This is your fault.
Yes, you.
You bugged me on Twitter, at cons, at every moment you could. “What about Braveheart?” you asked. “Braveheart is accurate, right?”
Well, in all honesty, I have some fond memories of the movie—that “insane Irishman” being one of them—but I also recall plenty that makes my historical heart cringe.
To be fair, though, it’s been many years since I watched Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s Oscar-winning 1995 film starring Mel Gibson as Scottish independence fighter William Wallace. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think it’ll be.
So let me fire up the DVD and see how this goes.
Hold on. Let me grab a Scotch.
Actually, the bottle.
Ok. Ready. Pressing ‘Play.’
So the film opens to scenic footage of Scotland, and even if my family didn’t have Scottish roots I’d be a big fan of such scenery. I love the beauty of stark landscapes, and Scotland has it in spades. On the historical side, though, it’s pretty strange that this opening scenery appears to all be from the West Highlands, which has little to do with Wallace’s life and career.
From what I recall, though, this is going to be the least of the historical sins in Braveheart.
I do have to note, though, giving credit where it’s due, that this lovely footage is set to a marvelous first movement of what will prove to be one of the really great soundtracks. The late James Horner has a long list of terrific soundtracks to his name, and this is easily one of his finest. There’s a chapter of my second Shards novel, Gates of Hell, that was written to one of these tracks on repeat.
Alas, things take a turn for the worse the moment the narrator opens his mouth, after a title card tells us this is Scotland in 1280:
I shall tell you of William Wallace. Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes. The king of Scotland had died without a son, and the king of England, a cruel pagan known as Edward the Longshanks, claimed the throne of Scotland for himself.
Well, movie, I’m neither English nor a hangman, and you’re a bloody liar.
Braveheart is attempting a pre-emptive strike against people pointing out its gross inaccuracies by denigrating the very concept of historical accuracy. As you can imagine, this doesn’t sit well with me.
Look, it’s an old adage that history is written by the victors, and there’s certainly some general truth to the concept. The accounts of events tend to be those of the survivors, and the winners of events tend to be the ones who survive. But we have many accounts of the losers, too, including many from both Scots and English at this period in time. And not all winners’ accounts are false. In the end, historians like me simply have to assume that no single source is telling the unbiased and unvarnished truth. We must be sensitive to the biases of all our sources—losers and winners, hangmen and hanged—not just in how they tell what they tell, but also in how they choose what (and what not) to tell. Our recognition of possible inaccuracy, in other words, is a call for us to be even more vigilant in pursuing accuracy. It is not, dear Braveheart, permission to throw out the very concept.
So back to the movie and this scene set in 1280. Let’s take this line by line, shall we?
The king of Scotland had died without a son—
Pardon me, but no, he hadn’t. In 1280, Scotland’s King Alexander III was still alive, as were both of his sons, Alexander and David. Prince Alexander would die in 1284, David in 1281, and the king himself in 1286.
Jesus, Gibson—::rimshot::—you couldn’t look up like the most basic dates?
—and the king of England, a cruel pagan known as Edward the Longshanks—
Wait, what? A pagan?!?
The popular meaning of the word pagan is “non-Christian.” The earlier Classical Latin meaning was something akin to “peasant.” Neither descriptor in any way applies to King Edward I of England.
As for “Longshanks,” which the narrator says like it’s a condemnation, it meant that he had long legs. Edward was a tall man, it seems, which will not apply to Gibson’s casting of the otherwise awesome Patrick McGoohan in the role.
—claimed the throne of Scotland for himself.
In 1280? Nope. The king and both his sons were alive. And even after King Alexander III followed his sons to the grave in 1286 (he tumbled off his horse in the dark, poor fellow), he had an unborn child as heir. Then, when that child miscarried, there was still an heir: a granddaughter, Margaret of Norway.
But even after she died on her way to Scotland in 1290—the Middle Ages were rough, y’all—King Edward still didn’t claim the throne for himself. Various powerful families vied for control in Scotland, and Edward was brought in to arbitrate the claims. In 1292, through a decision that seems to be fair by the rules of the time, John Balliol was chosen to be king and matters were seemingly settled. Trouble was, Edward viewed the Scottish throne as less lofty to his own, and he wasn’t shy about saying so. Fed up, and pressured by internal forces, Balliol renounced any loyalty to Edward in March 1296. Edward, as was his custom, responded quickly. By July he had seized the important border town of Berwick-on-Tweed, forced Balliol to abdicate the crown, and effectively put Scotland under direct English rule … 16 years after Braveheart claims.
Oh don’t worry. It’s going to get worse. Our narrator continues:
Scotland’s nobles fought him and fought each other over the crown. So Longshanks invited them to talks of truce—no weapons, one page only.
This never happened.
We will subsequently see that all these nobles will be hanged by the “cruel” English. This, too, did not happen. As we’ve already noted, nothing like it even could have happened until 1296-1297, which happens to be when the real William Wallace appears in the real historical record.
When he does show up in our record at this time, Wallace is a grown man leading a local band of rebellious Scots during what historians now refer to as the First War of Scottish Independence. He is not a mullet-haired, dirt-covered kid in rags, who is introduced by our narrator thus:
Among the farmers of that shire was Malcolm Wallace, a commoner with his own lands. He had two sons—John and William.
So much ouch.
First, Medieval folks weren’t filthy. They bathed. They owned combs. They knew how to sew.
Second, we know that William Wallace had at least two brothers, Malcolm and John, that their father was named Alan, and that they were lesser nobility, not hovel-dwelling mud farmers.
The reason we get his pops called Malcolm here instead of Alan is because the movie is interested less in the real William Wallace (who named Alan his dad in a letter from 1297) than it is in a totally fabricated “William Wallace” who is the subject of The Wallace, a verse biography (ahem) written in the 1470s, roughly 170 years after its subject died, by a poet named Blind Harry.
Harry was writing in response to the massive popularity of a work called The Bruce, a verse biography of Robert the Bruce written in 1375 by John Barbour. Robert the Bruce was a real dude, a contemporary of Wallace, the guy whose nickname truly is “Braveheart,” and the one who actually managed to achieve Scottish independence and rule as King Robert I. He’s also the subject of a new Netflix movie, but that’s not what we’re here for today.
Turning back to Harry, you should know that his Wallace is heavily embellished. In fact, it’s mostly bullpucky. He straight-up steals stories from Barbour’s Bruce, changes the names, and gives them to his own hero. Harry wasn’t interested in creating objective history so much as he wanted to inspire his compatriots and create a new myth of Wallace that would push Bruce down a peg or two.
Which brings me to the fact that the narrator of Braveheart turns out to be Robert the Bruce (Angus Macfadyen).
Think about that.
The Wallace steals from The Bruce to create a new, Wallace-centric myth of Scottish independence, and then Braveheart, to squeeze haggis in the wound, makes Robert the Bruce the friggin’ narrator of what is essentially The Wallace on Mad Max steroids stealing his bad-ass and well-earned nickname…and the first thing they have him do is attack history.
The flames. Flames on the sides of my face…
I already said that this early scene with all the Scottish nobles being hanged, for instance, couldn’t have happened in Wallace’s childhood. And that’s true. The story is ultimately based on a brief mention in The Bruce of two nobles being hanged in a barn in Ayr in 1306—a full year after Wallace was executed. Blind Harry took that reference, jacked it up to a whole bunch of Scottish nobles hanged in a barn, and then moved it back into the life of William Wallace, who after it happened locked the guilty English inside the same “Barns of Ayr,” as they came to be known, and burned the building down around them as they screamed. (Harry’s Wallace is a pretty nasty dude.) Braveheart then took Harry’s story and moved it back even further, into Wallace’s childhood and made him the wide-eyed witness to the tragedy.
Ugh.
Folks, I’m like three minutes into this thing, and I haven’t even bothered to talk about the totally nonsense 17th-century kilts that folks are wearing incorrectly.
But, hey, back to the plot and how William Wallace got his start.
