In all seriousness ... why isn’t Gandhi mentioned in any of the previous responses?
If this man doesn’t qualify as “good person”, I have no idea who whould ...
Well, Gandhi had some controversial bits including racism in South Africa, weird early fascination with fascism, bad treatment of wife etc. Although his moral balance clearly is weighed towards good guy.
Another mention.
SALADIN
Saladin was greatly respected by medieval Christian Europe. Think about this. Leader of Islam who
conquered Jerusalem from Christians (you basically couldn't do worse offence against medieval Christendom) and he was so nice that he was example of great ruler in the same Europe that
regularly launched Crusades against infidels and refused their right to exist.
He actually IIRC allowed Christian population of Jerusalem to leave peacefully and that's
despite the fact that when Christians conquered Jerusalem they butchered Muslim civilians a century ago so he had all pretext for revenge. He exchanged friendly gifts with his mortal enemy Lionheart.
Saladin was so respected by medieval Europe that in Dante's Inferno he was one of 'noble pagans' in Limbo instead of Hell (among great Greek and Roman philosophers) and that's the same literary work that put Muhammad himself near the very bottom of hell.
Honorary mentions:
Pedro II IIRC was so popular in Brazil that significant portion of Brazil public to this day considers overthrowing monarchy and replacing it with republic after his death as not the best move. But I don't know that much about Brazilian history to say more.
Matthias Corvinus not only was generally brilliant monarch in all aspects, there is also some saying among folk population about 'good times of king Corvinus' and he was folk hero in some parts of the kingdom.
Roosevelt, Curtin, Laurier, Wilhelmina and Victoria were probably quite nice people (although I am not very qualified in their regard) but the problem with them is - can we blame them for the bad treatment of minorities/colonies in their empires? In their era basically every country on the planet did it, and last two had limited power in their countries...
On another hand, the most monstrous leaders IMO were Shi Huangdi and Shaka, even by standards of their time and culture. Possibly Catherine di Medici if we blame her for massacre of St Bartholomeu and Genghis Khan if we blame him for mass destruction under Mongol Empire, but those two cases are complicated.
Though I don't follow Canadian politics, but you don't hear bad stuff about Canada (other than native American relations), so they must be doing something right.
)
(warning I could mess up something, but I am almost sure he was mentioned in very positive light). Status of women in Greece was also generally worse than in Persia (it was especially horrible in Athens, seriously status of women here is among the worst I have ever read about anywhere in history).
