12. William Shakespeare Gave Him A Bad Press
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Britain's greatest-ever playwright penned a number of historical dramas - including infamously about Richard III. Williams Shakespeare's play, written around 1592, depicts the Machiavellian rise of a power-hungry and ruthless tyrant to the monarchy - and Richard III has been played by such brilliant actors as Kenneth Branagh, Martin Freeman, Alec Guinness, Ian McKellen, Laurence Olivier, Al Pacino and Kevin Spacey down the years. However, Shakespeare greatly exaggerated the supposed evil nature of King Richard III in order to dramatise the character - and due to Tudor propaganda at the time. It is from this play that the supposed image of Richard as a physically-deformed man derives - with the King portrayed as having a crooked back, a hunch and a withered arm. Yet following the excavation of Richard III's body in Leicester it appears this was not true. He did have a misshapen spine to a certain degree, but he was nowhere near as deformed as Shakespeare claimed - and all because he wanted to firm-up the idea that King Richard III was a shifty, evil, Machiavellian type.