The reality of how William Wallace came on the scene is that localized rebel groups popped up almost immediately after King Edward forced Balliol’s abdication, attacking English holdings and personnel. One of these groups conducted the so-called Action at Lanark: the May 1297 assassination of William Heselrig, the English sheriff there. As luck would have it, one of the Englishmen who almost died in the attack, a man named Thomas Grey, would go on to have a son, also named Thomas Grey, who wrote a very useful Anglo-Norman chronicle of the period called the Scalacronica.
We don’t really know why Wallace was in Heselrig’s court that day, but the Scalacronica tells us that a fight broke out. Wallace managed to escape, gathered some more men, then came back and killed the sheriff and a number of other English before setting fire to some buildings.
You’ll not be shocked when I note that this isn’t how Braveheart does it.
After all that opening bollocks, Braveheart’s Wallace starts his rebellion because the young hero (some years after the opening crap) falls in love with and secretly marries a lovely maiden named Murron (Catherine McCormack). Because their secret marriage has denied the sheriff his chance to have sex with her on their wedding night via the right of prima nocte (first night)—a right that Edward has gleefully declared while ickily eyeing Princess Isabella of France (Sophie Marceau)—the sheriff of Lanark gruesomely and publicly executes Murren, which brings mullet-haired Wallace and some of his buddies out to surprise attack the uniformed Englishmen. Wallace destroys the first guy with a ball-and-chain flail, then the rest of the Scots join in and the dastardly sheriff is dead and the rebellion well and truly begun.
My dear movie …
- jus prima nocte wasn’t a thing Edward tried to pull off.
- Princess Isabella was two years old when Wallace killed Heselrig (and nine years old and living in France when the movie later has Gibson having an affair with her).
- Wallace’s love was named Marion, not Murren.
- mullets belong in the 1980s, not the 1280s.
- common soldiers didn’t wear uniforms like this in the 13th century.
- ball-and-chain flail? Really? Are you trying to make me twitchy?
By the gods, the historical cock-ups become almost comical at some point.
Gibson has his Scots paint their faces with blue war-paint, for instance, making them look like World Cup fans.
The rationale, I imagine, is that the ancient people called the Picts are thought to have (maybe) done something like it and the Picts generally lived in what we now identify as “Scotland” and … well, that’s probably all the research that they managed. Problem is, the Scots in origin were invaders from Ireland who had literally driven out the Picts centuries earlier. It’s hard to imagine they would be dressing up like them.
The historical sins of this movie are just so many. I don’t have time to list them all.
Yet I cannot move on without mentioning just one more.
One of the most important things we know Wallace did—by far the most famous thing he did—was to join forces with fellow rebel leader Andrew Moray to defeat an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge on 11 September 1297. This was the high point of Wallace’s career, since he would be defeated at the Battle of Falkirk on 22 July 1298 and spend the rest of his life in exile and on the run until the English captured him and executed him on 23 August 1305.
So, Stirling Bridge. An enormous moment for William Wallace and for Scottish history.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the movie depicted it with—I dunno, just spit-balling here—a bridge?
In short, if you want to know how accurate Braveheart is, here you go:
Wallace and company screaming for “freedom!” in their Pict-paint while dressed up in 17th-century kilts on a bridge-less meadow is the equivalent of me making a movie about the Battle of Bunker Hill in which I dress the American colonials in Star Trek uniforms, paint their faces with made-up “Native American” designs … and then shot the film in a Florida parking lot.
Mike’s Medieval Ratings
Authenticity: 1 of 10 plaid kilts
Just Plain Fun: 7 of 10 insane Irishmen
Michael Livingston is a Professor of Medieval Culture at The Citadel who has written extensively both on medieval history and on modern medievalism. His historical fantasy trilogy set in Ancient Rome, The Shards of Heaven, The Gates of Hell, and The Realms of God, is available from Tor Books.
Do Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age next! You will be spooning your own eyes out by the flat earth scene surprised and delighted!
The Battle of Stirling Bridge not having a bridge was a bridge too far for me…
I supposed it all kind of makes sense if you look at this film as a Scottish rebellion Mary Sue fanfic.
“…is the equivalent of me making a movie about the Battle of Bunker Hill in which I dress the American colonials in Star Trek uniforms, paint their faces with made-up “Native American” designs … and then shot the film in a Florida parking lot.”
I very, very badly want to see this film now.
First, Medieval folks weren’t filthy. They bathed. They owned combs. They knew how to sew.
But did they have mullets?
Braveheart would have been about half an hour shorter without all the slo-mo vanity shots of Gibson.
I’ve always wondered – it would still have been an awesomely bad movie if they had gotten the historical details right, but what was the up side of doing it wrong? Is it somehow more expensive to make a movie in which the narrator says “…in 1296 etc..” rather than “…in 1280”? I mean, I get that Gibson didn’t care, but if you don’t care, is there any difference in getting it right?
This does make me curious how the Scots of Wallace’s time saw themselves, origin-wise. The Kingdom of Alba came from the merger of the Picts and the Irish Scotti of Dal Riada. Would Wallace and Co. have seen themselves as descendants of the Picts? Or simply Gaels? Or something else entirely?
Patrick McGoohan was pretty fantastic, though.
And I want to see that version of Bunker Hill, too!!!!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Wait, you just stopped here? There’s so much more!
Patrick McGoohan is always fantastic.
I don’t care what you say, good sir! This movie gave us “FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!” and my skin still hasn’t recovered from the goosebumps.
@6, I never understand the psychology of Hollywood execs’ stubborn determination to just be wrong when it would cost nothing to be right. Is it an act of sadistic power? I don’t get it.
An example that baffles me is the decision to make puppet wild raccoons and skunks–North American animals–for the live action 101 Dalmations, set and filmed in Europe. There’s all these British actors and crew, did all of them shut up and take the money? Or did they have a word with the bosses, who then said “we do what we want!” ?
Also, I just read the last paragraph to my wife. She hasn’t stopped laughing…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
William Wallace did have a brief cameo in the new Netflix film you mentioned. Well, a couple of portions of him appeared in various locations, at least.
Surely you didn’t expect any undertaking involving Mel Gibson to be either accurate or honest.
Quoth Del: “An example that baffles me is the decision to make puppet wild raccoons and skunks–North American animals–for the live action 101 Dalmations, set and filmed in Europe. There’s all these British actors and crew, did all of them shut up and take the money? Or did they have a word with the bosses, who then said “we do what we want!” ?”
Tell me, how often in your job do you tell your bosses that they’re completely wrong? If you do, how often does it end well for you? :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
If it didn’t end well for me. I’d call the police beforehand
;)
Dipping into politics a bit, but the modern scottish referenda for independence got a nice shot in the arm when this released…wonder if there was a little cross-suggestion there (and who inspired who)
There are racoons in Europe now, though I don’t know of any skunks. They probably are less attractive as pets and therefore less likely to escape or be released by owners who realize they aren’t that great as pets after all.
I did love that Irishman, though. Almost as much as I love Joseph Gilgun on Preacher (to be honest, pretty much anywhere). It’s a close race.
And despite all of its inaccuracies it’s still a damn good movie!
Can the losers:
(1) write histories, and
(2) lie in those histories?
I, a southerner, say yes.
krad, regularly. What they mostly do is ignore me, which is one of the possibilities I mentioned.
The other possibility was that the bosses were “innocent” because nobody told them they were wrong. But that’s not my experience.
Barbour himself took a lot of liberties with the historical record as I understand it. That new Netflix movie, Outlaw/King, does a much better job (by Hollywood standards) of hewing to the letter and the spirit of Scottish history (in my pretty limited understanding of it). It just pains me that it winds up being the weaker movie (though by no means bad). Braveheart is a great movie, sure, but it always, always takes the Hollywood easy road.
https://hillbillyhighways.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/movies-braveheart-outlaw-king/
“Squeeze haggis in the wound…” Have to love the thought of that!
I’m with #4.
I’d watch that movie. Krad was right. I couldn’t stop laughing.
@21, Amen, H.P.! James Cabell, a southerner himself, observed that the various memoirs of politicians and generals of the ‘Lost Cause’ made it look like the Confederacy had been governed and defended solely by the mentally disabled. Robert E. Lee had the good sense and good taste NOT to write a memoir. He was pretty much alone in that.
