Outlaw King: Better Than Braveheart

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Billy Howle, Chris Pine, David Mackenzie, Edward I, Edward II, Florence Pugh, Kings and Queens, Loudoun HIll, Medieval Europe, Medieval Scotland, Outlaw King, Robert the Bruce, Stephen Dillane

I finally had time to watch something for this blog after my semester from hell. Hopefully I’ll be able to get to a more regular posting scheduled now. The film I watched is Netflix’ Outlaw King(2018, dir. David Mackenzie). The film tells the story of the early days of the rebellion of Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine) against the English kings Edward I (Stephen Dillane) and Edward II (Billy Howle).

Robert the Bruce

Robert the Bruce (which is an Anglicization of “Robert de Brus”) was descended from a line of Anglo-Norman nobles who arrived in Scotland in the 1120s. On his father’s side he was descended from the Scottish king David I (r. 1124-1153). His grandfather had staked a claim to the throne in 1290, when the Scottish throne became vacant, along with about a dozen other claimants. That “Great Cause” ultimately resulted in King Edward I being invited into to resolve the competing claims. But Edward made all the candidates swear loyalty to him and then refused to render a verdict, essentially seeking to incorporate Scotland into his kingdom despite not having a dynastic claim of his own. Edward correctly realized that with so many candidates, the Scots would have a lot of trouble organizing an effective resistance to him.

What he hadn’t counted on was the rebellion of Sir Andrew Moray and Sir William Wallace in 1297. That rebellion was militarily defeated at Falkirk in 1298, but Wallace continued a bandit resistance until he was captured in 1305, thus making it hard for the English to have complete control.

During all this, the Bruce family was caught between loyalty to Edward and rebellion against him, because they held land in both Scotland and England and resisting Edward would surely have meant losing their English holdings. (To confuse you, there have been lots of guys named ‘Robert the Bruce’. To spare you as much confusion as possible, I’m going to call his ancestors the Lords of Annandale and save ‘Robert the Bruce’ for the famous rebel.) So instead the family played both sides. Bruce’s grandfather, the 5^thEarl Lord of Annandale, turned over his Scottish lands and claim to the throne to his son, the 6^thLord of Annandale, who pretty quickly turned them over to his son Robert. That way, Robert could participate in Moray’s rebellion while the Lords of Annandale supported Edward and opposed Moray and Wallace.

A modern reconstruction of Bruce’s face

But Bruce eventually quickly concluded that Wallace had little chance of success, because he submitted to Edward and reportedly fought on his behalf at Falkirk, helping to defeat Wallace. This was to prove one of Bruce’s biggest obstacles to getting the throne, because his family and he had switched sides so often that when finally made a bid for the crown, few of the Scottish lords were willing to trust him.

By the time Wallace was caught, there were only two real claimants to the Scottish throne left, Robert the Bruce and John Comyn (sometimes called the ‘Red Comyn’, to distinguish him from a cousin John Comyn the Black Comyn). The two of them were essentially rivals, and it’s pretty clear that at least from the start of Andrew Moray’s rebellion, Bruce was always angling for the throne. Neither Moray nor Wallace had any sort of claim to rule Scotland and neither ever asserted a desire to be king. Their cause was just independence from English rule.

By the end of 1305, Edward was starting to suspect that he could not trust Bruce, because he revoked a grant of land he had given Bruce earlier in the year. It was a smart call, because mid-way through 1305, Bruce and Comyn had entered into a secret deal in which Comyn agreed to surrender his claim to the Scottish throne in exchange for Bruce’s lands. At least, that’s what two later sources claim. Bruce’s claim to the throne was stronger than Comyn’s, so it makes sense that Comyn might have decided that land in the hand was worth more than a weak claim in the bush.

At some point, however, Comyn appears to have spilled the beans to Edward and Bruce seems to have found out. He was at the English court and was reportedly warned that he needed to flee, which he did. When he got back to Scotland, Bruce sent a message requesting a meeting at the Franciscan monastery at Dumfries, and Comyn and his uncle showed up. Exactly what transpired at the meeting is unclear, but at some point Bruce pulled a dagger and stabbed Comyn. According to a not entirely certain story, Bruce left the chapel and commented to his men something to the effect that “I doubt I’ve killed John Comyn”. Reportedly one of them responded, “You doubt? I mak sikkar!” (“I’ll make sure”) Two of his men rushed into the chapel and killed both the Red Comyn and his uncle.

Edward II

Whether the famous dialog happened or not, it’s certain that Bruce sacrilegiously murdered his rival. It’s likely, though not provable, that he went to Dumfries planning to at least confront Comyn and probably to kill him for betraying him. English sources depict Bruce as having premeditated the killing, but they’re obviously quite biased.

