Historical Figures Who Are Nothing Like The People They're Painted To Be

Marie Antoinette often gets blamed for the French Revolution. People say she spent too much on her lavish, Versailles lifestyle, spent all her time partying, and bought too much jewelry. Oh, and then there's her most infamous quote: "Let them eat cake."

There's just one problem: she wasn't a villain at all. Marie Antoinette caught much of the blame from her angry subjects in the 1700s partly because she was a foreign queen from Austria and partly because she was a woman. She was called a b*tch, accused of affairs, and even put on trial for allegations of familial relationships.

The truth is, the queen was shipped away from home at the age of 14 to marry a king who didn't even speak her language, and she took unfair criticism for an entire aristocracy devoted to excess. Also, she never said, "Let them eat cake."

The fact that she and her husband, Louis XVI, didn't produce a male heir until 1781, 11 years after their marriage, also tarnished her reputation. While Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI's sexual inexperience was likely the cause of their bedroom issues, many blamed the young Marie Antoinette for the lack of heirs.

Mahatma Gandhi has a stellar reputation after successfully fighting for India's independence from Great Britain and advocating a nonviolent philosophy. But before he became a revered leader, Gandhi had a darker attitude. In 2015, a controversial book titled The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire claimed that Gandhi's years living in South Africa - from 1893 to 1914 - show his own discriminatory beliefs about Africans.

For example, in 1893, Gandhi wrote that a "general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are a little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa." He used the derogatory term "kaffir" when referring to South Africans, and advocated for segregating a community where Indians lived alongside South Africans.

Gandhi's grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, admits that his famous grandfather was "at times ignorant and prejudiced about South Africa's blacks," adding, "Gandhi, too, was an imperfect human being."

For years, Christopher Columbus was seen as the greatest explorer in history and was touted as the man who discovered the New World, but his sterling reputation is now tarnished. First, Columbus didn't discover the New World; there were already thousands of people living there. He wasn't even the first European to discover the New World, either - the Vikings beat Columbus by centuries.

On top of that, Columbus forced Natives into slavery and disfigured them as punishment for noncompliance. When he first met the Taino, Columbus wrote, "They were very well built, with very handsome bodies and very good faces... They do not carry arms or know them... They should be good servants.”

From the start, he was planning to exploit the Taino, enslaving them to collect gold and cutting off their limbs if they didn't meet his quotas. 

Cleopatra was much more than a sex symbol: she was a brilliant and cunning ruler who was wrongfully depicted as a seductress by her enemies. Cleopatra became queen at only 18, and she had to protect her country against the Mediterranean's biggest power, Rome. During Rome's civil war, Cleopatra had relationships with two important leaders: Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. 

When Mark Antony and Octavian, the future Augustus Caesar, battled it out for control in Rome, Octavian depicted Cleopatra as a temptress who seduced Mark Antony away from traditional Roman virtues. Unfortunately, Octavian's misogynistic depiction of Cleopatra overshadowed her brilliance. Cleopatra spoke up to a dozen languages, promoted scholars, and was educated in many fields, making her one of the most accomplished queens in history.

In 2016, she became Saint Teresa of Calcutta, but critics claim Mother Teresa also had a dark side. She devoted her life to taking care of the sick and poor, caring for the blind, and opening a leper colony. In recognition of her efforts, Mother Teresa won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. However, not everyone is a believer in the pure benevolence of her altruism.  

One critic, RSS (a Hindu nationalist group in India) chief Mohan Bhagwat, complimented Mother Teresa for her charitable work, but added, "Mother Teresa’s work had ulterior motive, which was to convert the person who was being served to Christianity."

Former volunteer Hemley Gonzalez says he voiced concerns to nuns at Mother Teresa's facility regarding cleanliness and the patients' health, and the nuns allegedly ignored him. According to Gonzalez, he witnessed nuns reusing needles, hand-washing soiled clothing next to cooking utensils, and forcing patients to bathe in ice-cold water. Gonzalez called it "a scene out of a World War II concentration camp." He says he offered to install a water heater, but the nuns allegedly responded, "We don't do that here. This is the way Jesus wants it." Gonzalez never met Mother Teresa herself, but questioned the legacy she left behind.

He's seen as the hunchbacked murderer of his own young nephews. King Richard III of England only ruled for two years, from 1483 until 1485, when he died in battle. He came to the throne with treachery: when Richard's brother, King Edward IV, died, he left behind a 12-year-old heir.

After years of the Wars of the Roses, Richard feared a Lancaster uprising, so he seized the throne. On his way to the top, Richard placed his two young nephews under arrest in the Tower of London.

Those two boys were never seen again, and Richard often gets the blame for their murders. But his bad reputation might be largely due to Shakespeare's play (written for Richard's Tudor rivals), which made Richard look like a tyrannical ruler. There's little evidence that Richard killed the boys, and many historians think his rule was successful. Plus, the discovery of his skeleton in 2012 proved the king was not a hunchback: that was an invention of Shakespeare designed to make Richard look bad.