‘Braveheart’ covers what is actually a very interesting and complex period of Scottish history which is tremendous fun to anybody into intricate genealogies – like me. Basically the senior line of the Scottish Royal family, the last representative being the Maid of Norway, petered out. Unluckily the junior line, The Earls of Huntingdon, had ended in 1232 with the death of the last Earl John le Scot (who BTW had an elder brother named Robert who disappeared from the record). But John had a sister, Margaret, who married Alan Lord of Galloway and was the mother of his heiress Devorguilla who married John de Balliol and together they founded Balliol college, chiefly famous as the Alma Mater of Lord Peter Wimsey. So you can see that from the point of view of primogeniture John Balliol, son of Devorguila, was a perfectly reasonable choice as the next King of Scotland. But Margaret had a younger sister, Isobel, who married Robert the Brus IV and was the great grandmother of Robert the Bruce.
And you thought the Wars of the Roses were bad.
Let me just say , I love it when you talk dirty about movies.
“I the most wanted man on my island, except I’m not on my island, of course. More’s the pity.”
“Your island”? You mean Ireland?”
“Yeah. It’s mine.”
I’m going to Ireland for the first time this April. I’m going to try to trick a local Irishman into doing this line with me ;)
Consider, also, the accuracies of this reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor. Like Braveheart, not particularly accurate, but very fun.
So was there any scotch left in the bottle after you finished viewing this movie?
I love the fact that Gibson had a statue of himself dressed as Wallace from the movie erected next to the 18th century Wallace monument in Scotland. Authorities had to place a fence around the statue because locals kept defacing it.
Those crazy Scots!
@30 It doesn’t sound like he finished the movie. Maybe he passed out after the battle of “Stirling Bridge.”
@29 — Arguably, that’s more accurate than Braveheart. Or than the movie Pearl Harbor.
I had some very interesting online discussions with a lowland Scot who told us all in detail what was wrong with Braveheart starting with the fact that William Wallace was a lowlander and a KNIGHT. She was extremely vehement. I didn’t blame her.
I love your posts and read each one, and this one was very good too.
However, I’m disappointed you stuck so much to the “history book” inaccuracies and didn’t delve into the costuming/weapons stuff as much as you usually do.
I was looking forward to, for instance, hearing your commentary on how all 5’10”, 180 pound William Wallace swung a 6-foot-long claymore in one hand.
Not only how the physics of that are absurd, but whether a sword like that even existed during the supposed timeframe of the movie. That sort of thing.
So I really kinda wish you hadn’t looked at this movie as being about a real historical time period with a real historical figure and rather treated it like what it is – a “medieval” fictional story about a bunch of guys who happen to share the same name (and not much else) with historical figures.
Still enjoyed reading it though. Hope you at least enjoyed the scotch.
Without this movie we might not have finally got a devolved Parliament in Scotland, prying at least a few powers back from the Westminster one (and that is a significant deal, since the imbalance of numbers meant that in the previous Westminster system it mattered not a jot which way Scottish MPs voted or even if they did). In fact this movie’s legacy was so significant that David “Lets Call A Public Referendum to Try and Settle Internal Conservative Party Squabbles” Cameron refused to allow Outlander to be broadcast in Scotland in the run up to the independence referendum in case access to far more historically accurate history would lead to inflamed passions and an informed vote. It gave us a voice, even a quiet and limited one again, and shone a spotlight under Westminster hypocrisy.
For those reasons alone I will give this movie many passes on historical accuracy, forever. It is become part of history, even if it wasn’t historically accurate.
#Aye.
My favorite comment about this movie will always be Roger Ebert’s: “It wasn’t even the best kilt movie of the year.” By which he meant, “Rob Roy” was a way better movie. I agree.
So what the heck’s a Bruce anyway? Did he claim the title as Prime Bruce? (Monty Python’s Bruce sketch pops top mind here.)
“Scotland’s nobles fought him and fought each other over the crown. So Longshanks invited them to talks of truce—no weapons, one page only.”
This is roughly where Outlaw King starts. The movie also features Chris Pine bathing nekkid, proving that there was washing in medieval times. For equal time nudity, Florence Pugh’s nipples, which seem to pop up in anything she does, clothes or no clothes. Also appearing, a cameo by Wallace’s torso. No crazy Irishman, but a crazy Scots analogue.
For me, the laugh out loud moment in Braveheart was the movie’s assertion that Wallace fathered the next King of England, establishing his lineage because the Prince preferred men and wouldn’t touch the Princess. Howlingly bad historical fantasy.
I had a coworker a while back whose grandmother said they were related to Wallace. I sincerely hope Mel Gibson never meets her grandmother. She was not happy with this movie and would have been glad to prove the warrior spirit of Scotland lives on.
“Braveheart’s Wallace starts his rebellion because the young hero […] falls in love with and secretly marries a lovely maiden named Murron (Catherine McCormack).”
I remember thinking that Mel Gibson was too old for that part of the role.
@36/random22: Are you Scottish?
@38/Saavik: ““Rob Roy” was a way better movie.” – Oh yes.
Without this movie we might not have finally got a devolved Parliament in Scotland
What? No. Devolution (or rather a referendum on it) was established Labour Party policy well before Braveheart. Remember the CSA and the SCC, both of which had strong Labour support. We’d have had a parliament anyway, whether or not the deranged Australian supported it.
refused to allow Outlander to be broadcast in Scotland in the run up to the independence referendum in case access to far more historically accurate history
Outlander??? Well, more accurate than Braveheart, I suppose. Still not really a load-bearing structure.
Heartily agree with all the post – especially the absence of a bridge. Stirling Bridge is an inherently cinematic battle – anyone could understand why the Scots won. They waited till the English army was halfway across the bridge and then attacked, so the larger enemy army was split. It would have been amazing – armoured knights and horses falling into the river, fighting in the water, the bridge swaying under its load. Instead of which they had a lot of extras running about in a field.
And the Inexplicable Irishmen too. What were they doing there? Nothing against Irishmen, but there weren’t any on the Scots side. There just weren’t. There were Irish soldiers involved in other battles of the Wars of Independence, but on the English side.
And you can’t ride a horse in a kilt. Kilts are for walking. Even when kilts were invented (some 400 years after Wallace and in a completely different part of the country) Highlanders didn’t ride in them; they wore trousers to ride.
I’ve never seen this movie, despite almost certainly having Scottish ancestry (our surname is Scottish, apparently we even have our own tartan and coat of arms). I also know very little about this particular era of history. My knowledge doesn’t extend much before the reign of Henry VIII, and even when it does it’s mostly limited to literature. I could probably tell you a few things about Geoffrey Chaucer, for example. But I feel like even I would have picked up on at least a few of the historical absurdities here.
This does make me curious how the Scots of Wallace’s time saw themselves, origin-wise. The Kingdom of Alba came from the merger of the Picts and the Irish Scotti of Dal Riada. Would Wallace and Co. have seen themselves as descendants of the Picts? Or simply Gaels? Or something else entirely?
Neither, I think. William Wallace was a lowlander, born somewhere near modern Glasgow. He would not have spoken Gaelic as a first language; Gaelic is the language of the north and west of Scotland, and the other Celtic languages of the region like Cumbric were extinct before Wallace was born. He would have spoken Scots, a language related to English, which had displaced Cumbric and Gaelic in the 12th century; also possibly some French and a little Latin.
His king, Alexander III, described himself on his seal as “King of the Scots and Britons” so there was obviously still a sense that Scotland was made up of two peoples, the Scots who had come over from Ireland and the native Britons. Both groups had originally been Celtic speakers, but those in the lowlands and borders had abandoned Celtic languages by this point (especially the nobility). Given where he lived, Wallace would probably have considered himself a Briton rather than a Scot, but that’s a guess.
One of the things that happened during the Wars was the development of a sense of Scottish nationhood; no subsequent king called himself anything but “King of Scots” and the Declaration of Arbroath (which read) refers to Scots and Scotland only.
me making a movie about the Battle of Bunker Hill in which I dress the American colonials in Star Trek uniforms, paint their faces with made-up “Native American” designs … and then shot the film in a Florida parking lot.