With such a blatant murder on his hands, Bruce was now committed to rebellion. So he immediately attacked Dumfries castle and forced the English garrison to surrender to him. The Scottish bishops pardoned Robert’s sacrilege and immediately agreed to support him as king, and 6 weeks later he was crowned at Scone, with several of the leading nobles present. A day later, Countess Isabella of Buchan, who was married to the Black Comyn, showed up. As a member of the MacDuff family, she claimed the right to perform the actual coronation, so the ceremony was repeated to strengthen Bruce’s somewhat shaky claim.

By June, Edward’s lieutenant in Scotland, Aymer de Valence, had arrived with a force at Perth. Bruce laid siege to Perth, but rather foolishly failed to take precautions against an attack by de Valence’s forces. He didn’t establish even basic defenses around his camp, so when de Valence’s forces launched a pre-dawn assault on his position, his whole army was routed and he and his family had to flee. The Battle of Methven, as this humiliating defeat is known, was an inauspicious start to his rebellion, and worse was to come.

For safety, he sent his wife, his daughter Marjorie, two sisters, and Isabella of Buchan to Kildrummy Castle with his brother Neil to protect them, but the English forces soon caught up to them. The women were able to flee the castle in time, but Neil was captured when the castle feel and immediately executed. Elizabeth and the other women were caught not long afterward by supporters of the Comyns. They were all sent into captivity in England. Isabella and Bruce’s sister Mary were put into cages that hung from the walls of the castles at Berwick and Roxburgh, while Elizabeth was held at a series of castles for the next eight years.

A possible depiction of Aymer de Valence from his tomb

These events forced the Black Comyn to side with the English against Bruce. In addition to Bruce being a rival to his claim on the throne, he had also murdered Comyn’s cousin and basically won the loyalty of the Black Comyn’s wife Isabella and gotten her captured and humiliated. In some ways he was Bruce’s biggest threat in the months after Methven. Bruce spent the winter of 1306-7 on the run, probably hiding out in the Hebrides, although his movements in this period are uncertain. He sent two of his brothers to gain control of southwest Scotland, but as they crossed Loch Ryan they were ambushed by MacDugall forces who were loyal to the Comyns; Bruce’s forces were again routed and both his brothers were sent to Carlisle, where Edward had them beheaded. The invasion of Loch Ryan may have been intended as a distraction to Bruce’s own landing in Galloway. In that case, it worked, but at quite a cost.

Bruce managed to win a small victory at Glen Trool, forcing de Valence’s forces to retreat by attacking them as they moved single-file through a rocky track along Clatteringshaws Loch. It was more of a propaganda victory than a strategic one, but it proved that Bruce had some ability to win, something he desperately needed if his rebellion was to succeed.

A far more important victory awaited him. He seems to have learned a lesson from Methven that he was fighting against superior forces and needed to be more tactical. A month later, he confronted de Valence’s forces at Loudoun Hill, where he was able to control the terms of the battle. He did a good job preparing the battle site and was able to inflict a serious defeat on the English. We’ll discuss it at length in a little bit.

Loudoun Hill was Bruce’s first significant victory, and it marks the start of a gradual turning poin tin his rebellion. Edward I died two months later, having been kept by illness at Lanercost monastery just south of the Scottish border for several months. Over the next year, Bruce ravaged Comyn-controlled parts of Scotland, demonstrating that the Scots could brutalize each other at least as effectively as the English had, and by 1309 he was sufficiently dominant that he could summon the Scottish Parliament to meet. Finally, in 1314, Bruce inflicted a massive defeat on Edward II at Bannockburn. That victory essentially re-established Scottish independence from England, although the conflict dragged on for years.

Outlaw King

The film focuses essentially on the period between 1304 and 1307, thus exploring only the period of Bruce’s fumbling beginnings as a rebel to the turning point of Loudoun Hill. It opens with a meeting between Edward I and various Scottish nobles outside Sterling Castle, which Edward is sieging while the Scottish nobles make their submission to them. Edward demonstrates the construction of a massive trebuchet which he fires at the castle (with a flaming missile, of course, because they’re absolutely necessary in films these days). Then he allows the castle to surrender. This is a nice historical touch, because in fact when Edward sieged Sterling Castle, he did delay accepting its surrender until he could try out the enormous siege engine he had had built.

Pine’s Bruce is shaggy and brooding throughout the film

In the feast that follows, it’s announced that Bruce’s father has arranged the marriage of Bruce to Elizabeth de Burgh (Florence Pugh). In fact, they were married in 1302 and already had at least one daughter when Bruce launched his rebellion.

