Historical Villain Downgrade: Difference between revisions
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But there are [[Adolf Hitler|certain]] [[Josef Stalin|characters]] [[Emperor Caligula|in history]] whose actions can't be depicted realistically on, say, a children's TV series.
That's where the
Basically, this trope occurs whenever an historical villain's evil actions are either glossed over or reduced in severity, in order to make them palatable, [[But Not Too Evil|even as a villain]], to mainstream television audiences.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Dracula]] may be pretty bad, but he is absolutely ''nothing'' compared to Vlad the Impaler, upon whom the character is based. (Though this is complicated by several [[Historical Villain Upgrade
* Happens sometimes in ''[[Dear America]]'' series, due to the fact that it's made for children. A very obvious example of a whole group being downgraded is in ''My Heart is on the Ground'' by Ann Rinaldi, which makes the white men who took Lakota children to be "reeducated" in the ways of white people seem only like misguided missionaries.
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* ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'''s aunts met Caligula in one episode. No need to get bogged down in the whole "fetus-eating" thing.
* Uday Hussein's sadistic nature is toned down quite a bit in the ''House of Saddam'' [[Miniseries]] for much the same reason as Amon Goeth in ''[[Schindler's List]]'': the producers thought the audience would just have trouble accepting that a human being could be as wantonly cruel as he was in real life.
* [[The Borgias]] depicts Juan Borgia as a stupid lech whose actions can be explained away by insecurities. And he really does love his family. The real Juan was sometimes referred to as a sort of idiotic
* Being a kids' show, ''[[Horrible Histories]]'' has to do this occasionally; though they do talk about death and violence frequently, some historical figures ''still'' have to be downgraded or at least simplified. Hitler is rarely used at all, and a lot of things are omitted from the segments about people like Caligula or Henry VIII.
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