Or perhaps making a movie about the American Revolution in which all the plantation slaves were happy and loyal to their masters, and the rebels were stirred into revolt by horrific British atrocities.
Oh, wait, Gibson made that one too.
(Shame, really, when the real story is much better; I’d watch a movie about Colonel Tye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Tye)
@41. Yes, born and raised.
@44/42
“William Wallace was a lowlander, born somewhere near modern Glasgow”
Just outside Kilmarnock, in fact. About 20 miles South of Glasgow, in Ayrshire.
Regarding the Referendum, while it was Labour Party policy to hold one, their enthusiasm for it was never exactly top notch (as witnessed by the shenanigans where they mucked about with the rules to try an ensure a permanent Labour majority, refusing to call it a parliament and going with “Scottish Executive” as a name, and also hobbling it by trying to hold back as many powers as possible). Braveheart, and the publicity around it, played a massive part in getting the Scottish public on board.
I find it a little odd that this article is written as if no one else has ever thought to point out the ridiculous historical inaccuracies in Braveheart – this is all pretty well-covered ground. Also, while some of it is “just plain fun,” I always found the stereotypical, homophobic portrayal of Edward II offensive.
While I’m not from Scotland myself, I definitely find myself nodding in agreement to your points, random22. When I worked in Aberdeen for a few years, I found myself a bit surprised by how many people in my office loved Braveheart. One of my colleagues actually had the “freedom” speech as his ringtone!! So it makes sense that the movie played a large part in stirring up public sentiment for the referendum.
Wallace was a well-educated ethncally-Norman gentleman; we know he wrote Latin because we have a letter of his in Latin. I’m sure he spoke French at court and Latin when he met the Pope. I don’t think we know for sure he could speak Scots, but it doesn’t seem likely to me that he couldn’t.
I suspect a lot of the stories about how Normans couldn’t speak the local vernacular were just them feigning ignorance for the sake of signalling gentility, like claiming not to be able to get a good night’s sleep on a mattress with a pea under it.
@47, homophobic, and also racially-essentialist. The attitude is that the English are all effeminate and impotent, and the best thing you can do for an Englishwoman, or any woman unlucky enough to be married to an Englishman, is to knock her up so she knows what a real man is like. Irvine Welsh, and his character Renton in Trainspotting, has the same attitude, as do many Americans.
In addition, the English in ths film are a sort of inherently and irredeemably evil orc, such that if some Englishmen do you wrong, then seeking to kill other Englishmen, lots of them, is a reasonable thing to put on your bucket list.
I dunno. That last paragraph sounds like something a LOT of people would say about the British State
There is good reason to believe Edward II was attracted to men. This did not keep him from fathering at least one bastard and doing his dynastic duty with Isabella of France, though the experience may have been less than satisfactory for both of them. The real problem was Edward, like James I later, was a lousy picker and tended to lavish titles and power on his boyfriends.
This whole series of articles is hilarious and awesome. Thanks!!!
I will forever appreciate this movie if only because it gave us the South Park Turkey Rebellion.
Besides Gibson, some of the blame for this film must also fall upon Braveheart’s screenwriter – a fantastically dim individual by the name of Randall Wallace. Yes, “Wallace” – and here we see the root of the problem. In an interview (presented in a History Channel docco about the inaccuracies of Braveheart) he expressed his belief that he is a direct descendant of William Wallace, and stated that no amount of evidence to the contrary would ever change his mind on that point because it was a “greater truth” that did not depend on mere facts. So the earlier comment about “medieval self-insert Mary Sue fan fiction” is very much to the point: Randall Wallace was consciously and deliberately puffing up the legend, not of himself exactly, but of someone he imagined to be his ancestor.
Bonus round! Can you guess what other well-known “historical” movie Randall Wallace wrote? That’s right: Pearl Harbor.
Wallace was a well-educated ethncally-Norman gentleman
I think you’re confusing him with Bruce – we know very little about Wallace’s ancestry but I don’t think there’s any reason to think he had much Norman ancestry. “Wallace” is probably a Celtic name. Robert Bruce was a de Brus, which is a Norman name.
While I’m sure it’s true that the Scots in Wallace’s crew did not paint themselves blue like Picts, doesn’t the Native American cosplay at the Boston Tea Party suggest it’s not entirely implausible?
Randall Wallace also wrote and directed The Man In The Iron Mask, and wrote Hacksaw Ridge. I haven’t seen the former in a long time (20 years), but I’m sure it’s full of innacuracies, and now I am less motivated to watch Hacksaw Ridge.
@51, that’s not quite the same thing. If several decades of biker stereotypes have taught us anything, it’s that “gay man” is not “weakling”. In the Vorkosigan books, nobody thinks it’s safe to mess with Aral just because he had a relationship with Ges, nor did anyone mess with Caesar, or even James I.
The line the Braveheart film is taking is not “gay man”. It’s “sissy”, “faggot” (in the sense if a bundle of dry breakable twigs, a thin man), “pansy”, “limp wrist”, “nancy boy”, “like a woman”, “a woman to men”, “poof”, “cuckold”, “impotent”, “can’t fight”, “can’t get his wife pregnant”, “can’t keep a real man away from his wife”, “can’t satisfy his wife like a real man can”. The slurs are homophobic, but the homophobic slurs are about masculine prowess. As Renton says of the English in Trainspotting, “effete arseholes!”.
Picts didn’t paint themselves blue. They may have had the occasional tattoo, but that’s not the same thing.
Hi, I don’t have anything to add about the many hilarious historical inaccuracies of Braveheart, I just want to share this (tangentially related) song because it fucking rocks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi7xBe5-M8k
Cheers!
On the question of Wallace’s ethnicity, Wikipedia traces his ancestry (great-great-grandfather) to a Welshman who came north in the train of a proto-Stewart when David I was settling Anglo-Normans (and Flemings) in the lowlands. (The other theory is that the name alludes to Strathclyde British ancestry.)
@54, ironically, if Randall Wallace is descended from anyone involved in this affair, it’s Edward II. It can be shown mathematically that a good proportion of the entire Anglosphere is descended from Edward III, although most of us who are not Benedict Cumberbatch have no documentation for it. If Wallace was the daddy of EIIIR, that would get Randall Wallace in with a good chance. Since it’s physically impossible for that to be true, he has to settle for the logical candidate, EIIR.
The story I heard was that the the family were from Oswestry, and before that came over with William the Conqueror. I wonder if the “aboriginal Clydesider Wallace” idea is coming from the same wellspring as the “working class hero Wallace” idea. Like I say, landowner, knighted, named after the Norman Conqueror (just as the Bruce has the equally Norman name of “Robert”), educated in Latin. He signed himself “le Waleys” in French and “Wallensis” in Latin, if I remember right, and the king of France called him “le Walois”.
Whether Wallace means “Briton” or “Welshman”, either way it’s not Celtic: it’ll be from the English word waelisc.
Isn’t funny that Robin Hood used to get written as posh, when the original ballad character wasn’t, and now Wallace gets written as not posh, when the historical Wallace was?
This line always amazed me. Who thought it plausible to describe a medieval King of England as, of all things, a pagan? I suppose if Randall Wallace wrote a remake of Downfall, Adolf Hitler would be described as a Communist.
Like those idiots that say the nazis were socialists because it was the National Socialist Workers Party.
This movie has so much to answer for. Not least of which is the stretch velvet on all the ladies.
@59: I know. Maybe I should have said “faux picts.” I imagine the Indian garb of the American rebels of the Boston Tea Party wasn’t particularly accurate either.
There’s some memes going around that tickle people in an “everything you know is wrong” way, and one of them is that the Angles and other invaders of Britain in the fifth century were pagan barbarians at a time when the native British were Christians. This is true, but they were Christian themselves by the time the seventh century was out, and were Christianising the Danes by the time the ninth century was done. One of the grievances the English had against the Vikings was the damage they did to English literature, destroying books.
