Who's wrongly portrayed as a hero?

My understanding is he was celebrated in parts of Britain well before V for Vendetta, mainly for being an anti-establishment figure, and for the method of his death, than for his beliefs.

His fellow plotters were then hanged and quartered. Fawkes was the last to stand on the scaffold. He asked for forgiveness of the King and state, while keeping up his "crosses and idle ceremonies" (Catholic practices). Weakened by torture and aided by the hangman, Fawkes began to climb the ladder to the noose, but either through jumping to his death or climbing too high so the rope was incorrectly set, he managed to avoid the agony of the latter part of his execution by breaking his neck.

and

(>Convicts were fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where they were hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered (chopped into four pieces). )

So he managed to escape his punishment (possibly) by killing himself before he could be further tortured.

Additionally according to wikipedia:

In Britain, 5 November has variously been called Guy Fawkes Night, Guy Fawkes Day, Plot Night[62] and Bonfire Night; the latter can be traced directly back to the original celebration of 5 November 1605.[63] Bonfires were accompanied by fireworks from the 1650s onwards, and it became the custom to burn an effigy (usually the pope) after 1673, when the heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, made his conversion to Catholicism public.[3] Effigies of other notable figures who have become targets for the public's ire, such as Paul Kruger and Margaret Thatcher, have also found their way onto the bonfires,[64] although most modern effigies are of Fawkes.[60]

(Interestingly, but almost completely unrelated:

The "guy" is normally created by children, from old clothes, newspapers, and a mask.[60] During the 19th century, "guy" came to mean an oddly dressed person, but in American English it lost any pejorative connotation, and was used to refer to any male person.

So Guy Fawkes is apparently directly where we get the word guy from.)

Finally,

William Harrison Ainsworth's 1841 historical romance Guy Fawkes; or, The Gunpowder Treason portrays Fawkes in a generally sympathetic light,[66] and transformed him in the public perception into an "acceptable fictional character". Fawkes subsequently appeared as "essentially an action hero" in children's books and penny dreadfuls such as The Boyhood Days of Guy Fawkes; or, The Conspirators of Old London, published in about 1905.

So he was definitely celebrated well before V for Vendetta.

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