exactly Cowperson, history is very coloured by perspective.
i remember seeing that very famous Vlad Dracule picture (illustration...) of people impaled and there he is with a goblet, obviously assumed to be drinking their blood in a book mentioning historical propoganda - this picture was in the movie 'bram stoker's dracula' but it was originally produced by a german prince, one of dracule's enemies.
so this picture affects to this day our perception of dracule when it was at the time probably exxagerated propoganda.
see also our perception of vikings, who were at odds with the cultural ancestor britain, as savages without culture when nothing could be further from the truth. they didn't have an established writing tradition and they didn't build big things, like 'we' did (we culturally anglocentric-wise, i am aware that many of us have scandinavian blood).
well, that may be a bit harsh on my part, as beowulf was i believe written down by early english scholars when in fact it was a norse legend. but i remember my grade seven history book (the cover was Agamemnon's avatar) painting the vikings as savage killers and not just settlers fighting over the same land, as there had been norse AND celtic tribes fighting over many terrirtories for centuries, not just the british isles.
seeing the movie 'the 13th warrior' was pretty neat to me, as i've always admired norse culture and was aware that the vikings weren't just mindless killers.
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