I can imagine the Normans (themselves well Christianised by the eleventh century when they conquered England) slightly pushing the idea that the English were not quite up to civilised European mainland Christian standards, but not pushing hard or for long, and in any case not still doing so by the end of the thirteenth century when Braveheart takes place. By then England was long theirs and they would be ashamed to think it wasn’t fully civilised. In any case Edward was a Plantagenet more than he was an Englishman, so to call him a pagan is to suggest mainland Europe was pagan!
You’ll have noticed each century I name is two centuries after the last, and I stepped through a few of them. They’re each the difference between 1776 and 1976, or 1818 and 2018. Just to give you an idea of the gulf of centuries between “pagan Angles” and the time of Edward I. Anyway, the Scots were no more advanced than the English at any given time.
Did Randall Wallace internalise the pagan English narrative and not notice the time difference? Or, again, as with examples above, do they just not care who calls them on bad history in their films, as long as they can paint a picture in emotive terms?
Two centuries is the time between Chaucer and Shakespeare, or Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Four centuries is the time between Chaucer and Austen, or Shakespeare and Irvine Welsh. Eight centuries, the time between the pagan Angles and Edward I, is the time between Chaucer, and Irvine Welsh’s literary successor two centuries from now, in 2218.
In 1990, in the early days of me having access to the Internet, I fell into correspondence with a Humanities student at Baylor University in Texas, who was big on African civilisations, and who informed me that the British only learned about civilisation from going on the Crusades and bringing skills back. The Brits had been hunter-gatherers to that point.
I checked to see they knew what “hunting-gathering” meant in terms of social organisation and means of sustenance, and they did.
All I have to contribute was that Princess Isabella was a pretty awesome character, even if she was wildly historically accurate, And although her crushed, stretch velvet cotehardie are laughable, she did look spectacularly regal and commanding in the parlay scene when she is wearing the dual royal tabard and is properly wimpled, veiled and crowned.
I could totally see this woman overthrowing her husband and becoming known as the “She-Wolf of France,”
Thank you! I watched the movie with friends and they finally told me to stuff it. As in stop muttering “This is so so baaaaad!” _Taught HS history and take great umbrage when it is done so wrong.
There are only two movies that I seen in my entire life (and I’m 70) that I hate so much that even thinking about them makes me angry. Alas, I saw both of them in the theater and paid for them. One is Forest Gump. The other is this loathsome ahistorical piece of torture porn. I clearly remember walking out of the theater in NJ with the woman I was seeing at the time and saying to her that Gibson had something Seriously Wrong with Him. I’ve never seen anything that he was involved with since, and I never will.
I once got VERY drunk in Stirling Castle (I was at Stirling University for an academic conference, and the dinner at Stirling Castle had an open bar.) I wandered drunkenly around the castle, including wandering into some places in which I probably wasn’t allowed to be, but I saw some wonderful tapestries and old furniture. The dinner opened with one of the hosts of the conference wearing a kilt and playing bagpipes.
The next day (hung-over) I went to the National Wallace Monument, where I saw the Wallace Sword. The monument is on the top of a hill and I got very lost (remember, I was very hung-over) on the way down. However, I saw some INCREDIBLE vistas and met some friendly sheep.
After the conference, I spent a couple of days in Edinburgh, and ate some of the BEST food. I will admit that I am not a fan of haggis or of blood pudding. However, everything else I ate was wonderful. I met up with some of the other conference attendees at a restaurant where I ate “banger and mash,” which was just WONDERFUL. Oh, and the candy! I can now say with authority that U.S. candy STINKS. I brought home an entire bag of candy.
I also drank some “real” Scotch (this was after I’d recovered from the hang-over) – I went into a bar in Edinburgh and asked the bartender to serve me something I wouldn’t be able to drink in the U.S. I bought a bottle of “Monkey Shoulder” Scotch for my partner – I am kind of sad to say that now it’s not that hard to find in the U.S., but at the time, it was impossible to get outside of Scotland.
I never thought “Braveheart” was anything other than fiction, and I am not nuts about Mel GIbson (and wasn’t even before the controversy about him). But I would go back to Scotland in the blink of an eye. It is a beautiful place and has a long history that I don’t have as a U.S.ian.
PS: I DID encounter some people in Scotland whose speech I literally couldn’t understand. We stayed in dorm rooms during the conference, and some Stirling residents worked as staff. Apparently, after getting very drunk in Stirling Castle (I do kind of love that I can say I have gotten drunk in a castle), I loudly receited “The Raven” by Poe and needed some help getting back to my room. I tried VERY MUCH to thank the staff person who helped me, but I couldn’t understand ANYTHING she was sayin
Re: the total lack of bridges…I dunno, maybe this was the a-bridged version of the battle?
It’s like Pearl Harbor with no harbor, Fort Sumter with no fort.
The Ius primae noctis (do get the Latin straight!) is totally a modern invention. Thanks for a wonderful comment. Would you care to do one on the Life of Christ?
Belatedly answering @39’s what the heck’s a Bruce anyway?, the family was “de Brus”, from Brus in Normandy, on a peninsula few miles over the English Channel from the Isle of Wight. It’s the peninsula Jersey and Guernsey lie just off.
i love braveheart and don’t care one iota that it’s not historically accurate. I think Mel read the poets version got inspired and made a movie he wanted to tell.
Sometimes the fiction that it’s biography adds to the story, take the book Memoirs of a Geisha- I finish it and find out that it wasn’t real, does that mean it’s still not a heeat story?
Oops – meant -great story
Oh, story about the filming of the Battle of Stirling Bridge and why there isn’t actually a bridge in it. Story goes when they were filming it was too difficult to move the cameras and get the armies on an actual bridge, so they instead went for a big flat field (much easier). Upon encountering the problems of filming, Gibson (supposedly) remarked on how difficult it was and how the British Army couldn’t move on a bridge or fight properly. “Yes,” the Location scout (who was supposedly Scottish) said, “That’s what the Army thought during the actual battle too.”
@54 “he expressed his belief that he is a direct descendant of William Wallace, and stated that no amount of evidence to the contrary would ever change his mind on that point”
This just makes me laugh so hard I can barely write a reply. Thank you for this.
But the Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought on Breeds Hill. So maybe not the best example.
But it was definitely on a hill.
@51 I would have had a lot less of an issue if they had portrayed Edward II as possibly gay, instead of portraying him as a weak, cowardly, prancing, lisping, effeminate stereotype. Casting Paul Lynde would have been more subtle.
@80 surely the problem with that is that the film was promoted as being the actual story of William Wallace though. Like many films that are supposed real accounts but are not actually accurate, people watch them and believe that they are the actual truth. I think, that was the point of the article, that it is just as easy to research a correct version of the story than to research a tale written 200 years later,or at the least put a disclaimer somewhere that this is based on a poem rather than actual facts.
Just think, a movie that is full of exciting battle scenes and political intrigue and is ALSO, historically as accurate as possible. Oh, how one can dream.
As far as we can tell from the historical record Edward I’s main problem with his heir was his extravagance with money. Edward II is described by contemporaries as being tall, strong and handsome. He doesn’t seem to have enjoyed aristocratic pastimes like hunting but got his exercise doing things like rowing and rough gardening work. Whatever his sexuality the real issue the nobility had with Edward II was the disproportionate power he gave his favorites.
Oh my god. I hate this film. I was 12 when it was released and even then I knew it was basically a fluff piece for advancing the egos of Mel Gibson and Scottish seperatists, full of gross innaccuracies and hilariously blatant fabrications.
The world went nuts for it, but I have always detested it and the terrible things it stands for.
@79. Del: Outlaw King’s subtitles correctly render “de Brus,” which makes it funnier that the article was corrupted somewhere along the way and he became THE Bruce not “of Bruce.”
Can I put in a request for such a review of the forthcoming “Mary Queen of Scots”? I haven’t seen it yet, but note from the trailer that Mary has a Scottish accent and (of course) at least 1 face-to-face encounter with Elizabeth I.
“which makes it funnier that the article was corrupted somewhere along the way and he became THE Bruce not “of Bruce.”
