Historical Hero Upgrade: Difference between revisions

{{quote| '''William Wilberforce in [[Real Life]]:''' "[The poor should know] that their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the hand of God; that it is their part ... contentedly to bear its inconveniences."}}

 

 

But there's a problem: most of the [[Real Life]] figures were morally grey and complex people. How are you going to make sure that your audience knows who the [[Designated Hero|hero]] is?

Well, all you have to do is to pick someone who was on your side. If you're American, all you have to do is choose a heroic American. Or failing that, an Irishman or a Scotsman (just as long as they fought those dastardly Englishmen/Germans/Commies/Arabs). And if you're English, you'll want to support that brave and heroic King William the Conqueror against those treacherous English bas... Hey--[[You Fail History Forever|wait a second...]]

 

 

 

Note that just because this trope happens to a person does NOT mean that he was evil in [[Real Life]]; he is simply being portrayed more positively in the work of fiction than he was in [[Real Life]].

Note that this trope isn't always played seriously; sometimes, a character will be retroactively turned into something on par with a [[Memetic Badass]] purely due to [[Rule of Cool]], upgraded in ways that are obviously intended to go far beyond any real-world heroism. The most extreme examples of this, of course, often overlap with [[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy]].

 

 

When [[Fanfic]] writers do this to a canon character, it's [[Draco in Leather Pants]].

* Recently some people have attempted to give this to Countess Elizabeth Báthory, one of the worst serial killers in history. Nicknamed the 'Blood Countess,' she is believed to be responsible for torturing hundreds of young women to death, but they only had the evidence to convict her for 80 of them. First with her husband and, after he died, as a solo killer with a three friends acting as accomplices, she would order them into her dungeon and sadistically beat them. Despite having hundreds of witnesses testify that young women would regularly enter the castle and only their corpses would come out, some people still claim she was innocent and the victim of a conspiracy by the catholic church and the Habsburg empire that ruled Hungary at the time, claiming that they wanted her money and land, and did not like seeing a woman in power. There are a few problems with these theories: first, her crimes were reported by the Lutheran church (which she was a member of), secondly, the Habsburgs waited about a decade between the crimes being first reported and launching an investigation, and finally, she did not have any land, money, or direct power after her husband died: their son inherited his father’s land, and their eldest daughter acted as regent while he was a minor. While it is true that, as the wife, and later, mother of the Count, she had a lot of pull, she was technically powerless. About the only detail about her life that actually ''is'' certainly a myth are the rumours that she would [[Blood Bath|bathe in the blood of her many victims]]. On a related note, Báthory has the strange distinction of also receiving [[Historical Villain Upgrade|Historical Villain Upgrades]] at the same time, as other works change her from the particularly depraved human being she was in real life to a vampire. Two sympathetic portrayals from recent movies are:

** ''Bathory'' took the position that she was completely innocent of any of the murders, and was really a kind a loving mother and ruler who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was the victim of the malicious slanders of greedy noblemen. That's not even getting into the ridiculousness of the monks spying on her.

* Wyatt Earp, in portrayals such as ''[[My Darling Clementine]]'' (1946) and ''The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp'' (1955), is portrayed as the paragon of the western lawman. Even more modern takes like ''Tombstone'' still can't uncouple themselves entirely from this image. In reality, he was much shadier and more self-interested. Earp himself was good at branding himself. The historical record seems to present the Earps and the various families like the Clantons or the McLaurys as no better than each other - more feuding families than cops vs. robbers. On the other hand, [[Hollywood History|most of the supposed Wild West tends to get treated like that.]] Earp's legend was also partially built on the fact he served as an "advisor" on a number of early Western movies.

* [[The Caligula|Vlad "the Impaler"]] was a particularly ruthless warlord who usually gets a [[Historical Villain Upgrade]] due to his association with Bram Stoker's novel ''[[Dracula]]''. However, he is also a celebrated national hero in Romania, since most of that ruthlessness was at the expense of their enemy, the Turks.

* Brutus

* ''[[Jeanne D Arc]]'', of course, does this to Joan of Arc. Another, more peculiar example lies in {{spoiler|Giles de Rais, who was an infamous serial killer in real life, but here he is one of Joan's most steadfast allies.}} By all accounts he WAS a loyal French royalist AND a savage, possibly, Satanic murderer. The two aren't incompatible. That, and there is no small amount of dispute over WHEN his murders started.

