This article examines the reception of Heliodor’s Aethiopica in German novels around 1700. The ‘Heliodor model’ proves to be remarkably persistent, as the form’s specific affordances offer an attractive variety of possible uses. At the same time, writers stick to the legitimized form of the novel for reasons of genre politics. In analyzing Eberhard W. Happel’s Afrikanischer Tarnolast (1689) and August Bohse’s Letztes Liebes- und Heldengedichte (1706), the article shows how these exemplary novels transform the ‘Heliodor model’ in idiosyncratic ways, and argues that these transformations aim at exploring and expanding the potential of literary characters.