I'm having a real hard time thinking of a leader who wasn't liked by at least some of the people, and it's surely impossible to find any leader liked by literally all people in their country. So clearly it's all shades of gray.

The worst leaders in history, the Hitlers and Stalins, have enjoyed substantial if not majority popular support in their time. Biden and Trump both have millions of Americans who like them. Even Caligula was popular with the general Roman population, if only because he lowered taxes and threw money around. Maybe Ceausescu was close to universally hated, but everybody was afraid to say anything until the preference cascade occurred? But probably even he had genuine supporters.