** [[Mark Twain]]'s ''Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|by the Sieur Louis de Conte]]'', which Twain called his favorite of all his books, is a rare example of near-total [[Sarcasm Failure]] on Twain's part, being a straight, starry-eyed depiction of a [[Lady of War]] and her noble death at the hands of evil. A lot of people called him out on this, including [[George Bernard Shaw]], who kept Joan the traditional heroine in his play ''Saint Joan'', but felt that her enemies had been the victims of a [[Historical Villain Upgrade]] and opted for [[White and Grey Morality]] in his version of events. Quite incorrectly, however, as regards Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who ''was'' a swine.

** Pretty much inverted by the musical ''[[Elisabeth]]'', which presents her as so damaged and unstable that she spends her ''entire adult life'' hallucinating that Death (in the form of a beautiful young man) is trying to seduce her.

* [[Christopher Columbus]] did not only not "discover" America:

 

== Anime & Manga ==

** This one is averted in Koei's Warriors series. In ''[[Samurai Warriors]] 2'', he comes off as a jerk, but hides a lot of ambitions that are beneficial for Japan. But in ''[[Warriors Orochi]]'', he becomes Orochi's henchman and is pretty much loyal to him and has no qualms on bringing chaos into the world. Maybe that's his true nature.

** The manga's treatment of Okubo is closer to this trope. He's historically seen as a [[Sleazy Politician]], and that aspect is certainly part of his character, although he's presented as working for the best for his country and deserving of the respect he gets from Kenshin and Saito. [[Word of God]] comments on wanting to rehabilitate his image, noting that in terms of corruption, he [[Take That|wasn't much different than Japan's current politicians]].

 

 

== Comicbooks ==

** Arguably, the film does actually emphasize their extreme devotion to religion, but also has Leonidas himself rejecting the practices as illogical and detrimental to them during a time of war.

 

 

** Saladin gets a bit of a Heroic Upgrade too in the film. He's been receiving Historical Hero Upgrades from both Muslims and Christian Europeans (to whom he was a [[Worthy Opponent]]) for so long that it's probably harder to represent him badly. Ironically, the modern lionisation of Saladin flows from the ''European'' depiction of him - until the late 19th century he was mostly forgotten in the Muslim world, in large part because the empire he created barely outlived him.

* The real ''[[Rob Roy]]'' was both a murderer and a cattle thief. The movie Rob Roy turns him into a heroic man of impeccable honor, though strangely it still does make passing mention to cattle-thieving.

** The German officers who attempted to assassintate Hitler were primarily old-guard conservatives of a monarchist bent; they despised Hitler not only for his crudeness but also the fact that he was the representative of the "upstart" middle/lower classes. Many turned against him simply because he was losing the war.

** Various members of the July conspiracy and the Kreisau Circle had different views. The vast majority were monarchists, various members were anti-Semites (though generally of the religious rather than racist variety), most wanted an authoritarian future, but several protested the treatment of Poles and Jews. The film's mistake is portray [[Black and Gray Morality|black and (fairly light) grey morality]] as [[Black and White Morality]].

** Not quite; a sleazy journalist pestered him for a story and then wrote about the downfall of [[Al Capone]] in [[Loosely Based On A True Story]] terms, with Ness as [[The Hero]]. But Ness actually lamented that, since he knew full well his role in Capone's downfall was limited and didn't like that the credit was stolen from other people.

** He's a bit more sympathetic in Brian Michael Bendis's comic ''Torso''. As Cleveland's head of Public Safety, he tries to prevent pedestrian traffic deaths (about 400 people a year) while the public is more concerned with a serial killer who's stalking prostitutes and immigrants in a tent city on the outskirts of the city that most of the population didn't care about anyway.

* Early in the USA's history, General Custer was often depicted as [[The Messiah]], a brave hero who fought against the Indians and died alongside his men. This myth extended to both literature and eventually, film. This is most notable in 1941's ''They Died with Their Boots On''. More modern sympathies with the Indians have caused him to no longer be portrayed this way, however. Custer's heroic myths are due to his wife, who outlived him (she died in 1933, a little under 50 years after him). She wrote ''three'' books depicting her late husband as a folk hero. She was afraid he would be blamed for the humiliating defeat and slaughter his troop suffered, and thus spent the rest of her life lobbying extensively to make her husband look a hero.

** ''They Died with Their Boots On'' also manages to [[You Fail History Forever|fail history forever]] by portraying him as a champion of Indians' rights.

* Chris Gardner in ''[[The Pursuit of Happyness]]''. Although somewhat true, he was somewhat more of a [[Jerkass]] than he was in the film.

