Scottish Blog

This is the final article describing the historical inaccuracies of the movie Braveheart.

While the movie Braveheart featured a number of strong misinterpretations of history, it also featured a number of smaller, less significant errors. Although individually these discrepancies are small , combined they have only added to the criticisms historians have about this movie.

In Braveheart, William Wallace is portrayed as being a commoner, hailing from a line of commoner parents. In real life William Wallace is actually descendant of Richard Wallace, a noble.

Braveheart portrays the Scottish fighters as all having worn kilts. While it is possible that some of the soldiers wore kilts, it was not a common occurrence even in everyday life at the time. Scottish soldiers are not recorded as having a wide spread use of kilts until the 1600s. Similarly, in a apparent attempt to convey Scottish culture to the viewers, bagpipes were played in various scenes of the movie. The bagpipes used were uillean bagpipes, which were invited in Ireland in the 17th century. Even the earliest Great Highland Bagpipe was not recorded until 1407, which makes it unlikely that any form of bagpipes would have been played at the time.

It was also shown in Braveheart that the Irish fighters at one point betrayed the English and fought for the Scots. This has no founding in histories or legends, in fact by all records it seems that the Irish were exemplary fighters on the English side.

It is shown in Braveheart that William Wallace rode out to battle sporting blue paint on his face. This is only support by a legend which says that he was visited by the Virgin Mary in a dream, who painted a blue saltire (the flag of Scotland). Although from watching the movie you will see that the paint on the face does not resemble the saltire and has a stronger bearing to Pictish war paints.