The film then moves forward to 1306 and has the mandatory tax collection sequence, because collecting taxes is how you know medieval kings are bad. During the tax collection Bruce starts to realize how unpopular the English are, and then word arrives that William Wallace’ arm has been tied to the market cross, prompting a riot. Bruce promptly returns home, tells his brothers they’re all going to revolt, and then meets the Red Comyn (Callen Mulvay) in an effort to persuade him to work together. Comyn, however, villainously tells Bruce that he’s going to betray Bruce to Edward, thereby eliminating his rival for the crown, thus forcing Bruce to stab him to death. So as the film presents it, Bruce is a very reluctant rebel, rebelling only because everyone hates the English, he’s upset that Wallace has been executed, and Comyn forced him to commit sacrilegious murder.

To put it politely, that’s an extremely generous interpretation of events. Wallace had been dead for a year before Bruce started his rebellion, so it’s unlikely that his execution had any significant influence over Bruce. Most historians feel that Bruce was already determined to rebel when he invited Comyn to the Dumfries meeting, and it’s likely that he called the meeting intending to kill his rival. Far from being a reluctant and selfless rebel, Bruce’s family had been self-serving in its pursuit of the crown and their best interests for a generation. Bruce’s rebellion was purely about his own ambitions.

The two coronations at Scone have been collapsed into a single event, which is understandable, and Isabella of Buchan performs the coronation, although no explanation is offered as to who she is or why she’s doing it.

Bruce offers to meet de Valence in single combat to decide who’s going to control Perth, and de Valence accepts but then underhandedly launches a night-time attack on Bruce, complete with flaming arrows, because when you’re launching a sneak attack you definitely want to make sure your enemies can see your arrows on the way in. So the film positions the Battle of Methven as an act of base treachery against a trusting Bruce. In reality, Bruce did offer de Valence single combat, but de Valence turned the offer down, and Bruce rather foolishly assumed that this meant de Valence wouldn’t attack. So, as with the murder of John Comyn, the film is trying to make Bruce look better than he was. His defeat at Methven was a sign that he was a rather green commander, not that de Valence was especially villainous.

Stephan Dillane as Edward I

Then Prince Edward captures Kildrummy Castle and apprehends Bruce’s women just outside the castle, which is inaccurate but probably a forgivable compression of events. But it’s Elizabeth who gets hung in a cage outside a castle, not Isabella.

After that, Edward I gives Prince Edward permission to ‘unfurl the dragon’, which apparently means that the English have permission to be unchivalrous when they fight. This is totally fabricated, and again seems intended to explain why Bruce is doing so badly at the start of the start of his rebellion—he hasn’t yet learned to fight dirty.

The Battle of Loch Ryan is presented as Bruce’s forces retreating out to the Hebrides to lick their wounds and being treacherously attacked by the MacDugall forces, instead of as an invasion attempt that went badly. The attack happens after Bruce has already gotten across the Loch, so he’s unable to get to back to the fight until it’s already become a disastrous rout.

Then we see Bruce training his forces to fight dirty, which in this case is killing the horses of the knights (something that medieval knights would actually have considered a violation of the rules of warfare) and then they launch sneak attacks on a couple of castles, retake them and burn them. This seems to be a rather garbled presentation of Bruce’s harrowing of Comyn’s lands and a very soft-pedaled harrowing to boot. Can’t have Bruce looking bad.

Then Edward I dies. His son is a complete dick, promising his father to carry his father’s bones into Scotland and then just giving an order to bury him when he died. This is wrong, since Edward died about two months later. An unreliable story claims that he asked his son to either carry his bones into Scotland or carry his heart to the Holy Land, but in reality, Edward had his dad’s body shipped back to London where it was give a proper, if somewhat simple, burial. The grave was opened in the 18^thcentury and his body found to be in remarkably good condition. All of this is clearly intended to build up Edward II as a villain.

Howle as Edward II. The armor isn’t very accurate, but it looks pretty on screen

Loudoun Hill

The film climaxes at Loudon Hill. Historically, Bruce identified Loudoun Hill as an ideal place to fight because it was located on a key road that de Valence’s forces would have to pass through. He chose Loudoun Hill because it was a relatively narrow stretch of dry land running between two large bogs. Bruce had his men narrow the dry ground by digging a series of trenches inward from the two bogs, thus creating a tight bottleneck at the base of a hill and sharply reducing the English advantage of numbers while rendering cavalry almost useless. In doing this, he may have been inspired by a similar tactic employed by the Flemish against the French cavalry at the battle of Courtrai in 1302. When the English cavalry advance, they found themselves forced to attack Bruce’s spearmen through a narrow causeway and up a slope. The result was that the Scots broke the English charge and inflicted enough damage that the English forces fell back in confusion and de Valance fled the scene. It was not a total rout, however; only about 100 English soldiers were killed. But, as I noted, it was a crucial battle because it demonstrated that Bruce could win a solid open-field victory against numerically superior forces.

