Richard III/YMMV

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• Adaptation Displacement: The play firmly established the popular image of Richard III as a crookbacked tyrant. To the extent where he's the only king of England to have his own fan club aimed at exposing this as a case of You Fail History Forever (spoofed in the first series of Blackadder, in which he really is a pleasant king who utters inverted versions of Shakespearean lines).
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Some productions like to depict Anne as being rather crooked and ambitious in her own right, and imply that she marries Richard not thanks to the power of his words and personality but because he puts her that much closer to getting a tiara again
  • This interpretation makes her own death rather karmic.
• Complete Monster: The real Richard (probably) wasn't, but this is what he's famous for.
• Evil Is Sexy: Richard's seduction of Lady Anne definitely qualifies. It's particularly marked in the Olivier film version, where Anne is all glazed-eyes and heaving bosom for Richard.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Doing this to Richard is largely the whole point of the play.
  • So much so that he get's played as Hitler. The dude is not popular.
• Magnificent Bastard: Richard.
• Moral Event Horizon: Richard's murder of the Little Princes catapults him over the line and causes many of his allies to rebel against him.