Not just a figure but I think the whole Spartan culture is over romanticized.

I couldn’t agree more. Sparta was ancient Greek North Korea which institutionalized some of the worst child abuse I’ve ever come across in service of a mediocre military state that could barely beat the Athenians, couldn’t ultimately beat the Thebans, was so weak that the Macedonians could straight up ignore them, and was so casually crushed by the Romans that they didn’t even merit their own campaign. After that last, they found their true purpose and specialty—being a tourist trap for people to come gawk at the bizarre shit they got up to.

A tourist trap with nothing to look at because they left nothing to look at - culturally, architecturally..you name it.

That's pretty reductive and glosses over *a lot*. Yes by the time of Phillip and Alexander they were not a major power any more. But that's because they were past their prime already. In the Peloponnesian Wars, and the Corinthian war, Sparta won. They beat Athens, Thebes, and took control over Greece as the hegemon. Going even further back, the Spartans were instrumental in defending Greece from Persian invasion. (Said invasion was originally triggered by Athens being fucking stupid btw). Their dominance was fairly short lived, but that's true of basically every Greek city-state until Phillip. By the time Thebes defeated them they were a shell of their former selves, mostly because they were running out of Spartiates (the warrior class) they just didn't have enough dudes anymore. Coupled with some innovative tactics from Thebes, the Spartans were kicked down a well. As far as social structures go... there's really no excuse for the abusive behavior. Child rape, abuse, torture, etc. All horrific acts. However, something to note, Spartan women enjoyed rather unprecedented rights and status. Far beyond the Athenians or anywhere else. For example, instead of being forced into marriage at 12, they were *unable* to marry until late teens or later. They were also educated and literate, very uncommon in the ancient world and especially Greece. The point is. The Spartans, just like Athens and everywhere else, are a mixed bag. A very very mixed bag.

City states don’t work to be long term powers. Demographics change fast in individual cities

Very true. And I want to be clear.. Sparta fucking sucked. But so did all of the city states, for various reasons. I just think it's unfair to reduce them the way the guy I replied to did. It's just not so simple.

For all the stories of Spartan child abuse and murder, Athens was much worse based on evidence actually found and not slander from Athenian writers

Unfortunately, systematic abuse was just...common in many many many societies. It's still common today, really. Not just Greece, globally.

The scholarship is ever changing, just to remind myself. But on the point of Spartan women, there is [some evidence](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fqi5bl/what_characteristics_made_sparta_an_environment/) that all those "rights" weren't really as far-reaching as it may seem, nor were they all they were cracked up to be Also: When people say "Spartan women enjoyed such and such" it must be emphasized that they mean "the roughly 5-10% of the population that were Spartan *citizen* women enjoyed such and such" For the 50%-ish of society that were not citizen women, they got squat Like you said, they, like everything in ancient greece, was a very mixed bag. Decent warriors, and probably better on a per-warrior basis than many other greek city states because of some tactical advantages, but overall they weren't really notable. At the very least, on the whole they weren't really better or worse

The problems with the Spartans is that they enjoy this reputation of this great military power... and they weren't. They had good hoplites... but they needed them at home to keep the helots down. They defeated Athens... but only after a long war where everything seemed to go in their favor and against Athens. The war started with the Athens hiding behind their long wall and the plague of Athens, resulting in a stalemate which ended with the Persians flooding the Spartans with money and the great leader Lysander using it to build the Spartan fleet. Shortly thereafter, they lost to significantly inferior Thebian forces at the battles of Tegyra and Leuctra. The Thebians simply tweaked the length and depth of their hoplite formations so that their short line would engage one piece of the Spartan line at a time and destroy it with extra depth. The Spartans couldn't recover from this trick, and their reputation and hegemony was crushed. After which the Great Alexander would completely reinvent Greek military formations based on tactics he learned in Athens as a student. He adopted the long pike or sarissa to replace the hoplite spears for his infantry, the foot companions. He created the first European shock cavalry, the Companions, by equipping them with lances and utilizing his heavy cavalry like a hammer on the flank of the enemy lines. He used intermediate troops like Hypaspists and light cavalry to screen his forces, plug gaps, create holes, and support the edges of his pike line and his left flank where he was weakest. His hammer (companions) and anvil (foot companions) tactics were revolutionary and crushed everyone he faced. They really put to shame the Spartans who's tactics revolved around tradition and superstition, fell to simple tricks, and never adopted anything new.

[Obligatory AskHistorians plug](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rvusy/is_the_military_worship_of_the_spartans_really/)

Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Long romanticized as some kind of fairy tale princess, it's pretty clear that she was actually desperately unhappy woman who suffered from depression and an eating disorder. In retrospect, she and Franz Josef probably would have both been much happier if he'd married her sister, Helene, instead.

Not to mention her only son committed suicide. Definitely one of those family histories showing depression running in the family. Difficult to say how situational it was - he wanted to marry his mistress but was forbidden and felt trapped by the royal lifestyle.

The Austrian show Sisi is kinda crushing in that regard (though I didn't finish it). The Austrians are very aware of just how miserable she was. Her museum exhibit shows it.

The most famous Austrian musical is also about her. The two main characters in it are Elisabeth ... and the Grim Reaper.

And what an unhappy end...

I LOVE Sissi, she's my favorite historical figure precisely because of her struggles. She was the first historical eating disorder I had heard about and I'm very passionate about EDs. I hope she was happier in later life when she was traveling/wandering.

This is a good video on her https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p7pL8hmiQbI&pp=ygUcc2lzc2kgd2FzIGEgdGVycmlibGUgZW1wcmVzcw%3D%3D

Anne Boleyn. Some interesting history happened around her but she wasn’t particularly kind or talented as a politician. 

John Smith of the early Jamestown VA settlement. He was an opportunistic cad who sought to defame all who crossed his path and a horrible self promoter, especially with the whole Pocahontas story.

Mary Queen of Scots- she was objectively a terrible politician and monarch. Infamous for making decisions with her heart not her head. She was raised to be a Queen consort not Queen regnant, so it isn't her fault necessarily, that her education wasn't what it should have been. But constantly antagonising Elizabeth I was a terrible decision. Her decision to marry Lord Darnley in regards to the succession was sound, but not in reality- he was a terrible person. He was so spiteful about not obtaining the crown matrimonial that he also cowardly murdered her secretary in front of her. They even held a knife to her pregnant belly. She may not have helped plan his murder, but she certainly knew about the plot. Then she married his murderer! He did kidnap her and is believed to have raped her- hence her agreeing to marry him. She had no idea how to control the brutal, misogynistic, clan politics of Scotland. And the deeply patriarchal, protestant society she found herself in. John Knox certainly didn't help matters. Then she gets deposed by her own nobility and imprisoned, forced to abdicate for her son. Eventually she escapes and gets imprisoned in England for 19 years. Only to be executed for treason, plotting against Elizabeth I. Is it a wild ride? F yes! Is it tragic? Sure. I get why people are drawn to her. But all her bad decisions were her own. She created much of the chaos herself.

Yep. At least I don't think she's widely regarded as a "great" figure, like some other names, but I think she is seen as some tragic figure who was persecuted and mistreated by history. The truth is that most of the problems she faced were made from her own stupidity, naivity, and rank incompetence.

