[12] According to his own recollections, Constantin grew up passionate about storytelling, picking up accounts from the family cook, a senior Romani man (and former slave), and from his maternal grandmother, who was a Napoleon enthusiast.

[21] In adulthood, he remained passionate about history, traveling domestically and abroad, rifling through archives and libraries, visiting museums and artistic monuments and researching oral tradition.

[16] Gane returned in 1927 with the notes of Întâmplarea cea mare ("Major Occurrence"), followed by a series of historical novels and tracts: Trecute vieți de doamne și domnițe ("Bygone Lives of Queens and Princesses", 3 volumes, 1932–1939); Farmece ("Charms", 1933); Acum o sută de ani ("One Hundred Years Ago", 2 volumes, 1935); P. P. Carp și locul său în istoria politică a țării ("P. P. Carp and His Place in the Country's Political History", 2 volumes, 1936); Domnița Alexandrina Ghica și contele D'Antraigues ("Princess Alexandrina Ghica and the Count D'Antraigues", 1937); Dincolo de zbuciumul veacului ("Beyond the Fretting of an Era", 1939).

[16] Gane also held conferences and, between 1929 and 1937, a series of Radio Bucharest lectures on historical, cultural and literary themes, including the first trial of Mihail Kogălniceanu, Dimitrie Cantemir, and the novels of Stefan Zweig.

[25] He also contributed to Ion Gigurtu's Libertatea, where he published a study on the formation of Romania's political parties (January 1934)[26] and a genealogical essay on Maurice Paléologue (February 1935).

[32] Politically, he gravitated toward the far-right, and joined the Iron Guard in 1937—his recruitment as an intellectual "committed to the Guardist line of thought" was celebrated in January 1938 by colleague Mircea Streinul.

This regime, which formed a one-party state around the National Renaissance Front (FRN), prevented political suspects from working; according to the diaries of Victor Slăvescu, Gane "had no means to support himself";[38] Sânziana was barred from reappearing later in 1938.

He was still in Bucharest on November 11, when he attended the funeral service of two policemen and Guardist affiliates, Eugen Necrelescu and Aron Valeriu, held at Sfântul Ilie Gorgani Church.

In February 1942, as a speaker of Russian, he was ordered to assist Ion Radu Mircea with collecting and translating historical documents stored in Odesa, but failed to show up for this assignment.

[46] Staying in Romania for the rest of World War II, Gane focused his biographical research on the Mavrodin boyars of Teleorman County, with a topical volume published in 1942.

[16] Also then, he founded the Romanian Genealogical Circle, a learned society also joined by Ioan C. Filitti, Constantin C. Giurescu, Emanoil Hagi-Moscu, Octav-George Lecca, Gheorghe G. Bezviconi, Dan Cernovodeanu, George D. Florescu, and Vasile Panopol.

[48] In early 1944, Gane was publishing the circle's specialized yearbook Arhiva Genealogică Română, which he described as the continuation of works undertaken by Sever Zotta;[49] he was additionally lecturing on behalf of the YMCA at the Bucharest Atheneum.

[50] Shortly after Romania proclaimed an armistice with Soviet Russia in mid-1944, Gane fled Bucharest, hiding out on the Sebeș (Frumoasa) Valley alongside the poet and fellow diplomat Lucian Blaga; their host was a local peasant, who had been active in the Iron Guard.

[52] Another fellow inmate, Onisifor Ghibu, reports that Gane, who had aged prematurely and looked like a "Byzantine saint", was frantically writing a novel called Rădăcini ("Roots").

He complained of exhaustion and told his jailer that he was on the brink of dying; they ultimately released him after other prisoners proceeded to bang on their cell doors and demand that Gane be spared.

[56] He was still offered praise in some contexts, including by Luceafărul journalist Artur Silvestri, who wrote that Gane and his contemporary Radu Rosetti had retold historical events with an "outstanding epic vein.

[61] In 1985, journalist Vartan Arachelian, in his book about the intertwined destinies of World War I, gave a positive coverage of Gane's military service, depicted as a feat of outstanding patriotism.

In 1947, literary critic Perpessicius asserted that Gane struck a "singular note in our historical literature", moving between the "romanticized document" and the novel itself—in both sets of works, the narrator shows up as a "discreet" participant, with clues and musings.

[69] Pe aripa vremei traces his own family's genealogical tree up to the foundation of Moldavia, while Acum o sută de ani recounts the main events that occurred in the Danubian Principalities a century earlier (1834–1835).

[16] His interest in the human character was explored in Farmece, an account of Despot Vodă; and in Dincolo de zbuciumul veacului, which selects grandiose and tragic figures from the turbulent Middle Ages.

In 1939, the literary scholar George Călinescu described Gane as the author of "corporate literature", who outlined a defense of the aristocracy and included himself in it, "seeking to prove his belonging to that caste".

Iorga substantiated this allegation by listing errors supposedly found in Gane's chapter, including the "calumny" regarding Alexandru Ioan Cuza's involvement in a conspiracy against Barbu Catargiu.

[79] Some 70 years later, writer Gheorghe Grigurcu revisited Trecute vieți as "one of the essential books of my childhood [...], with its rich literary savor pulsating within the arteries of complicated historical reconstructions".

[56] Love stories, abductions and releases, spectacular executions (such as those of Constantin Brâncoveanu and his sons), rises and falls succeed one another in a steady rhythm that recreates the atmosphere of the periods it depicts.

[16] Scholar Constanța Vintilă-Ghițulescu views Gane's study as a "landmark" in Romanian women's history, but also cautions that it belongs to the "tiny biographical" genre and often switches focus to the male protagonists.

"[82] As noted by historian Radu Mârza, "many of [Gane's] assessments", including some of his claims about Michael the Brave, Doamna Stanca, and Nicolae Pătrașcu, are flawed, "bookish rather than scholarly.

[90] As part of his research, Gane found and published portraits of Smaranda Vogoride, Princess-consort to Mihail Sturdza,[91] and of Lady Marițica Văcărescu-Bibescu;[88] he also helped record the life of Safta Costache Talpan.

As noted by historian Pavel Strihan, Gane credited urban legends about Prince Bibescu and Marițica, and gave a-historical explanations for their legal conflict with the Wallachian Ordinary Assembly.

He was puzzled by Gane's decision to include a rhyming preface ("curious verse, which we can do without"), as well as for adding "quite doubtful" explanations for the reader, which omitted a number of bibliographic sources.

[88] As argued by reviewer Sorin Lavric, Amărâte și vesele vieți is a counterweight to the main volumes, indirectly showing the relative emancipation of women under the Regulamentul Organic regime, but also the "baseness" of life in the post-aristocratic age.