re: Does anyone else have this issue or am I just a Misogynistic Pig.

Have you read Anne Rice's The Witching Hour? Julien Mayfair ranks high among my favorite fictional characters of all time.
The Feast of All Saints is another of her best. She really brings historical New Orleans to life in all its creepy, decrepit glory.

Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series is really good. I believe it's seven books starting just after the death of the Gracchi brothers and going all the way to the ascension of Augustus. Gaius Marius and especially Lucius Cornelius Sulla both just jump off the page. It's well researched with extensive citations. By far the best and most accurate historical novels on Rome that I've come across. (Little known but fascinating tidbit on Julius Caesar: Sulla was such a terrible horseman that he rode a donkey on campaign. When his wife finally persuaded him to allow Caesar to step down as Flamen Dialis and embark on a military career he stipulated that to teach JC humility he was forbidden from riding a horse. So for the first 10 or so years of his military career Caesar also rode a donkey. That's how scary Sulla was.)