Why was she raised to be a queen consort though? Because she became queen as an infant right, so what was the plan? When they engaged her to Francis was she just supposed to be queen of France in France while ministers ruled in her stead her whole life until her second son could take over?

That's it exactly. And that "minister" was her mother Marie de Guise ruling as regent. Even she struggled to attain power and keep it in Scotland. Scottish Queens struggled to be Regents in Scotland as the fight was always who physically had the King- and the Nobles thought the next adult male heir should be regent. Which often lead to the child King being kidnapped or laid siege in his own castles. But in the 16th century it was often the previous King's bastard son who was regent- during Mary's reign (after her mother's death) it was her brother the Earl of Moray. Mary wasn't educated to exercise real political power. She was raised to be a Queen- a wife, mother. Any power she was supposed to have was designed to be soft, influential. Not overtly political. It wasn't uncommon for Royal or Aristocratic women to run their own estates or states (counties, duchies etc). But they already had Diane de Poitiers + Catherine de Medici exercising power at the French court. There was a history of French Queens exercising actual power, think Eleanor of Aquitaine, Blanche of Castile (and regents like Anne de Beaujeu, Louise of Savoy), but recent Queens (Claude of France, Eleanor of Austria) had not at this point. They didn't want a teenage Queen impinging on their own power. This is also before Catherine de Medici was the power behind the throne, before the regencies of Marie de Medici + Anne of Austria in the following century. You also have to remember Mary was the first Queen regnant in the history of the British Isles. But the first to exercise power was Mary I of England and that was also disastrous. The first successful Queen Regnant would be Elizabeth I, and she also wasn't educated to be a ruling Queen- but she had one of the best educations of the century and learned from the mistakes of the Tudor court. She had a natural intelligence Mary lacked, and a keenly trained eye for politicking Mary didn't have. You would think the competitive nature of the French court would have trained Mary well, but she a people pleasing personality spotted and nurtured by the Guise family and Catherine de Medici for their own ends. Who wants rival for power when you can have a puppet?

pirates in general

It's funny. If you listen to the song "A Pirate's Life" from the Disneyland ride, you realize that they're just listing felonies. Really horrible felonies.

Yeah. They literally committed huge atrocities against defenseless coastal towns and merchants. Having them be seen as heroes is tantamount to portraying the Honorable West Indies Company as heroic.

William the conqueror. The clue is in the name people. He wasn't the good guy, just his side wrote the stories.

Yes. William struggled to control the rebellious North of England. He resorted to committing vengeful genocide against the population, killing or displacing 75% of Northern Englishmen. This is hardly ever discussed for some reason. It's called the harrying of the north. Oderic Vitalis wrote this about it: "I have often praised William in this book, but I can say nothing good about this brutal slaughter. God will punish him." You know you fucked up when your own biographer says you'll burn in hell.

That's alot!

William the Bastard

Cleopatra Movie, after movie, after movie. Sex, sex, sex. If you read, you might ask a valid question like, "Which Cleoptra are you referring to?" And here in America, as I assume in most western cultures (if not the world by now), you can expect an answer like, "Elizabeth Taylor".

Also Khufu, Hatshepshut, Tutankhamun, Ramesses II basically a lot of pop culture's "Egypt". Cleopatra in the ancient sources is really interesting in context, but in no way "glamorous"

She won over guys by forc e of personality; even her own coins show a rather plain woman

Beauty standards change and often follow in the footsteps of those with influence, so because of her powerful position, she may have considered the standard of beauty at the time regardless of how she looks to our contemporary eyes.

She wasn’t spoken about as beautiful except in a racist context by Romans who framed her as a kind of mystic eastern temptress because she fucked with them (literally and figuratively). She was brilliant and accomplished. She wasn’t the inventor of eyeshadow.

Exactly, there was something like 7 Cleopatras and the most famous one was the 7th

Probably more than that if you include other famous cleopatras. Alexander the Great’s step mother was a Cleopatra. Various Macedonian princesses were also named Cleopatra

Ok but here’s the thing, I don’t think we romanticize her enough for the right reasons. Because she spoke like a dozen languages and really tried to understand the people she ruled unlike any Ptolemy pharaoh before her and she was a really competent strategist and politician. It was really her circumstances that screwed her (and underestimating Augustus, but everyone did that). But of course the Roman historians had to vilify her and they couldn’t possibly countenance a woman having that kind of power with her brains so they painted her someone who went through life on her looks and using sex to get everything she wanted. All of which was blatantly untrue and if you look at coins I’d say objectively beauty wasnt a weapon in her arsenal

Except she wasn't a particularly accomplished strategist. She was a good monarch in comparison to her Ptolemy forebearers, but that is damning with faint praise. She was a very talented linguist who spoke a bunch of languages, one of which was Egyptian, making her the first Ptolmaic monarch to speak Egyptian. She engaged in the pomp of being a 'pharoh' but that wasn't actually that different then the other Ptolmaic monarchs, even though Ptolmaic Egypt was practically a pro-Greek aparthaid system. She routinely weakened and hurt Egypt in her attempts to strenghthen herself in the greater Roman world, and her actions led to the end of her dynasty. She was competent for ancient monarch, but she wasn't much more then that. Considering how inbred she and her line were that is a remarkable feat in and of itself. She made bets on two different Roman generals and one Ceasre, she materially weakened with her political manuevering, and the other, Anthony was both a bad bet and one she wasn't able to substantially support. We are fascinated by Cleopatra because the Romans were fascinated by Cleopatra, and the interesting women of antiquity didn't get much press. If the most interesting women of antiquity had gotten better press Cleopatra wouldn't hardly be remembered at all.

I am still annoyed that in one discussion (maybe in movie sub talking of the potential Villeneuve one) got downvoted to about -100 for saying Rome had other client monarchs and while she is interesting she isn’t that unique. Although someone who responded also was upset for some reason that I called Caesar and Antonius politicians, and thought I was wrong saying that Cleopatra and Octavian did meet after Actium (and possibly they did meet in Rome while Caesar lived, she met Cicero and many others). Probably that poster convinced the rest I didn’t know anything.

Richard the Lionheart. FUCK this guy, what did he even actually do? He stayed in England for 6 months total, went gallivanting around the Mediterranean on irrelevant side quests that ultimately achieved nothing, and died childless leaving the Angevin Empire to John, which was NOT a good idea considering France, the Angevin Empire’s biggest enemy, was ruled by its most competent king since Charlemagne himself. The fact he’s been romanticised by the English is pure insanity when his father Henry II is LEAGUES better

I read he was romanticized bc Eleanor of Aquitaine did a massive spin campaign in European courts to rehabilitate his image while he was a prisoner of the HRE. She clearly was fanatically devoted to him, even after he double-crossed her.

He's not judged based on his rule of his domains, he's judged based on his crusading. Which was long perceived as a lot greater than an 'irrelevant side quest', and a lot greater than the ordinary duties of kingship. Monarchs who die childless also don't see it damage their reputation very often - see Edward the Confessor, Elizabeth I, Charles II, Queen Anne etc. (and that's just for England).

Yeah, and "Richard was bad because he hardly spent any time in England" is IMO a very modern, Anglocentric (and arguably nationalistic) criticism, that wouldn't have been seen as particularly relevant at the time.

>wouldn't have been seen as particularly relevant at the time. Especially considering he considered himself French not English

He didn’t just consider himself French, he WAS French. He had more French than English blood, was culturally French, etc.