* Cecil B De Mille's ''Samson & Delilah'' does this to the latter, whether she existed or not. Delilah never felt remorse for {{spoiler|chopping off Samson's hair and removing his strength}} and her part in the story ends after that. His version has her truly fall in love with Samson and feel bad when {{spoiler|he goes blind}}.

* While not much is known about the actual personalities of any of the well-known military leaders in the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, they are depicted in ''[[Red Cliff]]'' as having considerably modern views on things despite living in third century CE China.

* The film version of ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' paints Guy Fawkes as a [[Doomed Moral Victor]] and [[Tragic Hero]] who died to strike a blow for freedom. It fails to mention that he and the other members of the Gunpowder Plot were essentially [[Western Terrorists]] mainly interested in replacing the Protestant monarchy with a Catholic one. People in the UK [[Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters|tend to have a neutral view of him]] (he's famously referred to as "the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions"{{spoiler|*:Those intentions, of course, being to blow it up and kill everyone present. But at least he was honest about it.}}), since the government at the time was pretty draconian and handing out excruciating deaths rather freely. It is also notable that Fawkes was the last man brought into the plot, and was brought in due to having worked as a mercenary in Spain, which gave him the necessary Catholic sympathies and demolitions expertise.

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]'' has a few:

** This is especially the case regarding on Liu Bei. True enough, he had noble goals. However, his traits have often been exaggerated to make him seem as if he was an extremely honorable man; never mind that he made lots and lots of mistakes that make him pale in comparison to Cao Cao's war abilities (such as irrationally leading the disastrous attack on Yi Ling, or slamming his infant son to the ground, effectively dooming his future empire). Yeah, author favoritism is also at fault here.

** Zhao Yun gets special treatment as Liu Bei's most badass [[Bishounen]] spear-wielding hero apparently and treated like Yukimura as one of the best warriors in China.

* A good deal of children's fiction about the English Civil War depicts the Royalists as being noble, flawless heroes and the Roundheads as being sly, unscrupulous villains. Adult fiction, on the other hand, often depicts the Royalists as deceitful, Frenchified, crypto-Catholic cads and the Roundheads as solid, honest, decent, beef-hearted true Englishmen. In reality, of course, both sides had legitimate points and obvious wrongs.

* Mary Boleyn was characterized by in ''[[The Other Boleyn Girl]]'' as a blushing virgin who loved Henry VIII and only wanted a quiet life in the country (as opposed to her sister, who was evil by virtue of being ambitious). The real Mary was known as "The Great Prostitute" because of her promiscuity. Her family went so far as to recall her from the French court because her behavior there was scandalizing them. Anne, on the other hand, only ever slept with one guy, and [[Historical Villain Upgrade|look how she's remembered]].

* Not much is known of Saint Nicholas's actual accomplishments outside of receiving a broken nose and being put in prison by Roman authorities, and being a bishop. But almost all the popular legends have amped up his image since then to the point of him being practically a superhero. [[Badass Santa]] indeed.

** And ''that'' gets taken [[Up to Eleven]] in ''[[Stationery Voyagers]]'', where Niklo DiMyral gets the proto-Islamic Arab world to join forces with both the Church and Rome to hunt down a pimp whose recent kidnappings of three young girls has crossed the [[Moral Event Horizon]] in the eyes of all three factions. The real Nicholas could never have dreamed of achieving such unity; not even for a single instance and a noble cause.

* ''[[The Pyrates]]'' reinvents Captain Henry Avery/Long Ben Bridgeman, mutineer and pirate, as Royal Navy hero Captain Benjamin Avery. But it's not claiming to be remotely historically accurate.

 

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[The Tudors]]'' does this with Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. Anne in fiction is usually portrayed as a scheming whore, while Cromwell is often made pure evil. The show portrays Anne as being honestly in love with Henry and a devoted mother. Cromwell, while still rather ruthless, is seen as very human, and quite sympathetic.

** To be fair, Anne is also depicted as intending (at least at first) to manipulate Henry using both lust and love, and to maneuver him into serving the schemes of her father, a notable member of Henry's court, long before she begins to legitimately care for him. Both depictions are much more morally gray than normal, and as such, probably a more accurate depiction of real people, at least morally if not historically.

 

== Theatre ==

* Thomas More's portrayal in ''[[A Man for All Seasons]]'' tends to focus on his bravery in maintaining his principles even when he knew this would result in his gruesome death, presenting him as a champion of the freedom of the individual conscience. Even apart, however, from the [[Values Dissonance]] that led him (like nearly everyone in his own time) to approve the burning of heretics, More was fully convinced that the state ''had a perfect right'' to suppress any '''open''' dissent; his entire defense was based upon the plea that he had not made his personal opinions known. He was definitely no advocate of free speech, as the play seems to suggest he was.

