Braveheart - Historical Accuracy

Historical Accuracy

Randall Wallace, the writer of the screenplay, has acknowledged Blind Harry's 15th century epic poem The Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace, Knight of Elderslie as a major inspiration for the film. In defending his script, Randall Wallace has said, "Is Blind Harry true? I don't know. I know that it spoke to my heart and that's what matters to me, that it spoke to my heart. " Although some incidents which are not historically accurate are taken from Blind Harry (e. g. the hanging of Scots nobles at the start) there are important aspects of the plot which are based neither on history nor Blind Harry (e. g. Wallace's affair with Princess Isabelle, although this may have been inspired by a play The Wallace by Sydney Goodsir Smith).

Elizabeth Ewan describes Braveheart as a film which "almost totally sacrifices historical accuracy for epic adventure". The "brave heart" refers in Scottish history to that of Robert the Bruce, and an attribution by William Edmondstoune Aytoun, in his poem Heart of Bruce, to Sir James the Good: "Pass thee first, thou dauntless heart, As thou wert wont of yore!", prior to Douglas's demise at the Battle of Teba in Andalusia.

Sharon Krossa notes that the film contains numerous historical errors, beginning with the wearing of belted plaid by Wallace and his men. In that period "no Scots ... wore belted plaids (let alone kilts of any kind). " Moreover, when Highlanders finally did begin wearing the belted plaid, it was not "in the rather bizarre style depicted in the film. " She compares the inaccuracy to "a film about Colonial America showing the colonial men wearing 20th century business suits, but with the jackets worn back-to-front instead of the right way around. " "The events aren't accurate, the dates aren't accurate, the characters aren't accurate, the names aren't accurate, the clothes aren't accurate—in short, just about nothing is accurate. " Peter Traquair has referred to Wallace's "farcical representation as a wild and hairy highlander painted with woad (1,000 years too late) running amok in a tartan kilt (500 years too early). " The belted plaid (feileadh mór) léine was not introduced until the 16th century.

In 2009, the film was second on a list of "most historically inaccurate movies" in The Times. In the 2007 humorous non-fictional historiography An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, author John O'Farrell notes that Braveheart could not have been more historically inaccurate, even if a "Plasticine dog" had been inserted in the film and the title changed to William Wallace and Gromit.

Randall Wallace is very vocal about defending his script from historians who have dismissed the film as a Hollywood perversion of actual events. In the DVD audio commentary of Braveheart, Mel Gibson acknowledges many of the historical inaccuracies but defends his choices as director, noting that the way events were portrayed in the film were much more "cinematically compelling" than the historical fact or conventional mythos.