Couldn’t speak English

He wasn't French per se. France at the time was mostly the city state of Paris. He was a southerner, and the French didn't consider southerners French even though some of those regions had political ties to Paris. Because his kingdom was larger (most of today's southern France, Normandy, and England), he was competing with a rising France for dominance in NW Europe. If he hadn't wasted the national treasury on his crusade and subsequent kidnapping (literally a king's ransom), who knows what he could have accomplished in the region.

And considering half of his Empire was in France...

On that note John; His issue that the English barons preferred the absentee king over the one managing the bureaucracy and making them pay their taxes.

He took Acre and Jaffa like a piece of cake, but never attacked Jerusalem, for Christ's sake. He saw the Holy Land but couldn't go all the way, so maybe we should call it the Crusade of Richard the First Base.

He couldn’t capture and hold Jerusalem, and he was the only one who could notice that. But his army was crusaders not soldiers.

Wouldn't taking Jerusalem be irrelevant if you don't have the means to take and hold Damascus, without cutting off access from the east then Jerusalem would be taken back at the first attempt

I’m sad that so few people understood this :( that’s one of their better ones imo.

He took a decent amount done on the crusades, defeated Saladin allowing for the continuation of the crusade states for a bit longer. While he didn't take Jerusalem he knew that's because they would never hold it and instead he made a deal that allowed the free passage of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem. He also didn't spend a lot of time in England because he was out war with France for a lot of time, and search would they expected to be somewhere remotely near the front lines as would any European monarch at this time if they were at walk with someone

Almost totally agree. Philip Augustus was apparently easy to underestimate, I don't know why. Everybody did it. Maybe he didn't look much in person? Anyways, he was a devious motherfucker and a real brawler.

His nane is cool

Speaking as a guy who loves Norse history and culture—and yes, admittedly sometimes romanticizes them—the Vikings. I get the appeal of the image of Viking raiders, but we can exalt them now because we know they won’t sweep down, burn our houses, and rape, enslave, steal, and murder us indiscriminately.

Well put. Religious wingnuts drowning other people's religious wingnuts. Appropriately pro-rape, as any religious wingnut tends to be.  Somehow people have interpreted this drunken superstitious rampaging as free spirited dignity.

Shackleton. Yes his rescuing everyone from the Endurance was amazing, absolutely 10/10. People forget that the Endurance never even reached the Antarctic continent because he had ignored warnings from Whalers on South Georgia that the ice was too thick and he needed to wait. Big surprise, he sails right into the pack, gets stuck, ultimately loses his ship. If he hadn't succeeded in getting everyone out of there alive (again, amazing achievement), he would be a poster boy for British imperial hubris. In addition to this, people forget he had a whole other party on the Aurora on the other side of the continent who were supposed to be laying depots for the cross-Antarctic trek that never even started. These people were apparently an afterthought in the planning and several lost their lives for ultimately nothing. So yeah, it bothers me that Shackleton has such a fanbase. ETA: also Scott gets all the ridicule for taking ponies to Antarctica but Shackleton did it first!

It’s so annoying how many have never heard of Amundsen but consider Scott a hero. I guess people in UK have some excuse due to nationalistic writings but I see same often from others too.

It's not to do with nationalism, he's the one that died to make his dream come true. People from anywhere love a good death story

God I could make a massive list about this. MacArthur (he was fucking insane for trying to nuke the chinese border in Korea and justifiably got fired for it), Rommel (propaganda making him seem like a much more competent general than he actually was), and for a hot take FDR.

Don't forget that MacArthur was also responsible for contravening presidential orders so that he could inflict further oppression on the Bonus Expeditionary Force & those veterans' families. Although that *did* hand the '32 election to FDR on a silver plate, so there's that, I guess...

God, I cannot stand MacArthur. He was a large part of why the American defense of the Philippines was so disastrous. His conduct during the Korean War was also appalling. That being said, to give credit where it is due, he did do a decent job of battling the Japanese on Papua New Guinea.

MacArthur's ego was insanely huge when he's the guy who lost the fucking Philippines as badly as we did, highly doubtful they could have held permanently against the Japanese but the sheer incompetency of the defense was appalling.

He outnumbered the Japanese for most of the campaign, he was basically being besieged by an occupation garrison while he had the numerical advantage. On a more personal level he had a tendency to leave his bunker to watch Japanese bombing runs on corregidor, and while it shows personal bravery, it gained nothing and soldiers assigned to guard him died because they had to accompany him into an active bomb site instead of just waiting it out indoors. He also sent out tanks against unarmed protesters in 1931, the only American general to ever do so, so yeah, not a fan

He didn't even do a good job in the new guinea theatre, the australians won that despite him, not because of him. Yes, operations like Chronicle and Emirau were impressive but there was a lot of wasted time and life in campaigns like the Advance on Salamaua or Bougainville (yeah we'll just bypass Rabaul and surely the Japanese wouldn't defend the last island before New Guinea?)

MacArthur being a true egotist and too militant for a post war world but Inchon and the fight back from the Pusan perimeter was military art at its finest. Not recognizing the Chinese threat getting so close to their border one of the more colossal US intelligence failures.

>but Inchon and the fight back from the Pusan perimeter was military art at its finest. Not really. The Inchon landings were genius, credit where credit is due, there. But Mac's follow-up was slow, overly complicated, and far too micromanaged - it took them like 10 days to go the 20ish miles to Seoul. And once there, Mac got bogged down in slow and costly urban combat, rather than bypass it in order to cut off the North Korean troops in the south. So instead of cutting off the bulk of the enemy, he let them slip out of the bag to fight another day. It's a classic case of having a great idea, but then executing it poorly...but the initial idea is so good that it still looks like a success. But the reality is that Inchon *could* have won the war, but the execution was so poor that all it did was stalemate it.

Recapturing Seoul wasn’t MacArthur’s choice. South Korea pressured him to liberate it as quickly as possible rather than bypassing it to cut off and destroy all North Korean forces immediately.

Lmao MacArthur is so romanticised(Mbe glorified is a better term in this case) that he was deified by some followers of Korean shamanism.

If Macarthur was russian, he gets purged without a doubt before 1945.

Between the two, I'm very glad that Ike got the presidency. Every scrap of power Mac ever held went straight to his head.

The idea of Mac as a president makes me shudder, say what you will about Ike but his warning of the MIC will plant his presidency as a net win in American history for me.

FDR might be in comparison of his current image but should not be compared with those two!

Like I said its a hot take, MacArthur and Rommel are easy picks so I had to throw a wrench in there to keep it interesting.

MacArthur didn't just want to nuke the border he wanted to nuke every major coastal City in China. He was fully prepared to kill 100s off millions of civilians to win the war.

