Here's an exercise of imagination for y'all. Let's suppose some crazy inventor has found a way to send people back in time to live the life of a fictional/real character of any book ever written. The fans of Assassin's Creed will be familiar to this concept, the Animus is a device that allows a user to experience the memories of his/her ancestors as if it was real.

The question is who would you choose to be? given that:
- you can only choose one time, one figure, then the device is broken for good, so pick carefully;
- once "teleported", you lose your previous memory, you'll become the hero/heroine and will live his/her life exactly as described in the book, including personality, love, pain, death;
- once the character dies, you're teleported back in the present and you will gain both your old memory and the fresh memory of everything that happened in this process. Your body and mind are restored like everything happened in just a second of sleep.

I have made up this context to differentiate the thread from "who's your favorite book character", I'm more interested in "whose life you'd want to live, first hand, no personal contribution, no risks attached".

Henry VIII, King of England.

Well it depends whether I can inherit the character's abilities or not. If affirmative, I'd like to be Leonardo da Vinci. If not, I'd be either Spartacus or Miyamoto Musashi.

Brian Boru as told in Morgan Llywelyn's "Lion of Ireland".

for a fictional character I would choose Roland Deschain aka The Gunslinger from The Dark Tower series... Epic journey would be epic. and would be an awesome life to live

Man, would I be the hero of some erotic novel or would I take on the life of some super genius like Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein and then continue with the field of science only with all of the memories those dudes had and thus an edge to make big discoveries.

I dunno. A lot of fictional heroes also go through a ton of pain and misery, so maybe a short stay would be better. Really can't decide on a character or a person.

It would be [censored] hard to decide but today I'd pick John Blackthorne (Shogun).

Scott Mitchal from Ghost Recon (yes there are books) or someone who serves under him.

Theodore Roosevelt

Lara Croft hands down. Me likes adventure, tomb raiding and all and besides I don't know how it feels to be a woman and badass and sixy

On a second thought JC Denton from Deus Ex is very very tempting as well.

I'll decide when I see the Animus

Ok now don't cheat, it was about books not video games.

Ya there's always the game manual

Judas Iscariot

Well this is a little controversial but...Jesus. Either way I would KNOW incredible stuff.

I'd be one of the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan.

I'm all about destroying [censored].