This is our 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.

Braveheart

This is the second article in regards to the movie Braveheart and its historical inaccuracies.

The mistakes found in Braveheart range between the totally historically inaccurate and to the relatively unimportant, yet they all add up to paint a misinterpreted picture of the subject which Braveheart is based on.

While in my previous article on Braveheart, I had mentioned that Robert the Bruce and William Wallace did not meet and interact like it was portrayed in Braveheart, what was not mentioned is the fact that when they did stage their rebellions, they were fighting for opposite causes. William Wallace, the main character of Braveheart, fought for the cause of the exiled Scottish king John Balliol. Robert the Bruce on the other hand only supported his own claim to the throne. So, while the movie was accurate in the fact that both men fought against the English, it was inaccurate in portraying why they were doing it.

Another largely inaccurate aspect of Braveheart was its depiction of the Battle of Stirling Bridge. This is largely due to two facts, the battle is not portrayed as being held on a bridge (as it was in real life) and it makes no mention of Andrew de Moray. Both these aspects were important in reality as they both played vital roles to the outcome of the battle. The bridge location was a key role in allowing the smaller number of Scots to win over the English. While Andrew de Moray is by many considered to be an even stronger aspect of that day’s victory than William Wallace, as Moray was a better tactician and had a much higher number of troops following him.

The side story of Braveheart, which features secret meetings between William Wallace and Princess Isabella, and the possibility that Princess Isabella carried his child, are all completely false. At the time of the movie Princess Isabella was only ten years old and still lived in France, making it impossible for the two to meet.

There will be one more article on this subject, which will deal with the smaller inaccuracies found in Braveheart.

Braveheart was a internationally renowned film portraying William Wallace and his fight against the English.

It can be safely said that Braveheart has been one of the most successful movies in modern history, with five Oscar wins, fifteen other prominent awards and gross revenues to date of well over $202,600,000 throughout the world.

While Braveheart was an internationally acclaimed hit, it did not have the same positive effect on Scottish historians. The film is considered to be inaccurate in many ways and completely incorrect in other regards. Some have even gone so far as to proclaim Braveheart to be a work of fantasy with only accidental ties to the history it was meant to portray.

While detailed lists can be found of how Braveheart differed to the true story of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and the Scottish Wars of Independence., but these lists are often so extensive that one would require a considerable knowledge of Scottish history to fully appreciate them.

Yet there are a number of differences between Braveheart and real life that can be appreciated by most.

Firstly, Braveheart was never used to refer to William Wallace as the movie might seem to imply. If it were to be applied to anyone, it would be best to say that Robert the Bruce would have been the recipient of the name. After his death, the heart of Robert the Bruce was carried on a pilgrimage, when the convoy was attacked, the carrier of the heart, Sir James Douglass, three the heart forward and yelled "Onward braveheart, Douglas shall follow thee or die."

Although Braveheart portrays William Wallace and Robert the Bruce as having met, argued and even fought each other, it is in fact an inaccuracy. The two figures had never actually met, and fought for two different causes.

There are further historical inaccuracies in Braveheart, I will cover these in a further article.