William Wallace vs. Braveheart

Nedanstående innehåll är skapat av Mimers Brunns besökare. Kommentera arbete

A COMPARISON OF THE REAL WILLIAM WALLACE AND THE CHARACTER WILLIAN WALLACE IN THE MOVIE BRAVEHEART


The movie "Braveheart" is about one of the famous Scottish national heroes – William Wallace. When watching the movie you get to follow Wallace from the age about ten thoroughout his life to his execution in 1305. It is said that the movie is based on a true story, and of course in some ways it is, but many things in the movie does not correspond with the real history about William Wallace.

William Wallace was born in the district around Paisley in 1272. His father was a knight who owned a small piece of land. Here you can find the first mistake – or maybe we should call it an exaggeration. Wallace shure came from simple conditions, but it was probably not as bad as shown in the movie. The second mistake is to be seen when Williams father is killed in a battle with English soldiers. In the movie this happens when William is about ten years old, but at the time when William were that age king Alexander III ruled Scotland, so king Edward and the Englishmen had no reason to fight there. If you follow the chronological order it is more likely that William’s father was killed somewhere around 1291. This means that William were about the age of twenty when his father died.

Further on in the movie we get to see how Wallace meets with prince Edward of Wale’s wife, princess Isabella, and makes her pregnant. It is said that the child is Edward III. This is an impossibility since the prince and the princess got married in 1308 – which means three years after Wallace’s death. The only possibility Wallace had to meet with the princess was when he were in France, and at that time the princess was about four years old.
So unless he made her pregnant as a four-year old girl and she then stayed pregnant for thirteen years until Edward III was born in 1312 it is a lie to say that William Wallace was the father of Edward III.

The last big mistake about Wallace I found in the movie, or maybe I should say the last place where Mel Gibson has been a bit careless about the truth is the circumstances concerning Wallace’s death. In the movie Robert de Bruce’s father, Robert de Bruce VII, is the one that makes it possible for the Englishmen to capture Wallace. The p...