Historical Hero Upgrade: Difference between revisions

** While in ''[[Divine Comedy]]'', Dante puts him as a great traitor in the deepest level of hell, [[William Shakespeare]] saw him as a man who died for the Republic's interests. For a long time the prevailing opinion among liberal-minded intellectuals that Brutus was a shining paragon of republicanism and Caesar a grasping tyrant. They probably patterned this off of his ancestor ''Lucius'' Brutus, slayer of the last king of Rome, who (if he actually existed) got a [[Historical Hero Upgrade]] in Roman historiography itself.

** Plutarch wrote in his book of historical biographies, ''Parallel Lives'', that Brutus was the last great republican, so it isn't unambiguously a case of an upgrade.

** [[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.

* Empress/Queen Consort Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary aka [[Spell My Name with an "S"|Sisi/Sissi]] got ''many'' "biographical novels" describing her as a mix of a grown [[Manic Pixie Dream Girl]] and a full-blown [[Purity Sue]] who is utterly hated or bullied by her [[Evil Matriarch]] mother-in-law Sophie (who was more of an [[Ignored Expert]]) and pretty much brings sun and love to everyone else, solving their problems with much class and sweetness. This reaches egregious levels with the ''Sissi'' movie trilogy and the ''[[Princess Sissi]]'' animated TV series. [[wikipedia:Elisabeth of Bavaria|The real Elisabeth]], however, was much closer to a [[Broken Bird]] [[Rebellious Princess]], [[Fish Out of Water|unable to withstand the pressure coming from the Habsburg Court]] and [[Break the Cutie|plagued by disgraces and mental illnesses]]. (Arguably, the most down-to-Earth and realistic portrayal of Sissi in media would Brigitte Hamann's biography, ''The Reluctant Empress''.