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I: On heroic martyrs and their legacies
History is littered with public figures who were valorized in death simply because they were assassinated early in their careers, but who would have otherwise not amounted to much had fate allowed them to live their full natural lives. Such figures often become the perfect saintly martyrs precisely because they did or stood for so little, thereby making it possible for people to project all manner of aspirations and ideological convictions onto their legacy.