Not a corruption – in Scots the chief of a family is called “The [family name]”. So the head of the Macleod family is known as The Macleod.
Robert de Brus in French, Robert Bruce in Scots, and, since he was head of the Bruce family, he was Robert the Bruce. His brother was plain Edward Bruce.
If you’re taking requests, I’d like to see your assessment of “Flesh+Blood”, the Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh movie which, being set in 1501, is basically right at the very end of the Medieval Period.
I think we all owe Michael an apology for inflcting this movie on him. And maybe a replacement bottle of Scotch. Can anybody think of really good medieval movie for him to watch next? Pity he has already done A Knight’s Tale.
@93 Have we done “The Lion In Winter (1968)” yet?
I’d be interested in Kingdom of Heaven (the extended version).
@76 Well done. You have my utmost respect.
@91. ajay: Never heard of any other clan leader referred to as THE anything, but guess that’s my limited experience. “de Brus” still means of or from a place called Brus. It’s not a definite article. So still sounds funny to my ear that it would change.
“Hi, I’m Bob. THE Bob!”
Since some regionalism and English dialects don’t pronounce the voiced /th/ — think of the stereotypical Bronx or New Jersey accent — I can see someone from an area whose population pronounces “the” with the voiced /th/ thinking “ignorant yahoos” and writing “Robert the Bruce” instead of “Robert de Bruis.
“de Brus” still means of or from a place called Brus. It’s not a definite article.
Sure, in French. But in English/Scots it dropped the “de” and became a surname, like lots of other Norman family names derived from placenames. First name Robert, surname Bruce (also spelt Brus). Robert Bruce.
And it’s fairly common to refer to people as “the [surname]”. The title of Barbour’s long verse biography of Robert Bruce (from the late 14th century) is “The Bruce” and Barbour throughout refers to “the Douglas”, “the Comyn”, “the Cliffurd” and so on.
The idea that it’s a corruption of “de Brus” doesn’t hold water, because Sir James Douglas wasn’t Sir James de Douglas and he still gets called “the Douglas”. Not to mention that Barbour never talks about Robert’s brother, Edward Bruce (Edward de Brus in French) as “Edward the Bruce”.
@97
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45518505
Article date:
14 September 2018
Ooh Lion in Winter! There are some historical issues but who cares?! Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn chewing up all the available scenery, sweet!
Kingdom of Heaven is almost as egregious as Braveheart but at least nobody paints themselves blue.
Kingdom of Heaven does have one of my favorite scores, at least.
My biggest complaint is that Orlando Bloom is entirely too pretty to be a blacksmith.
Mine is that Balian of Ibelin was totally not a Blacksmith. And Sibylla of Jerusalem was totally in love with her husband Guy of Lusignan. We could throw in the fact that while Saladin accepted ransom for some of the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem he sold others as slaves.
@98. swampyankee: ” I can see someone from an area whose population pronounces “the” with the voiced /th/ thinking “ignorant yahoos” and writing “Robert the Bruce” instead of “Robert de Bruis.”
Or if you’re from Chicago, go the other way and make “the” into “de”. De Bearss!
@99. ajay: Not an expert on this, but using “de” in French was something nobles did, similar to how Germans used “von” mostly for aristocracy. It’s a “nobiliary particle” (had to look that up). As I said, Outlaw King correctly renders it as de Brus. As the Norman invaders assimilated into England, so did the “normanisms” of their language. I can see the sound “de” becoming “the” and retaining its connotation of nobility.
@100. random: there hasn’t been a “The” in 300 years? no wonder I didn’t know about it.
@12, @16:
A few years ago I was in a community theater production and the script included a line where a character (not mine) claims his name was changed at Ellis Island.
Me: That’s wrong – immigration officials at Ellis Island didn’t make people change their names.
Director: Do you think anyone in the audience will know the difference?
Me: Probably not…
(The line stayed in.)
@104: Back in the middle ages, being called “de X” or “von X” meant you or your ancestors were from X, and didn’t indicate nobility. More recently, it came to have that connotation.
As the Norman invaders assimilated into England, so did the “normanisms” of their language. I can see the sound “de” becoming “the” and retaining its connotation of nobility.#
The problem with your theory here is that Robert the Bruce/Robert de Brus had a brother called Edward, and as far as I know he was called “Edward de Brus” and “Edward Bruce” but never “Edward the Bruce”. I also don’t think you will be able to point to any other examples of “de” becoming “the” in England or Scotland in that period. Hugh de Cressingham, for example, Wallace’s opponent and the English treasurer of Scotland, was never to my knowledge called “Hugh the Cressingham” though I’m sure he was occasionally “Hugh Cressingham”.
As Julie says, being a “de” or a “von” – or indeed a “da” or a “di” or an “of” – in the Middle Ages didn’t mean “this person is a noble”. As often as not it meant “this person hasn’t got a surname so we’re just going to use their birthplace to distinguish them from all the other people with the same name”. William of Ockham, for example. Leonardo da Vinci. Giotto di Bondone.
More recently it has become a signifier of nobility and various unscrupulous people have vonned or de’d themselves to pretend to a status they do not possess.
@104 Sorry, I wasn’t clear, there hasn’t been a “The Buchanan” specifically in that time. That is just Clan Buchanan, it has been in use in other Clans though (it is complicated, genealogy in Scottish Clans is a tricky era) with “The [Clan Name]” being a standard format for the recognised Clan Heads; and it has been in use informally in ordinary families in the Ayrshire and Glasgow areas too; although with the latter it seems to have mostly died out in the generations born since the 1960s/70s :(
Further to 107, there are still places in Scotland where it’s customary to use the name of your farm as your surname, regardless of what your real surname is. So if you’re John Fraser and you buy Bridge Farm, everyone will call you John Bridge.
I played bagpipes for years, and the first thing I noticed about the sound track- while haunting- the pipes playing were uillean Irish pipes, not the Great Highland Bagpipe. Well screwed up, Mel.
@107. ajay: ” in the Middle Ages didn’t mean “this person is a noble”
It wasn’t proof of nobility, but particularly in France, it was associated with families of French nobility. Non-noble families that claimed a place name often attached the de, du, or d’ directly, as in “Dupont.” After the Norman Conquest, this was carried over to England. So while it was used by non-nobles as a signifier of place, “I am of Brus,” clearly the Brus family claimed nobility. We’re still in the Middle Ages here, right?
Do Outlaw / King next! It’s a spiritual sequel to this movie!
@105/Julie_K I don’t know about Ellis Island, but there are some cases when the people that work recording immigrants’ entrance make a mistake and that ends forcing people to adopt that name. My own last name is an example. They didn’t understand my grandfather’s handwriting. Even if it was technically a mistake, it was easier to change the marriage and birth certificates that the immigration record.
I owe the spelling of my surname to a county clerk who recorded my great great great grandfather’s land claim. He spelled it like it sounded to him. Works for us.
That was fun. Now do Outlaw King. I’ll wait right here.
Yes, Outlaw King, please. Perfect follow-up article.
palindrom310 @@@@@ 113:
There’s a pretty nice blog post from the New York Public Library that uses some books by actual historians to explain how that’s not really true: “Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was)”.
At Ellis Island (which undoubtedly processed the majority of immigrants coming to the US while it was open), officials did not write down the names of immigrants. Instead, they compared what immigrants said with the manifests provided by the shipping companies, which were generally based on names written down by ticket agents back in Europe. Occasionally, if the immigrant convinced them the name was spelled wrong, they attempted to correct it, but in the overwhelming majority of cases they left the names unchanged. (So some name changes may well have happened in Europe, when a ticket agent wrote down something wrong, or even when a ticket buyer supplied a different name.)
And, in any case, there was no practical way for the Federal government of the 1890s or 1920s to enforce a “name change”.
@117/PeterErwin
Thank you for the information! It seems the Ellis island practice is good way to avoid the issues with my last name. I probably should have mentioned in my first comment that I’m not American, well, United States American, I’m South American :)
Okay, okay, okay. But is the scene where the bray farts turn around and flash their brightest vertical smiles to the enemy accurate? Did they possess such advanced mooning technology at the time?