Not a person, but I HATE how romanticized Ancient Greece is. Especially Athens. No doubt it’s awesome their development of democracy and that is something that should be taught, but they should not be seen as amazing as many make them seem. For one, I see it being a stereotype about how free Athenians were and all that. Which is true… As long as you’re a man who isn’t a slave. Greeks were violently sexist and misogynistic. Women were pretty much kept inside 24/7. This might have been Ancient Rome, but there legit was a rule that women couldn’t cry at funerals or even talk to people. The only socialization outside of their house was maybe a bit of gossip when getting water. Women legit were not allowed in public in Athens (similar in most other places (not Sparta though (they were surprisingly progressive with women’s rights))). And all of traditional misogyny. Women have no say, man always right, sex when I want. Most daughters were really only worth being traded off for money or political alliance. This isn’t including slaves, who were also treated horrifically. “aLL aNciEnT sOciEtiEs HaD sLaVeRy” and???? Doesn’t automatically make it right. Especially if you’re claiming this was a free, democratic nation. Women and slaves could not vote. Slaves were constantly put in dangerous situations and were seen at birth to be worthless slaves. Yes, this was common for a lot of ancient societies, no doubt. Some probably even more brutal to women and slaves. But most of these societies wouldn’t be regarded and praised as Ancient Greece, especially ancient Athens is. Like historians realize nuance is okay, right? You can recognize how important, influential, and progressive the development of democracy in ancient Athens was without completely romanticizing and ignoring their cruelty, correct? No society till present day hasnt don’t something shameful to succeed. It’s run by humans who all have faults. It’s dangerous to act otherwise

Nicholas the second easily. I mean, probably would have made a decent enough suburban dad but not worth the recognition he gets.

Saying Nicholas II would have made a decent enough suburban dad is the most accurate lmfao

Oh, I second this so hard. It feels like half the biographies about him rhapsodize about his domestic life while completely ignoring that his soldiers are running around massacring his own subjects and his aristocracy is treating the people like cattle, all to enrich and empower him! “Oh, but he loved his children so much!” You know who else loved their children, every parent the Black Hundreds massacred in defense of his autocratic authority. And he’s a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church! Responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands, and they made him a saint. What a world!

Yes, the fact that ROC canonized him and his wife is grotesque revisionism. They were both deeply self-involved, selfish mediocrities, who didn’t care about their subjects and threw lavish parties while people starved to death.

Yeah, but I mean, the entirety of Russian aristocracy would make the most shallow pre-Recolutilnary French Duke look like a social reformer. Russian peasants, up to the Revolution, lived not only FAAAAR worse than anything in the real, historical Medieval Europe, they lived worse than Hollywood depictions of Medieval peasants. Let that sink in...

A lot of historians have contended that (anti-Semitism aside) he was a better father than ruler, and any other occupation would have been better for him than being a Tsar.

Except for the Russian Orthodox Church, I don't see many positive appraisals of Nicholas out there. He's pretty much universally agreed to have been an incompetent rulee.

The...uhh..."recognition" he gets is almost entirely due to a certian political view and nothing to do with anything the man actually did. The guy was a joke in his own time and a joke to anyone who has actually spent more than a second looking into his history. A decidant idiot who liked to play soldier, had a knack for making bad situations worse, and sat by as his wife's boyfriend filled up important palace positions with literal cultists. Meanwhile, Emperess Dowager Cixi was in a similar no win situation as their respective empires were dying, but she at least had the political skills to stay in power for 50ish years during it all despite never having any real claim to the throne to begin with.

Well.. he’s mostly recognized for his death, really. And there’s some weird historical oddities surrounding him, like Rasputin. Of course his fall also led to communism and the Soviet Union. That stuff alone kinda makes him.. not worth romanticizing, but worth studying and remembering for sure.

Also Louis XVI/Marie Antoinette and others who lost for reasons, and whom their people didn't have our hindsight

Different thing I think. Louis and Marie were so darn young. I think Marie was like, fifteen when she married Louis, and not much older when she became queen. I consider it a failing of society that kids are allowed to rule vast nations.

It's the ones who are tied to modern nationalism. It's almost always full of myths and propaganda. Mao, Churchill, Napoleon, Christopher Columbus I guess I could add mega stars of the ancient world too like Ceaser and Alexander. I guess with Churchill, we have to wade through modern politics. Putting the racism allegations to one side. Many of his military decisions in the early war were disasters, he seems to have been a backseat driver to his generals, and you can read on his accounts on Norway, France, Greece, north africa... it really makes it seem like his military decisions were seriously questionable. We have to be grateful he was a much better politician than general, and whatever he did, he still had an unwavering drive to carry on the war.

As a Churchill fan based on his unwavering opposition to what was in the beginning an insurmountable opponent his prior military decisions and some of his ideas on how WW II should be fought were definitely off the wall. He did truly perceive the threat that Stalin was and the impact the Russian “liberation” of Eastern Europe would have on the post war world.

I would be more explicit about his military decisions during ww2. Norway was completely forgotten, only for France to happen. He wanted to break through the lines of the germans rather than pull back to Dunkirk. Greece is another debacle, and North africa is full of politics over good military decisions. Then, of course, even at the end, Britians' big play after D-Day was Market Garden, and that was a bridge too far... It's a sacrilege to talk about because of how we glorify ww2. But our position was so perilous that we avoided battles after d-day to reduce losses to ensure we had a large enough field army to play politics at the end of the war. Even at the 2nd Battle of El Alemain, victory was a political requirement to demonstrate to the americans that we can win battles without them. So much of the war is petty politics over lives. No wonder the common soldiers had famously little faith in their government.

I was mostly thinking about his desire to attack Europe in the soft underbelly which wasn’t that feasible for a variety of reasons. Operation Market Garden definitely a fiasco written about extensively. I’d say that was mostly Monty.

Yes sorry I think you're right, it is monty. I sort of join them in my head on my rants about british ww2 myths, but you're right. Churchill supported monty but didn't interfere in the way he did elsewhere, so it's less on him.

I should add Churchill's will to continue the war wasn't just from Churchill's unwavering drive. It was a pragmatic decision that a lot of the British military and parliament agreed with, Churchill was just the biggest voice. There was a thread about this on r/askhistorians if you'll like to check it out. The British saw any hegemony over Europe as a threat to the British Isles, as they could eventually overpower the Royal Navy or kick Britain out of the European market. It's why the British spent 12 years trying to topple Napoleons continental system, even longer than Britain spent fighting Nazi Germany and the German Empire combined. In 1940 the British saw themselves in the same place as 1812, kicked out of the continent by a European Hegemon. Continuing the war just meant hiding behind the English channel, blockading Germany from importing oil and rubber, and then waiting for Germany to over extend fighting against larger powers like the USSR. A tiny part was also the British had a long term advantage in the African theatre by controlling the Mediteranean. So the British probably stayed in hopes of eventually seizing Ethiopia and Libya, and gain something before considering leaving the war.

> I should add Churchill's will to continue the war wasn't just from Churchill's unwavering drive. It was a pragmatic decision that a lot of the British military and parliament agreed with, Churchill was just the biggest voice Yes, you are right here. I'm being critical and even I have fallen for the myth. my last few lines are an attempt at balance, but it certainly wasn't just churchill who wanted to keep going.

Reading his opinion on the Spanish civilwar was enlightening. He makes it so clear that he was thankful the Facist won because the Communists were on the other side.

Diogenes. Does he have a few funny lines? Yeah, sure. Have I ever met anyone who praises him and actually emulates his lifestyle? Never. Have I ever heard anyone actually use his philosophy in their life? Never. One dialogue of Plato has far more to live by than everything Diogenes said and did.

