It's hardly highbrow literature and as far as you can get from "woke", but George McDonald Fraser's "Flashman" series has him at the heart of every 19th century conflict from England to China. Fraser was a journalist, and the history is supposed to be quite accurate, aside from liberties necessary for the plot.

Flashman is the main bully character in the book Tom Brown's School Days. After he is expelled from the school, he manages to get a commission in the British Army and fail upwards even as he is a cad and a coward.