‘Who is the bad guy in history who isn’t actually a bad guy?’ – 20 unfairly blamed figures from the past

Ever been blamed for something you didn’t do? Or hung out with a troublemaker and got tarred with the same brush? Then you have something in common with a whole host of historical people who have also been unfairly maligned.

Over on AskReddit, user SATANICWORSHIPER666 posed the following question:

Who is the bad guy in history who isn’t actually a bad guy?

And received plenty of replies from people keen to clear the names of some mislabelled villains.

1.

‘Macbeth. He killed Duncan in battle, not in his sleep, and by all accounts he was a decent king of Scotland. The Scottish play was just Shakespeare’s way of sucking up to the Stuart Dynasty.’
–SnooChipmunks126

2.

‘Charles Lightoller. Most senior officer who survived the Titanic disaster. He gets mostly remembered for interpreting Captain Smith’s order to evacuate as woman and children only, leading to the deaths of most of the male passengers.

He even got dealt a shitty hand in the James Cameron Titanic with one scene having him threaten to ‘shoot the passengers like dogs’ if they didn’t order themselves. An event which did not happen. But after the disaster he gave a very honest testimony and did not shy away from being to blame. He was the one who stood up in court and said we were reckless to keep the ship at speed on a calm sea where icebergs would be difficult to see.

He later campaigned with the British Board of Trade and other Maritime organisations to create new mandatory regulations:

Basing lifeboat capacity on the number of passengers and crew instead of ship tonnage, conducting lifeboat drills so passengers know where their lifeboats are and crew know how to operate them, instituting manned 24-hour wireless (radio) communications on all passenger ships, and requiring mandatory transmissions of ice warnings to ships.

Regulations which are still followed today.

In May 1940 he heard about the evacuation at Dunkirk on the radio and jumped in his personal Yacht The Sundowner and saved 127 men. He was a remarkable man.’
–killingjoke96

3.

‘King Herod. Dude wasn’t a saint but he definitely didn’t order the murder of babies in Bethlehem and actually spent much of his reign upgrading towns and cities in the region to try to bring them up to scratch with Roman cities of the time. Christianity did him dirty to add jeopardy to the story of Jesus.’
–Haramdour

4.

‘Alfred Nobel. People assume he invented dynamite so it could be used as a weapon, and blame him for all the millions of war deaths since, and say it’s ironic they he created the Nobel Peace Prize.

He was from a family of miners, and his father and elder brother both died in gunpowder accidents, so he wanted to create a safe explosive they wouldn’t go off if you accidentally dropped it. He was literally trying to save lives.’
–GoonerwithPIED

5.

‘Monica Lewinsky. She was an intern pressured by one of the most powerful man in the world. She did not deserve to be made the villain.’
–No-Marzipan-3176

6.

‘In the film Titanic the character Murdoch killed someone, took bribes and generally came across as a right shit. He 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.’
–softpetalbabe

7.

‘Marie-Antoinette was most likely just an overly sheltered rich woman who was used as a pawn in a political marriage then ridiculed when asked about topics she had no real knowledge on or power to change. Not saying she was a good person but we don’t know what she would have done if she wasn’t sheltered from the suffering of her people, or had married for love instead of familial obligations.’
–shadowsog95

8.

‘Niccolò Machiavelli. People think he’s all about being ruthless but really he was just giving advice on how to survive in tough political times.’
–Valentinawux

9.

‘Vlad the Impaler gets a bad rap. He’s well known for impaling people on spikes, but he did this mostly to prisoners who were already dead. He did it to scare the Ottoman Empire from invading his land. So he placed impaled bodies by the road the ottomans were coming down to frighten them out of attacking his land.

It worked and the Romanians stayed free instead of becoming another colony of the empire. He’s a hero in Romania, but we just think of him and see him as evil. He was just clever.’
–kbrown423

10.

‘The Luddites that destroyed industrial equipment in England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution had good intentions and were folk heroes. But now the term ‘Luddite’ is used as a pejorative term for a person who resists new technology coming out, with the connotation that they are stubborn and unreasonable.

Luddites in history were actually the good guys trying to ensure labourers had a better quality of life. They only hurt the equipment of the factory bosses who treated their workers poorly.’
–sertulariae