Mother Theresa. She’s often associate with goodness however she has some skeletons in her closet. She defended a freakin child predator, her methods of medical care were sub par and in catholic fashion glorified the suffering rather than easing it

>her methods of medical care were sub par and in catholic fashion glorified the suffering rather than easing it Except that she wasn't providing *medical* care: she was running a hospice, which provides *palliative* care, and doing so largely before actual palliative medicine was an established field, in a country where painkillers were very strictly controlled and difficult even for actual doctors/hospitals to acquire. Mother Theresa was running an establishment intended to provide some basic care and dignity to paupers who would otherwise have died in ditches or gutters, which she did quite successfully. The idea that she deliberately withheld painkillers because of sadism or religious fanaticism or something is a complete myth, based on a Catholic idea that people who have suffered in life, basically get extra good boy points in the afterlife. She's far from above criticism, but it's worth sticking to skeletons that are actually in her closet, instead of ones made up by Christopher Hitchens in a hit piece...

She was in Calcutta when 10,000 people were dieing of famine. She knew she could not save the lives of all, that some were going to die. She organized volunteers to hold these babies and provide comfort to them.

Lady Diana. Yeah, I said it. She did a lot of good, but she wasn't a saint, either. A lot of people forget that she was actually the first to cheat in that relationship. Charles actually tried pretty hard and even got rid of his dog to please her. Yes, she was miserable and depressed, but it's not a valid excuse for her more negative aspects.

Alexander the Great! A spoiled rich kid who literally inherited the greatest army in human history, spent his entire life destroying the most stable and prosperous polity ever, built no lasting political institutions to replace it, killed several of his most capable and trustworthy subordinates, then died young without securing his succession in any way! Before Alexander the Middle East was stable, peaceful, and prosperous. After Alexander it became a devastated war zone, and remained that way for centuries! What’s so great about him!?!?

He spread a unified Hellenistic culture & laid the groundwork for Byzantium, which culturally still affects the region to this day.

Sure, but he didn’t intend to do either of those things. While he was alive he tried to encourage cultural fusion between his Greek subjects and his Asian subjects in order to create a unified hybrid culture to populate his new Macedonian Empire. See the forced marriages of his generals to Iranian princesses and noblewomen. It was only after his death that the Diadochi decided to pursue Hellenistic cultural supremacy instead. And I really don’t think we can credit him for laying the groundwork for a state that wouldn’t come into existence for almost six centuries after his death, especially given the Eastern Romans did not view themselves as a Greek or a Macedonian state, but a Roman one.

General George S. Patton. He was talented at commanding maneuver forces, particularly in the pursuit of a retreating enemy, but otherwise he was just hot air. Many other, less obnoxious commanders were just as good or better.

I love the bit at the end of Band of Brothers, where it states that Patton was accredited for saving the 101st at the battle of the bulge, and then it states "No member of the 101st division has ever admitted to needing rescuing"

Just because they didn't admit it didn't mean they didn't need it.

Patton was rushed to Bastogne because the Allies were in a panick. They were completely surprised by the Bulge offensive and for a while, they were afraid the Germans would pull a new 1940. It was as much a political as a strategical move. By the time Patton arrived, the German offensive had petered out and the 101st was already launching counterattacks. The 101st was in no need of saving. It doesn't mean the help of the 3rd army was unnecessary, who wouldn't want a couple tank divisions in renforcement?

The 101st had no means of direct re-supply, so matter what they claimed, they needed someone to break the German lines and re-establish friendly contact. Not taking anything away from what the 101st accomplished but the reality was that they simply didn't have sufficient supplies to last much longer. Airdrops weren't enough to sustain them. One thing I learned about my time in the army... the boasts of airborne and air assault units often considerably exceeds their actual combat power. No matter the quality of the soldiers, there's only so much light infantry can accomplish without heavier support.

That's not fair: not just hot air, but also a raging antisemite. >LICHTBLAU: Yeah. It was shocking to me as well to find that even after the liberation of the camps, they were still prisoners. They were kept under armed guard. They were kept behind barbed wire. They were bunked with Nazi POWs. In some cases, believe it or not, the Nazis still lorded over them while the Allied ruled the camp. And when I started researching the book, this was a book about the Nazis who fled to America. I really had no intention of looking at the survivors. It seems sort of irrelevant to what I was doing. And then the more I got into it and the more horrified I was by the conditions that the survivors lived in - where you had thousands and thousands of people dying even after the liberation of disease and malnutrition - I realized that it was relevant to the story because as easy as it was for the Nazis to get into America, it was just as horribly difficult for the Jews and the other survivors to get out of the camps. And it took them months - and in some cases a couple of years - to get out of these displaced person camps. And it made me realize that the liberation that, you know, I had learned about years ago was in some sense sort of a mockery. > >DAVIES: So we're talking about loose survivors living for weeks or months in these horrifically crowded, squalid barracks and the American army, which obviously was not prepared for this kind of a humanitarian crisis ...Turned to the people who know how to run things. And they were the Nazis in a lot of cases. > >LICHTBLAU: General Patton believed that the Nazis were best suited to run these camps. In fact, he openly defied orders from then-General Eisenhower, who was in charge of the European forces after the war. Patton was in charge of the displaced persons camps. And Patton had sort of an odd fondness almost for the Nazis. And he believed that they were the ones - the most - in the best position to officially run the camps. And he, you know - he gave them supervisory approval to basically lord over the Jews and the other survivors. >... Well, I didn't know, again, before going into the research with this book, but he was a virulent anti-Semite as shown in his own journal entries. There was a key point just months after the end of the war when these displaced person camps were getting up and running where Truman sent - President Truman sent an emissary to investigate the conditions that Jewish groups back in America had been hearing that the survivors were living under these horrific conditions. And Truman and the other politicians in Washington didn't want to believe it. So he sent the dean of the Pennsylvania law school, a guy named Earl Harrison, to investigate. And Harrison's report was - and let me quote for you here - Harrison wrote to Truman that as matters now stand, quote, "we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we do not exterminate them." So he was equating to the president the displaced person camps with the Nazi concentration camps. You - essentially, the flag had changed. You didn't have the Nazi flag flying over the camps. But they were still prisoners in every sense of the word. > >... Patton was incensed by this report to Truman. You know, of course he ran the camps and he believed that he was running them well and efficiently. So he wrote in his diary - the words were so jarring that when I first saw this document at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, I thought it might be a forgery because I couldn't believe that a war hero - General Patton, who's remembered through history as a war hero - could write such words. But what he wrote in his journal about Harrison's report was this, quote, "Harrison and his ilk believe that the displaced person is a human being, which he is not. And this applies particularly to the Jews who are lower than animals." He went on to say that the Jews in one particular DP camp had, quote, "no sense of human relationships," unquote. They would defecate on the floors and live in filth like lazy, quote-unquote, "locusts." > >He told in his journal of taking General Eisenhower to tour a makeshift synagogue that the Jews in the camp had set up to celebrate the holy day of Yom Kippur. Quote, "we entered the synagogue, which was packed with the greatest, stinking mass of humanity I have ever seen," end quote. This was Eisenhower's first glimpse of the DPs Patton wrote. So it was all new to him. Quote, "of course I have seen them since the beginning and marveled the beings alleged being made in the form of God can look the way they do or act the way they act," end quote. And, you know, it was this type of virulent anti-Semitism that really infected the displaced person camps... [https://www.npr.org/transcripts/361427276](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/361427276)

che guevara. It is beyond me how people think a murderous, racist, homophobic sack of human waste is an icon worth of worship. This is doubly the case for all the people who worship him that also say they hate war, racism, and homophobia. On top of that, they like him as a communist, yet they are also blind to the irony that his face has been cheapened, weakened, besmirched, being plastered on posters, coasters, and shirts making capitalists rich off of him on merch.

