20 Historical Bad Guys Who Really Weren’t

Dr. Kevorkian had a point
20 Historical Bad Guys Who Really Weren’t

They say history is written by the Victors, which is an insane coincidence because all those guys named Victor sure did a lot of winning. Sometimes, it wasn’t even guys, let alone ones with a specific name. Once upon a time, we would have all believed what a corporation wanted us to believe about a person who stood up against them or an artist with a poetic license to kill wanted to portray.

But now, we have the internet. We have Wikipedia and podcasts. And here on the information superhighway, nothing drives faster than pointing out the flaws in the narratives we’ve been fed our whole lives by movies and history class. As a result, when user jamespeech111 asked r/AskReddit, “Who is a bad guy in history who actually wasn’t a bad guy?” everyone had a story they’d learned from someone’s deep dive.

2y ago A dingo really ate her baby.
Kaneshadow 2y ago Solieri wasn't actually a bitter nemesis to Mozart IRL
HeiBaisWrath 2y ago Napoleon, there wasn't really a bad or a good side in the Napoleonic wars
paultrashpanderson 2y ago Machiavelli. One of the most honest dudes in history, and his name is instead synonymous with villainy.
Paskyc 2y ago In brave heart, William Wallace gets betrayed by Robert the Bruce which never happened, he was loyal to the end
JJohnston015 2y ago Captain Bligh. His mistake was being too soft rather than too harsh. Не let his crew slack off while they were waiting to make sure the breadfruit trees would survive transplantation, and they mutinied when he put them back to work.
No_Prize9794 2y ago Edited 2y ago Pharaoh Cleopatra, she was actually a pretty good ruler with her focusing more on her nation than just abusing her position for her own benefit, there's even some records saying that she wasn't even all that beautiful, she was however very intelligent with stuff like how she learned around 10 different languages
pinksparklyreddit 2y ago Edited 2y ago Nietzsche. His work was largely appropriated by the Nazis, but the man himself was very vocal in being against anti- semitism. After his death, his sister began editing and publishing a lot of his unpublished work to support her personal views on Nazism.
2y ago Dr. Kevorkian is history since he's dead so ima have to go with him. People should absolutely be able to make the decision about end of life care and I think with time people will not only start thinking differently that conviction will be over turned.
The-loon 2y ago The McDonald's coffee lady - the woman who sued mcDonalds after she spilled coffee on her lap received 3rd degree burns in her pelvic area. She was hospitalized for 8 days and required a couple years of rehabilitation. The media jumped on the story making it a poster case for frivolous lawsuits.
fillumcricket 2y ago Sinead O'Connor Ripped up a picture of the Pope live on SNL in the 90s in a protest against covered up child abuse in the Catholic Church. The world lost their shit. She was demonized and professionally blacklisted for years, booed to hell at concerts, had her intelligence and sanity questioned, and was made into an international punchline. Even SNL disavowed her actions and wouldn't rebroadcast it. And....turns out she was 1000% right.
MsMerete 2y ago A lot of the women of history who have been treated as sluts/liars/manipulative/murderers etc. Example being Erzabet Bathory - a woman with money and power and her uncle wanted it so she gets locked in a room and goes down in history for bathing in the blood of virgins. Not saying she was a good person necessarily, just that the idea that she murdered hundreds of local young women so she could bathe in their blood is bollocks. And there are many more women who gets treated the same.
2y ago Lorena Bobbitt. She became such a meme and was always blamed for attacking her husband unprovoked but she was defending herself from a serial rapist and abuser. Не literally had raped her earlier that same day. In the same spirit, Monica Lewinsky didn't deserve any of the hatred she received either. She was so young and she was taken advantage of by the literal most powerful man in the world, but somehow HER name ended up labeling the scandal.
caribou91 2y ago Amanda Knox. She was accused of killing her college study abroad roommate after extremely sloppy investigation, WILD claims, cruel tabloid journals calling her all kinds of slut shaming names and asserting that she killed the roommate because she (roommate) wouldn't agree to a threesome, the true killer's DNA being all over the damn place, etc. etc. She was cleared of all charges later on but she and her equally innocent beau spent YEARS in prison in Italy for it.
2y ago Edited 2y ago Julius Caesar. Не was no angel but he wasn't executed for trying to turn Rome into a dictatorship. In fact, it was actually because he was a political reformer who wanted to tax the wealthy landowners. The senate had always been very violent to reformers, as most of it was made up of wealthy landowners. They tried to rewrite history to make reformers like Tiberius seem evil for trying to grant rights to workers and small landowners, while death squad leaders who killed anyone advocating reform such as Lucius Sulla have been paraded by
2y ago Edited 2y ago Anyone that is familiar with the movie 300 is aware of how it sanitises the Spartans and how it demonises the First Persian Empire. The reality is that the First Persian Empire or the Achaemenid Empire was pretty forward thinking for the era; this is the empire that freed the Jews from the Babylonians and gave the world the Cyrus Cylinder which some regard as the first bill of rights. As for Sparta? It was a militaristic society based on Social Darwinism (centuries before the birth of Charles Darwin) and it had a greater
2y ago Ty Cobb. The stories about him being racist were lies spread in a rag, and told by a guy who made up a bunch of lies to sell a book, and Cobb tried to sue him before he died Не never stabbed a black waiter. The three black people he got into a fight with at a bar were actually white. Не was never a member of the KKK, and actually supported integration in baseball and was participated in the opening of a Negro League ballpark. Не was a big fan of Willie Mays. None of the
wagwa2001 2y ago Edited 2y ago Richard Jewel - initially lauded as a hero and a brave man who ran towards the bomb to help... then the FBI and media turned on him and accused him of doing the bombing himself... because; he was actually just as fucking outlandishly brave and ran toward the bomb to help people, They took his truck for evidence, he had to go into hiding... made a villain by incompetent people... For YEARS... finally exonerated and dies shortly afterward
cooshed 2y ago In the film Titanic the character Murdoch killed someone, took bribes and generally came across as a right shit. Не was a real life person who was actually a hero and saved many lives. His living relatives were so disgusted that the VP of Fox travelled to Dalbeattie to personally apologise and presented a £5000 donation to Dalbeattie High School to boost the school's William Murdoch Memorial Prize.
nocturnalfrolic 2y ago Tom the cat. Jerry is a menace.

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