depiction of Paddy Mayne. Far from being "a brutish, rough man who was looked down on by the aristocracy of his native Newtownards and despised the toff officer class of the British army", Foley pointed out that the ostensibly working class Mayne was in fact born to a landed family, went to grammar school, played rugby for the British & Irish Lions, and studied at Queen's University Belfast before qualifying as a solicitor. Historian Damien Lewis also said it was "nonsense" to portray Mayne as a "thug and drunken lout", when he "cared passionately for those men he commanded".
Moreover, it was Stirling who asked General De Gaulle to have Frenchmen in the SAS because he needed men ready to do anything to deal with the Germans. So the 1re Compagnie de Chasseurs Parachutistes was sent, which became the French Squadron SAS.
Gavin Mortimer wrote that the "main problem with Rogue Heroes is that it is true to David Stirling's version of how the SAS was born. But as I make clear in my recent biography of Stirling, The Phoney Major, based on two decades of research, he was a master at twisting the truth to suit his own ends", adding that Paddy Mayne "was not the borderline psychopath depicted in Rogue Heroes. I know because I've interviewed scores of men who served under Mayne in the SAS."