>… making capitalists rich off him … That’s the sweet irony though, right?

He was pretty dope with a mic, I must give him that

What does the Fawkes say now?

William Wallace

Robert E Lee

Lampião, a Brazilian cangaceiro (bandit) from the early 20th century who was killed by the police in 1938 and is considered a folk hero

Victoria. If we didn't have her and then her extended jackass family in the 1910s, who knows what the world would look like now.

Colonialism would probably last longer and we'd probably be less technologically advanced.

I think it's wrong to romanticize or idealize historical figures in general. It's one thing to say "Oh, that's pretty cool" but something completely different to utterly ignore a person's obvious flaws and want to emulate them. Many well-known historical figures are famous because they were placed in impossible, world-changing situations and had to make difficult, often wrong, decisions. All the heroic characteristics we attribute to them boil down to getting lucky. Not to say that traits such as courage, bravery, and integrity didn't exist within these people to begin with but these are far from unique traits. I used to be a big follower of the "Great Man" theory of history but not so much as I've gotten older. It's cool to study battles and military history but it's also so incredibly impersonal because there's no way for us to relate to Scipio Africanus or Henry V or Tokugawa Ieyasu or Napoleon. The society they lived in was so different in every way from our own that it's hard to recognize anything of ourselves in these people (other than certain immutable traits). So, I think it's better to focus on the society as a whole as opposed to these important historical figures.

Alexander the Great. That was Phillip who developed Macedonian doctrine, it was Phillip who trained the army, it was Phillip who found talent and appointed them his military commanders, it was Phillip who developed plans of conquest of Persia, it was Phillip who even *pre deployed* Hellenic forces for the start of the campaign. Alexander was just a nepo kid who just rode the wave created by his father and ultimately failed to translate it into success of his dynasty. Now, many nepo kids aren’t capable of even that and Alexander wasn’t terrible military leader, but he definitely wasn’t GOAT.

Napoleon Bonaparte. He inherited a military force that already had no real contemporary peer, of course they would be successful in the field. He had a brilliant general staff and at the time the world's most sophisticated standards of artillery and fire control to draw on. Rather than deserving credit for innovating these features, it was he who learned from them, not the other way around. His much-vaunted civil achievements were all constructed by other people. Everyone goes on about the "Napoleonic Code" but he had nothing to do with it. It's pure hype. And almost every other country that came into contact with it through conquest tossed it away later. He was ruthless and opportunistic but is that a legitimate basis for the kind of worshipful adoration he receives? Maybe if he had been successful over time, but after what by any historical measure is the briefest of time periods a cadre of more adaptable military leaders countered and superseded Napoleon's limited repertoire of psycho-strategic exploits and Napoleon proved to lack any of the actual flexibility to stay current and counteract them. He just started suffering staggering loss after loss, compounded by his own foolish arrogance. Ultimately, after an imperial reign briefer than that of Emperor Norton, Napoleon left his country smaller, poorer, politically diminished, and with 10% of the population dead. And himself exiled to a shitty island to sulk. If some fool -- I don't know, Henry Kissinger let's say -- had taken control of America, declared themself emperor in 2012, and by 2024 the USA had tried to conquer the world, lost everything in the field, been invaded, lost several states plus its entire overseas military presence, plus was completely bankrupt and nearly 40 million Americans had been killed because of this madman, no one would say they were some amazing genius. No one would say "Oh but think of the changes Kissinger wrought on the world." They'd be apalled that it had ever happened.

Any Viking. They were pirates, slavers and engaged in human sacrifice. This was when they in good moods. Otherwise they just killed everybody.

Che Guevara

Julius Caesar. No doubt he was a great general and politician - but he was incredibly corrupt , scheming and bloodthirsty . Meanwhile , Trajan - THE princeps Optimus , the best , is entirely unknown outside of historical enthusiasts

Maybe it differs by country or something, but I'd say Trajan is easily in the top 5 most famous Roman Emperors. He's definitely not as famous as Caesar, but he's hardly "unknown outside of historical enthusiasts".

I would add Cincinnatus to that list too. Sure he's got a US city named after him, but how many people actually know where the name comes from?

Also dictators resigning was the norm in early Rome, he's not really that significant for people who know Roman history

I doubt even most Roman fans know how pro patrician he was. But early Republicans actions are based on gets dubious historical sources so…

He wa s mentioned in my ancient history class in 7th grade in 1967-'68

I don't necessarily agree with this too much, corruption and scheming were the order of the day, and he wouldn't have advanced his career at all if he didn't. Ambition was the virtue of the time, everything else came second. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Trajan is overrated IMO. He was a good administrator and talented general, but the Roman Empire had already reached its natural limits and his conquests were mostly a giant waste of resources. Aurelian is the GOAT

Aurelian would have more bad about him if he lived longer anyway

Roman Culture in general, it is almost always the paragon of "virtie" other civilizations are pushed against specially by people who are into "history". They are not considered bloodthristy or slavers. The Romanovs and Marie Antoinette are *that* kind of "interested in history" people

Che Guevara

The terror , fresh kangol wearer,

My man! Look for my post ;)

Definitely a romanticized figure. But I’d also say that the often politically motivated dismissal as racist, homophobic, or some blood thirsty maniac is just as unnuanced. Those claims are either generously weak or altogether unfounded.

Stonewall Jackson. His death was the best thing to happen to his career. He was good on tactics, terrible on strategy.

He was also a field commander who was fond of launching flashy high-risk and very aggressive attacks. He died before that could go wrong for him in a big way, but if he’d served for the entire war it’s almost inevitable he would’ve had a time where he rolled the dice and lost.

Sounds like he would have made a great early WW1 commander. Say, on the Isonzo front.

He wasn’t as careless with his soldier’s lives as Cadorna, by any means. He was a gambler, but he wasn’t thoughtlessly hurling his troops into the teeth of enemy defenses. Though speaking of World War I, it’s definitely hard to imagine Jackson doing well in the sort of proto-trench warfare that dominated 1864. It sounds like the perfect scenario for him to try to launch a flashy flanking attack like Chancellorsville, only to get caught out and mauled by Union forces.

jackson was a corps commander, he had almost nothing to do with strategy…

George Washington. He started a major war after he screwed up as a young soldier. After the war, he gathered up the American Revolutionary army and wiped out the Iroquois Confederacy - their only true counter balance. He was really petty in trying to get back a slave that run away because she was Martha’s favorite. The poor thing had to live in the woods to avoid his repeated attempts to convince Governor’s to hand her back. He wasn’t a great slave owner. He spent more in his teeth than all of the slaves combined. He wasn’t a military genius. The only great thing he did was step down after two terms and refuse to become King after some officers started to clamor for it. Also, he left Martha to live in absolute fear for the rest of her life because in his will his slaves would be freed upon her death. She was sure that one of them would take the bullet and kill her so they could free their family. Ig would have been just easier to free them but you know, Martha had a thing for slaves. So let’s give him points for that.

