🧩 BND Motif Index · M623
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
When a controversial figure dies, people fight over whether to honor the custom of speaking well of the dead or to tell the truth about who they were.
- 1claim filed under it
- 1claim retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
🔗 goes with: 🧩 Final curtain 🧩 Sanewashing
📰 In the news
the stories its claims were told about, the most told first (matched by our tools, so a link can be wrong)
- 📰 Jeffrey Archer, British novelist and politician, dies at 86 2026-10-06 to 2026-10-07
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, newest first, in our words, with where each was heard
- 2026-10-07 “Jeffrey Archer was a liar and a crook, and his death shouldn't be met with eulogies; the BBC's obituary was at least honest about him.” 🧶 people online
M623 · first seen 2026-10-07 · what this is · how the index works