 

 

* Taking a leaf from ''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]'', ''[[Dynasty Warriors]]'' promotes Liu Bei to a man concerned primarily with virtue and honourable behaviour.

** To a lesser degree, his son Liu Shan is also portrayed as, while far from the warrior his father was, a man of virtue.

** For starters, the Hashshashin themselves. IRL(as far as we know), they were Hassan-I-Sabah's private army, and brainwashed with drugs to boot. They built a reputation at the time as his enemies were [[Asshole Victim|Asshole Victims]] who they eliminated with a minimum of collateral damage.

*** There is no [[Real Life]] proof of their supposed drug-use, only hearsay from their foes. But they definately were ruthless religious fanatic, not entirely unlike the modern Islamic terrorists.

** [[Richard the Lion Heart|King Richard I]] of England, however, got a fairly realistic representation: he went by the title "Lionhearted" even in his own day, and it did not refer to heroism but a love of combat. So, though he's driven to conquer Jerusalem, he [[I Gave My Word|keeps his promise]] to listen to [[Player Character|Altaïr]] finally after he beats [[Big Bad|Robert De Sable]] in single combat, and lets Altair go free afterwards. He's undeniably a jerkass, but he's still portrayed in a relatively positive manner - basically a [[Noble Demon]].

** According to some fan-theories, the events of the games are filtered through Altair and Ezio's impressions of them. Such as the way beggars in AC 1 would bother Altair and ''only'' Altair.

** Not to mention that with their advantage in information control, the Templars would obviously try to slander any historical figure who allied themselves with the Assassins.

 

== Other ==

 

 

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* At the end of ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', the heroes have to whitewash Führer Bradley's life and not tell anyone that {{spoiler|he was a Homunculus and willing to sacrifice his people to give Father godhood}}.

 

 

== Films -- Live-Action ==

 

 

== Literature ==

** A recurring theme in the books is Cain using his memoirs (compiled into the books we read) to give himself a [[Historical Villain Upgrade]] instead. By his actions, Cain is a hero. By his own claims he's a self-serving coward. Those tropes get played with a lot, and Sandy Mitchell says [[Shrug of God|he's not sure.]]

* Within the ''[[Dragaera]]'' series, the Dumas-[[Recycled in Space|recycling]] novels Brust [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|attributes to Paarfi]] are an example of this (and probably [[Historical Villain Upgrade]] as well) in universe. Paari presents a rose-colored, [[Good Old Ways]] view of Dragaeran history and tends to present historical figures in a flattering light, although in some cases, you can read between the lines and sense the real person was much less pleasant.

* Jayne Cobb in ''[[Firefly]]''. On a backwater planet of mud-cultivating peasants, Jayne apparently stole a fortune from the local tyrant, but was forced to jettison the cargo from his damaged ship. It landed near the homes of the 'Mudders', who assumed he had done it on purpose. Stories were told and songs were sung about the legendary Jayne Cobb, folk hero. Even when the Mudders are told the truth, some of them are so loyal to the * idea* of their hero that they prefer to stick to the old story.

* The original ''[[Star Trek]]'' invokes this trope by establishing that some people in the 23rd century consider [[Magnificent Bastard|Khan Noonien Singh]] to be one of history's heroes.

 

 

== Videogames ==

* In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'', the official history records Delita as a hero, even though {{spoiler|he left quite a body count on the way to the throne.}}

* Pilineal Whitestrake in ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' series is known as the Divine Crusader, and held in high regard by Imperials for freeing Tamriel from the Ayleids. Nevermind he was a racist berserker who would often go into psychopathic episodes, which were said to have damaged the lands themself. He nearly single-handedly wiped ''an entire race'' from the face of the planet, and even attacked another race called the Khajiit, ''simply because they didn't look human''.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Parodied on a ''[[Robot Chicken]]'' sketch that shows [[Benjamin Franklin]] practicing with a bo staff and declares "For America!" at the very end.

{{quote| "1776! It ain't accurate, but it'll blow your fucking mind!"}}

* Jebediah Springfield on ''[[The Simpsons]]''. Touted as an archetypal pioneer who killed bears with his bare hands, {{spoiler|he was in fact a German pirate who once tried to off George Washington but got his ass kicked.}}

[[Category:Alternate History Tropes]]

[[Category:Historical Hero Upgrade]]