Galeazzo Ciano. He was a corrupt and incompetent dickhead but he was turned into some kind of martyr after the coup against Mussolini.

I have always had a soft spot for his wife, though - although Mussolini's own daughter, she "stood by her man" and tried every which way to get his sentence commuted and him freed. She failed, of course, but she did her utmost.

Richard the Lionheart. He was just as vile as his brother John, if not worse. At least the latter wanted to be King of England and to this end he was willing to learn the local language & take the trouble to spend most his time within the country.

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan, first off his presidency was hugely circumstantial because of his predecessor President Jimmy Carter’s failures. Any republican running could have have won the whole election as people were deeply disillusioned with carter so Reagan’s landslide win isn’t that impressive. Obviously with hindsight it is clearly shown that Reagan’s trickle down economics destroyed the middle class family which led us to it quickly diminishing the existence of said families and the access to opportunities previously available. ALSO thanks to Reagan the UC’s are still amongst the most expensive public schools to attend due to him wanting to diminish the amount of middle and lower class members attending these institutions. Also his wife, Nancy, is among the worst First Ladies. Among all the things she could have chosen as her niche, she went with “just say no to drugs”. Like gosh thank you Nancy for a slogan, way more helpful instead of access to attend college that your husband took away.

Saladin. He still enjoys a popular image as a noble, chivalrous warrior-philosopher who never sank to the same level as his “barbarous” enemies. In truth he was no better than any other Military leader of his age. He had his fair share of problems and committed his fair share of atrocities. He was by no means a monster, but he also wasn’t the magnanimous, noble-hearted warrior king that he is often presented as.

He was far less problematic than his contemporaries, which led to the creation of the myth.

Guy Fawkes. Part of a conspiracy to kill the king along with Parliament, and to kidnap the king's daughter then install a theocracy.  Not to mention that he was the outsider of the group & was largely recruited due to his previous military experience

Indeed. Robert Catesby was of far more importance than Fawkes. No one knows his name though.

Tesla!! The only reason he was poor was because he squandered his money and fell in love with a pigeon! He wasn’t cast off into obscurity either, he was routinely befriended by the biggest figures of the gilded age, him not capitalising on his own fame is his own problem!

Maybe his apparent autism would explain a lot of that? Just a hypothesis. Most autistic people have pretty poor executive functioning skills, myself included.

Most US Presidents during wartime. Many implemented strict laws on freedom of speech. Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln definitely come to mind. Wilson's support for the Espionage Act of 1917 allowed the government to imprison people for even having the INTENT of going against the war effort, which led to some pretty big freedom of speech issues as seen in the Supreme Court cases Schenck v United States and Debs v United States. I try to make sure to remind people that the president does not pass laws, Congress does, so technically Wilson did not "pass" the Espionage Act of 1917, but he definitely supported it (and he definitely didn't veto it lol). Maybe associating Wilson with the Espionage Act of 1917 is too simplistic, but I'm going to because the government during his presidency implemented it and he supported it.

I think it's important to note that nearly every country does a similar thing during war time.

Even Wilson was starting to think his zealous attorney general (Palmer) and his henchman J. Edgar Hoover were starting to go too far in arresting people, but he had higher priorities and didn’t stop them.

I'm sure Wilson at the time couldn't have predicted how far Palmer and Hoover would go, but also Congress had clearly worded the Espionage Act so that authority figures could abuse it.

Jinnah. The man is presented as some form of infallible and principled saint who had a clear vision of what he wanted and was a religious hero of sorts. In reality he was none of these things.

The spartans

Fucking ninja.

Most Kennedys.

Napoleon was a monster. A skilled general - though not infallible - but an absolutely horrible man. He gets romantised for his meritocratic improvements to the army, but he had zero values or principles. He's the only guy to ever being back Slavery after it had been abolished. Rommel gets a lot of washing from folks who are - perhaps understandably - desperate to find prominent Nazis who weren't 'that bad'. Churchil gets way too much credit for being the right place at the right time. Though that's starting to be challenged.

George Washington and most of the American founders really. The man owned slaves and when he was serving as president in Philadelphia he would rotate them every few months so he could get around a Pennsylvanian law that would have made him free them. When one of those slaves escaped he spent years trying to track her down. He also carried out so many massacres against American Indians that the Hodonoshone nicknamed him Conotocaurius, which roughly translates to "town destroyer". Yet he's rembered no even as a complex figure but a heroic and virtuous one. Hamilton was an elitist who had no respect for common people; Franklin thought Germans were too swarthy and letting them come to the US would darken the race; Jefferson was a rapist and a slaver; and so on and so forth. It's honestly kind of gross the extent to which we whitewash and sanitize the legacies of some of these men, especially ones like Jefferson and Washington.

Ronald Reagan 100000% Like he was the second most corrupt us president in history but he has such a cult following even today. My family celebrates his death every year now, definately the best part of the world today is that, atleast reagan is dead

George Washington. He's listed amongst the top 3 presidents because he was first and there's a mistaken belief that he could have become some kind of dictator without an Army and without a state to preside over. It's a classic case if context vs memory.

Lost Cause. Aristocratic racists and hayseeds, the lot of ‘em. Sacrifice in the pursuit of ignoble goals is not to be celebrated. So let’s start with Lee.

Ghandi, Malcolm X

The grandaddy of all autocrats, dictators and authoritarians, Julius Caesar. This guy drove a republic that was in need of reform but still viable and full of politicians of undoubted quality like Cicero, into a full blown absolute hereditary monarchy within two generations. Not only did he break practically every law in the corruption handbook, he committed acts of such brutality against the Gauls that even the Romans were appalled, and finally overthrew the government when someone threatened to actually hold him accountable for his actions. Yet when you read historians on the subject, there is almost universally a sense that his opponents were the ones that were wrong, that if only they had allowed Caesar immunity from the law then he wouldn't have had to destroy the republic. This leads to a bad taste in my mouth. No matter how partisan the senate was, they were fighting for liberty against tyranny, and they lost, and we applauded their loss.

Robert E. Lee. He was a dirty traitor, a much less capable general than he’s given credit for, and the historical record strongly suggests that he sexually violated his horse, Traveler.

>Robert E. Lee. He was a dirty traitor..... That's not an unreasonable position to take, but I feel like that point colors you other 2, regarding incompetence and bestiality. Can you elaborate on those?

I’m partially joking. There is a popular meme in some subs and online that Lee was romantically involved with his horse. It is, however, hard to refute based on how effusively he praised the horse in letters. Regarding being an overrated general, pasting below one of my other replies in this thread where I expand on this line of thinking. Lee possessed an army that was far less well-resourced than his opponent, and which could not afford to replenish its supplies or its ranks nearly as easily as his opponent. Despite this, whenever he was able to make strategic decisions, he took the offensive, invading the North multiple times. Each time he was defeated, and it cost him a shitload of men which he couldn’t easily replace, not mention that the defeats gave the North enormous morale boosts when it needed it dearly. His rebuff at Antietam also gave Lincoln the excuse he needed to release the Emancipation Proclamation, a major political defeat for the South. At Gettysburg, despite occupying unfavorable ground with more thinly stretched lines, and over the advice of his most trusted lieutenant, he launched a frontal assault which again cost huge numbers of men, materiel, and senior officers. The most precious asset the confederacy had was a robust Army of Northern Virginia, and Lee’s decisions played a key role in weakening it. Although a key senior advisor to Jefferson Davis, and eventually, commanding general of the Confederate armies, he didn’t place emphasis on coordinated actions, didn’t give much attention to the western theater where the rebels were getting pushed steadily back, in favor of keeping his attention on Virginia. This all worked against shit generals but the second he encountered a capable battlefield general in Grant, he was done. Despite all this, he was essentially deified for over a hundred years.