I’m a fan of (some of) Bernard Cornwell’s historical fiction. He clearly had an issue with Braveheart. In his Grail Quest series about an English longbowman, a minor noble, nervous in advance of a battle between the English and the Scottish, comments, ‘I heard that they paint their faces blue…” To which his liege responds, “Where did you get that stupid idea?”
I’m only paraphrasing and likely mis-remembering details but it was a laugh out loud moment.
Thank you for writing this. I have long known that historically Braveheart was bunk, although most of my ire was directed at the stupid romance with the French princess, but you still pointed out errors I was unaware of. I am not Mel Gibson’s greatest admirer, and (Irishman aside) I did not think this was a great movie, just a fairly standard high budget costume drama. The lack of historical accuracy in novels is a particular bugaboo of mine. (I half killed myself on the research for Mirror Maze.) I gave up on it in movies log ago.
For the record, the awesome Patrick McGoohan was just over 6 feet two inches tall, so he was definitely well cast as Longshanks.
Well, when the movie is written by an American screenwriter named Wallace, you can expect a bit of bias.
Most of Braveheart was shot in Ireland, which offended more than a few Scots at the time. Rob Roy, on the other hand (while guilty of its own historical inaccuracies), was largely filmed in Scotland and made me miss home much more.
Thank you so much for this!
I majored in European history in college, and as I was about to embark on a semester-long term at U of Edinburgh, my advisor had me write a research paper on Braveheart- which was awesome, and involved watching the movie 3 times with a laptop and a bottle of scotch. While I enjoy this film, it has some of the most ridiculous and historically inaccurate moments I’ve ever seen on film (not least of which is Mel Gibson playing William Wallace, who was such a fearsome warrior because he was 6’8”- I love how a monument at Sterling was made with Mel Gibson’s face, and was subsequently graffitied repeatedly until authorities fenced it off).
What is it with the kilts? Wallace was not a highlander. He was a Lowland Scot. That made him more British than Edward, a Norman. What he would wear would be more akin to what the English and Welsh he fought wore.
He didn’t speak Gaelic but probably the andicedent to what is now called Broad Scots and which was more related to Northumbrian English than to the Brythonic Celt of his ancestors. And being the son of a minor lowland,land-owning noble he had received an education from a relative in the clergy, so he probably could converse in Latin and in French as well.
Sir William Wallace also had spent some time on the Continent engaged in that most Scottish of professions, mercenary. This more than likely reinforced his fluency in French.
Edward, who was also called the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ primarily spoke the language of the English court, French.
Robert the Bruce’ family name, de Bruys, tells of its Norman origin. But by his time, the family had become more Scots that the Scots. And Robert’s daddy, Robert did claim to be a direct descendant of David I.
All in all, the film is historically correct in that there was a William Wallace who fought Edward I over Scottish sovereignty. He lived at the same time and interacted with the future king of Scotland, Robert the Bruce. The rest is cinematic license.
Bonus points for gratuitous Clue reference!
So, I looked up Margaret of Norway and found out that she supposedly died from “the effects of sea-sickness”. Say what now? Last time I checked, nausea was not a fatal condition. Do you have any speculation about what the actual cause of death was, or is there just too little information to make that determination?
Also, you realize that now you have to do a column on Outlaw King for comparison, right?
@6:
A common public excuse is: character is more important than story or setting because people invest in characters.
But the assumption here is that story and character are mutually exclusive; that history and an engaging story are mutually exclusive. Are they really?
@126:
Not by itself; the obvious guess is that she was weakened by dehydration (note “effects”), which IIUC can kill in ~3 days if severe enough. Being so sick she couldn’t even keep down plain water could do it.
@0: a nice comparison on the accuracy of battle, but according to various sources you left out one element: the utter incompetence of the English commanders (note ‘s’; that was part of the problem). A dispute over precedence led to the army not getting over in great numbers until after Wallace was able to pull together forces (behind the rock the abovementioned monument is on, according to the local exhibit), then surprise the English when their forces were split. It was a fast action, not a pitched battle like Agincourt.
You have taken most of my 15 minute rant on BRAVEHEART. I live part time in Scotland. Had jut fbished reading the book, Braveheart, when the movie came out, The only god line init is when Melth Walce, riding a horse in his kilt (ouch) goes by and one of the Scottish foot soldiers says, “Funny, I thought he was taller!” In fact Wallace and King Longshanks were reputed to be the two tallest men in Britain!
And re the Battle of Stirling Bridge–it’s still taught in War Colleges as a perfect example of gorilla warfare.
Plus–you missed the ending, where Wallace–after being hanged and drawn, live r and light on his chest (but presumably before he’s quartered ) sits up and shouts FREEDOM. Lie down, you silly git. You’re basically dead.
Thanks for the great read,
Jane Yolen
PS I think the blue comes from the Blue Men of the Minch. Nevermind. Modern Scots have adopted it for sports events!
Jane Yolen
I (a Scot who knows his history) saw this in a cinema in Essex in England. It was a wonderful mix of awful/amusing, especially as the real stories are so much better! Highlight though was on leaving when hearing someone behind me say (in broad “saarf eest” English accent) “wow, that Edward was a right b******!”.
Whatever you think of the film, it’s excellent agitprop…
Well, Gibson later went to Clemens Brentano (largely putting words into the mouth of Anne Emmerich) rather than the Gospels for his Passion of the Christ, and seemingly to a pull from an orifice for The Patriot, so perhaps Braveheart would look accurate by comparison, now.
Back in 1995 while the flick was still an anticipated release, I stumbled upon the then-new soundtrack CD of James Horner’s wonderful music, and spent long hours enjoying it. The tracks were was so evocative that, in anticipation of the movie, I pulled out the family Encyclopaedia Brittanica (1956 edition), and started reading all the relevant articles.
One advantage of the Brittanica in this regard is that, having been founded in Edinburgh by Scottish printers as one of the jewels of the Scottish Enlightenment, and then with increasing participation by English scholars, it had a nuanced view of intra-British conflicts. So, I delved into the articles with some confidence that I was getting historians’ best efforts. One of the particular highlights was the article about the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which I read, of course, with Horner’s music in background. The experience was… cinematic. As the old joke goes, movies can’t match a book’s special effects.
Seeing the movie was such a letdown, and the portrayal of the Battle of Stirling Bridge was an absolute travesty. Guys? Read some history, and learn how to portray drama.
But, sure, keep the crazed Irishman.
I agree with much of what you have mentioned. You missed several points on historical accuracy as well. William Wallace was very tall at least 6 ft 7 inches. He was about as tall as Edward I or Longshanks. I remember they made a joke of it in the movie when one of the Scottish soldiers remarks that he thought the Wallace was a very tall man.
To me the worst thing was making Robert the Bruce appear to be a weak individual.
I enjoyed many of the films of Mel Gibson but he did not do justice to William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland or the Robert the Bruce a true hero of Scotland. There are and were many other actors that could have portrayed William Wallace and could have done a better job. Patrick McGoohan was great in his role and I loved the wild Irishman.
The actor who portrayed Robert the Bruce in Braveheart is starring in a new movie to be released in 2019 and he portrays the Bruce in his later years after the Battle of Bannockburn.
Although they did not do a great job getting history correct the movie did bring attention to a hero of Scotland that many people did not know anything about.
If 2018’s Robin Hood is any harbinger of what is to come, one day we will look back fondly on Braveheart, with nostalgia for its comparatively accurate picture of the Middle Ages.
I’m not sure why it’s acceptable for motion pictures to play fast and loose with the facts, even very recent facts. For example, after I saw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, I read the book by Kim Barker that the film was based on. I was a bit disillusioned to discover that the climax of the film, in which Barker blackmails an Afghan official to get a friend rescued from terrorists, was entirely made up.
Honestly, does anyone really believe that even a modicum of truth can be found in anything emanating from Mel Gibson?
@129/JaneYolen: “And re the Battle of Stirling Bridge–it’s still taught in War Colleges as a perfect example of gorilla warfare.”
Not guerrilla warfare, but how a weaker force can defeat a larger one by selecting the battleground.
