Long celebrated by Christian Europe as a figure of the struggle “against the Turks”, with the political emancipation of the Balkan nations, George Kastriot Skanderbeg (1405–1468), became in the nineteenth century one of the key figures symbolizing this emancipation. If the figures of national heroes are classic, that of Skanderbeg is particular in that he could be claimed by several Balkan nations (Greek, Serbian, Montenegrin, then especially Albanian) and as such become the subject of controversy. His religious affiliation, as well as other aspects of his life and actions, also provoked and still provoke debate, including within Albanian society itself. The “figures of paper” (or “figures of stone” in the case of monuments) that have been associated with him since the beginning of the nineteenth century are therefore diverse and often contradictory. Beyond the question of sources and their use, the web of controversies (also diachronic) around him was linked to the development of interdependent historiographic fields through the circulation of authors, texts, artifacts, and methods in a space not just limited to the Balkans. But the controversy was also strongly marked by relationships to politics and media fields that characterize the spaces where these historiographies evolved during four different periods (up to the end of the long nineteenth century, between the World Wars, Communism, and post-Communism in the Balkans).