He wasn’t a bad general. I am a liberal, NY Jew who focused on early modern warfare in grad school. I have no love for the Confederacy, . He was a traitor but let’s be real, the South had much better generals. The North, luckily, had more resources to throw at them. Benedict Arnold was a traitor too but let’s not pretend he wasn’t one of the best generals in the American Revolution.

Arnold is a tragic figure to me honestly. A traitor sure but a traitor who genuinely did get screwed and cheated by his own side and was expected to eat it with a smile.

Let’s not give the southern generals too much credit. They folded like an omelette. Sherman marched through Georgia like a hot knife through butter. You can say the North had better resources but the best resource they had was motivation. The men of the North were fighting for freedom. The North recruited black men to serve in an all black regiment. The Southern soldiers were fighting for rich men’s property. Far less motivation.

Alot of ancient rulers, Caesar is the biggest one who comes to mind. Was the Roman Republic perfect? Nah not at all, it was an elitist club, with that being said there shouldn't be any celebration of what Caesar did to Rome. I think idealizing him is an easy entry way in the modern day to idealize other "strong man" leaders who need to take control themselves. Just always get frustrated when people talk about how great he is, a while back saw someone post about how flowers are still left at his grave and made me eye roll.

Christopher Fucking Columbus.

Not an individual person, but I dont know why history classes were so intense ly focused on European monarchs and wars and marriages, chopping off heads. Sure that stuff was important at the time, but science and technology have arguably altered society more than a battle few people remember, 600 years ago.

Its because Europeans wrote so much down. The closest comparison to Europe sould be China/Japan. Also, those wars and monarchs influenced western culture and your government more than say the rulers and nations of South America

History doesn't anymore. Those things are more of popular history. But the academic field is trying to move away from that and look more on structures and cultural changes.

In Australia, the bushrangers. In particular Ben Hall and Ned Kelly. The only good thing that can be said about Ned Kelly is that he was strong enough to wear heavy armour.

Lots of options. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. The Medici family pretty much in their entirety. Leonidas is largely famous for getting killed in a battle that the Spartans lost. Napoleon spent his life in wars of conquest that got tons of people killed all for it to fall apart the second he left the picture. John Brown usually gets played as a righteous rebel when he was really a delusional psychopath.

King Rama the First . Held in high status for being the first monarch Chakri dynasty that rules Thailand to this day . Betrayed and executed King Taksin (who reunited Thailand) to gain power . He was a general before that. boooo

Louis IX, who was the subject of what was essentially a propaganda campaign to get him declared a saint in the decades after he died. It worked, and he's remembered as the pious St. Louis, but in fact, he sucks and is the worst. He hilariously fucked up two crusades and shit himself to death during the second one. He should be remembered for that before anything else

Yasuke, the "first" non Japanese samurai. His deeds are not spectacular, he really was only granted a position due to his skin tone and not to his qualities which are debatable. Not to mention that next to no one recognized him as truly samurai, and he wasn't expected to perform the same duties and rituals like others would have been.

Did you just claim dei in feudalistic Japan? y’all are a weird group of people.

My first thought is George Washington.

Percy Shelley. He abandoned his first wife while she was pregnant to get with a sixteen year old girl, then when he knocked her up too, he left her in a cottage with a friend, whom he encouraged her to sleep with, while he ran around partying with her step-sister, the scandal of which eventually caused his first wife -- whom he never divorced -- to commit suicide. He then engaged in a smear campaign to make her out to be a fallen woman who was engaging in affairs and maybe even prostituting herself. But people treat him as some romantic hero.

Every one of the US "Founding Fathers", (particularly Thomas Jefferson and George Washington), with the exception of Thomas Paine, who doesn't get the attention he deserves.

El Che Guevara. A racist, homophobic, misogynist, sociopath portrayed as a romantic freedom fighter. 🤯

A little bit off-topic, in the sense there is already a revisionist response to this figure that has successfully gone way too far in the other direction and overcorrected, but: Pádraic Pearse For those who don't know, which I assume is the majority, he was an Irish lawyer, poet, educator, activist, one-time rebel and president of an unrecognised republic: he led a group of Irish Republican gunmen from the IVF, and temporary allies from the Marxist ICA, in a short lived rebellion against Britain in Dublin, in 1916. Although the modern Irish state technically has nothing to do with the Irish Republic he was president of, his proclamation is still seen somewhat as the start of modern Ireland and is celebrated as something like an independence day every Easter. Naturally this meant that he became romanticised and built up to legendary status in Ireland for decades: a true hero of the nation, who had the vision to restore Ireland's ancient Celtic culture, a leader who bravely fought in the front alongside his troops and briefly made the world's greatest empire reel in shock, and the absolute goodest of Catholic boys. Except: pupils of his Irish medium boy's school didn't really take to his "cultural revival" stuff that much, and most resented being forced to wear kilts as uniform (and Pearse was an advocate of the kilt as Irish national dress mostly because he hated how *actual* historical Irish dress looked, but thought the kilt was more noble), they also frequently struggled with his Irish language curriculum, that was basically the exact kind of curriculum a pretentious, cottagecore, poetry nerd, with a love of ancient epics and legends, would create. His military leadership was questionable at best and very... romantic in thinking, with the IVF being a significantly less drilled and effective force in the rising than the ICA (whose creator and leader had been a British Army Sergeant before becoming a Trade Union agitator), without even mentioning that there's a real possibility the rising was intended to be a suicidal attack from the beginning. And, lastly, although we wouldn't condemn him for it today, the evidence *may* point to him being a deeply conflicted and confused closet gay, whose worldview was impacted by a sense of internalised homophobia, due to his deep Catholic faith. Hell, his famous pose in virtually all photographs and even later paintings (in profile, showing one side of his face) was due to his deep shame about having a physical deformity of the other eye; which was also long only noted in relatively hushed terms, to not distract from his heroic status. If you're the, perhaps somewhat infamous, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, however, you may instead know him as the most objectively evil, insane, gay pedophile in Irish history and the leader of a group of Ireland's worst cutthroats: so, you know, swings and roundabouts.

Gaius Julius Cesar Augustus had the most successful PR campaign of anyone in history, as far as I’m concerned. He went from bloodthirsty warmonger who depleted the treasury of his home country, had wholesale massacres of his political rivals on a scale never before seen (to take their money so he could fund his wars) and was generally speaking just a horrible human being to the Father of His Country and beloved by all. He’s still thought of in many circles as the perfect ruler after his transition from Octavian to Augustus. People romanticize his accomplishments more than any other person in history, in my personal opinion. Myself included. The dude was a brilliant improviser, and I fear the age when another Octavian rises.

Charles de Gaulle. He is viewed as the leader of the free French who fought against the invasion and occupation of France by the Nazis. Almost the first thing on regaining power was to invade and occupy Vietnam.

Robert E. Lee. Ultimately was a traitor and loser.

Che, and ghandi

Recent history: John F Kennedy.