Also, I’m pretty sure it’s not taught as a good example of how one should treat the mortal remains of one’s vanquished opponent!
I’d like to know why people in the movie and TV business work so hard at getting as much wrong as they possibly can, when it would be so much easier to put things on the screen correctly.
For instance, *everything* in “The 100” to do with physics, chemistry, medical, space travel and more – it’s ALL WRONG. There was one instance where blood types were mentioned and one case of somewhat proper treatment for a stab wound. I assume whomever wrote those bits was summarily <s>executed</s> fired for excessive competency.
I’d love to know whether the writers are simply ignorant and wallowing in it, flat out stupid, or are deliberately doing all the science stuff horribly as a massive trolling campaign. Whatever they’re up to, it’s made the show into a low grade train wreck with very high production values. If they’d bothered to STFI for 10 minutes of research per episode, people would be comparing it to shows like “The Expanse”.
What is it with the kilts? Wallace was not a highlander. He was a Lowland Scot. That made him more British than Edward, a Norman. What he would wear would be more akin to what the English and Welsh he fought wore.
Not even Highlanders wore kilts in the fourteenth century. They wore long knee-length tunics over hose or long shorts, with woollen cloaks over the top – pretty similar to what Lowlanders and indeed Englishmen wore. The kilt was three centuries later.
This is a kind of “Oxford Aztec” error; the unthinking assumption that every culture except your own has always been the same. The Plains Indians have always been horse-riding nomads, the Aztec Empire always ruled Mexico and so on – in fact the Aztec Empire is younger than Oxford University.
I was getting at the same idea when I went on about the eight centuries between pagan Angles and the Plantagenet dynasty. I nearly went on a rant about the blue face thing being basically gotten from Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and therefore nearly one and a half millennia apart, at the opposite end of the island and a different ethnic group (which, fourteen centuries ago, was on another island at the time).
The spatial and ethnic version of this is thinking “The Celts” do x, or they do x in “in India” or “in China”.
(or “in South East Asia”, pinning some Chinese phenomenon on the Khmer Empire)
I wonder why the Highlanders adopted the great kilt in the first place? It certainly wasn’t for convenience!
@126
As @128 says, dehydration from constant vomiting as well as an inability to ingest any further sustenance or fluids. People still get airlifted off of modern boats due to the danger of that happening. Plus it can also affect your sense of balance which runs the risk of going overboard or just collapsing and hitting your head off of deck equipment. The BBC did a fly on the wall docu a while back about trawlermen in the North Sea, and one episode did have a new and inexperienced deck hand having to be airlifted off due to how badly they suffered from seasickness. And that is modern boats, with a relatively rapid return-to-port time. Imagine on a wooden boat, with no stabilisation gear, and longer journey times.
@142 I’ll just add vomiting to death to the list of unpleasant ways to die. I wonder if you could damage your esophagus enough to bleed or get an infection, in case dehydration wasn’t nasty enough.
A postscript: I saw the movie in the US just before a trip to the Glasgow (1995) Worldcon, with a little tourism afterwards (which is why the misportrayal of Stirling Bridge stuck in my memory — I got the facts only a couple of weeks later.) There was great excitement in Scotland about the movie; I remember signs in towns offering “Braveheart curry” (no, I didn’t try it — my hot-spice days are behind me) and even “Braveheart vegetables”(!). I wasn’t around to hear the comments about how wrong the film was, but I can imagine them.
Wikipedia says the European economy got bigger and bigger, wool got cheaper and cheaper, so Highlanders wore longer and longer cloaks over their tunics in the 17th century (a typical arms race of display clothing, look at lace ruffs in the 16th century, or codpieces in the 15th). Eventually they got so long they had to wrap them round their waists.
This sounds very practical for cold weather, you can wrap it all round your cold bare legs; the bit I don’t understand is why have bare legs in the first place? Even the Romans, bare-legged in Italy, wore leggings when in Scotland. One writer says it’s good for military mobility, you can wade a river in your bare legs and not get your clothes wet. I don’t know.
Going bare-legged in Scotland is actually quite practical, our climate is cold and wet, which means that if you are trudging through long grass, scrub, and also jumping through our many small rivers and burns, you are going to have wet, cold, legs anyway. At least with a kilt you can dry off quickly when you do get indoors or camped out for the night. With leggings and trousers, you’ll just be trapped in a cold and wet item of clothing; and that is a fast way to get various skin conditions as well as hypothermia.
I get the kilts.
In a Civil War movie, for example, the Union troops wear blue, and the Confederates wear gray — not the clownish uniforms some of them actually wore. This is to avoid confusing the audience.
Movies about the Revolutionary War show you American troops in blue and British troops in red, and try to avoid showing the Hessians in their uniforms, also blue.
In Westerns, when the US Cavalry goes into battle, you don’t see the Native American auxiliaries — “Indian scouts” — that usually accompanied the Cavalry. The complex politics of the frontier, that often had weaker tribes allying themselves with the US government for protection, is reduced to Cowboys and Indians.
Thanks for the education
Basically, history is complicated.
In the DVD commentary, Gibson explained the inaccuracies. He said he was aware some of the characters weren’t even alive at the same time, etc. His defense was the movie was more cinematic that way. I loved the movie and never assume any movie is accurate. But I do understand why the Scots would be upset. I’m from Tennessee. Every movie set in Tennessee but filmed somewhere else shows everyone barefoot and inbred. I had a pen pal in school from Washington state who asked if I had electricity and indoor plumbing. Now millions of people think Scots invented the mullet…
“Now millions of people think Scots invented the mullet…”
When as we all know it was the Massagetic Huns. Procopius, Secret History, chapter 7:
“They never touched the moustache and beard, but let them grow like the Persians: but they shaved the hair off the front part of their heads as far as the temples, and let it hang down long and in disorder behind, like the Massagetae. Wherefore they called this the Hunnic fashion of wearing the hair…”
“the bit I don’t understand is why have bare legs in the first place?”
They didn’t. The kilt was and is worn over thick long woolen socks – very little of the leg is actually exposed. The result is a lot warmer than thin trousers, even in blizzard conditions (source: personal experience).
Until now I had now idea that was the guy from “The Prisoner” paying Edward.
Granted he’s aged but how could you miss that voice? On the other hand if you’re not a big Prisoner fan…
To echo JoR: ” In spite of the inaccuracies in ” Braveheart ” it was a damn Good movie! “! I wholeheartedly agree with that Absolute fact!
Also, to echo one of my Most favorite and beloved authors–a Scottish historian who I had the Extreme pleasure and honour to meet and know–Sir David R. Ross–believed ” Braveheart ” should be viewed through the prism of one Very extraordinary Scot whose resolve was the liberation of SCOTLAND, the Country he Loved more than any other, and the Scottish People, from the heinous and vicious tyranny of the English { and ‘ Longshanks ‘ }!
Obviously, the most egregiously omission from ” Braveheart “–and one that truly bothers most Scots, is, ” Where’s the bridge? “. Asked by one observer, a production technician explained that due to logistics, a bridge ‘ got in the way ‘. . .to which another Scot replied, ” Aye, that’s what the English found out! “
To me, “Braveheart ” truly transcends what the late, Great Sir David R. Ross declared; that it Most Assuredly reflects the ” Spirit ” of one Very Brave extraordinary Scot, who forfeited his Very life in the resolve to see his vision of SCOTLAND free from the English yoke of tyranny and the subjugation the Scottish People! ! !
Robert, Scotland is not subjugated by England. We are a member of a union we proposed and joined after the Darien colonial project failed and bankrupted us, after which Scots went on to play a dominant role in the British Empire. Whether the union is working for us anymore is another matter, but it’s not a colonial arrangement and it’s offensive for white Scots to claim to be a colonised or subjugated people. Too many people take away a simplistic us-vs-them ethnonationalism from this movie, and it’s not a good thing. England is a complex and diverse country with many people of Scottish heritage (and vice versa), and the relationship between us is far more nuanced than this.
Given that James I&VI was king of Scots before he became king of England you could argue the colonization when the other way. Certainly contemporary English felt like they were being taken over.