Loudoun Hill

The film gets Loudoun Hill roughly right, but exaggerates several important points. Bruce himself helps dig the ditches. There’s no evidence of that, but modern audiences like to see kings acting like the common man. In reality, Edward II actually enjoyed ditch-digging—manual labor like digging ditches and laying bricks was a hobby of his—but the film wants to make Edward look worse than he was to make Bruce look better. Bruce’s men also fill the ditch with sharpened stakes, which didn’t happen. Instead of de Valance, it’s Edward who’s in command, when in reality, Edward wasn’t king yet and wasn’t in Scotland at all.

At the start, Bruce stations some of his men in front of the ditch, thus disguising its presence from the English. When the English charge, the Scots scurry behind the ditch, causing the English to crash into the spike-filled ditches. Then the Scots attack, using mostly swords and axes rather than spears. While not exactly correctly, this isn’t so outrageously wrong as to be a serious problem because it does get the basic dynamic of the battle right, although the slope of the hill is behind the Scots and not a factor in the fight.

Edward rides into the battle, but gets unhorsed. Bruce fights him in single combat, soundly defeats him, and then allows him to flee back to his troops. Of all the inaccuracies in the film, this is, for me at least, the most problematic. Not only was Edward not present at the battle, but if he had been and if Bruce had defeated in combat, he would almost certainly have taken Edward prisoner. Having Edward as prisoner would have ended the war right then and there. The English would not have dared attack while their king was prisoner, so Bruce would have been able to dictate the terms of an abject surrender to the English. More importantly, Edward had not fathered any children at this point in his life. If Bruce had killed Edward, there would have been a serious political crisis in England, because Edward’s presumptive heir at this point was his seven-year old half-brother Thomas of Brotherton, and there would probably have been a power struggle within the English government to see who would run the government during the prolonged royal minority. So had Bruce actually allowed (the not actually yet) King Edward II to run off the battlefield, he would have blown the biggest political opportunity of his reign.

Other Thoughts

Throughout the film, I couldn’t help comparing it to Mel Gibson’s rather more famous Braveheart. Although Outlaw King gets a fair number of things wrong and consistently massages the facts to make Bruce seem a more decent man than he was, it’s still light-years better than Braveheart in terms of historical accuracy. For starters, there’s nary a kilt in sight. The costuming at least tried to look period and, in FrockFlick’s opinion got at least halfway there, although a lot of the women are wearing barbettes without a headpiece, making all of Elizabeth’s ladies look like they had bad toothaches that day.

Waiting for the dentist to come through town

Another way that Outlaw King is superior to Braveheart is that both Edward I and Edward II are treated more fairly. Edward I is not a sneering villain bent on sexing his daughter-in-law, and Billy Howle’s Prince Edward isn’t the limp-wristed sissyboy of Gibson’s film. He’s an angry young man eager to move out of his father’s shadow, which at least makes sense as a characterization, and the film accurately depicts his eagerness for battle.

Pine’s Bruce, on the other hand, is a surprisingly bland hero whose shaggy beard and haircut are probably his most notable characteristic. He spends a lot of time looking moodily at the camera, brooding about how poorly his rebellion is going. To the extent that the film succeeds, I think it’s more despite Pine’s performance than because of it. Given that Pine spends an enormous amount of time on-screen, the weakness of his performance results in a film that lacks energy except in the fight scenes, and it’s not surprising that Mackenzie cut 20 minutes from the film after a test audience told him it was boring.

So overall, Outlaw King is kind of a big Meh. It’s not a bad film, but it’s nowhere near what I would call a good film. It’s more accurate than Braveheart, but then so is the average grade school production of Snow White.

Want to Know More?

Outlaw King is available on Netflix.

Fiona Watson’s Traitor, Outlaw, King: Part One The Making of Robert the Bruce offers a reasonable, non-romantic, non-patriotic take on him, making it one of the best things available on Bruce.

The Bruce: Careful What I Wish For

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Bannockburn, Brian Blessed, Edward I, Edward II, Medieval Europe, Medieval Scotland, Needlepointing the Bayeux Tapestry, Robert the Bruce, Sandy Welch, The Bruce

So I recently watched The Bruce (1996, dir. Bob Carruthers and David McWhinnie, with additional scenes by Brian Blessed). It’s available for free on YouTube. As I watched it, I realized why it’s available for free. It’s dreadful. It’s a low-budget labor of love, but it’s the sort of child only a mother could muster affection for. It feels very much like some enthusiastic Scottish history re-enactor wanted to prove that it was possible to make an historically-accurate movie about Scottish history that was still a really good film, and then only managed to get the first half of the job done.

So I’m a bit conflicted about this film. You’ve all read my posts where I lament about how badly most historical movies deviate from the facts, and I insist that the actual events are often more interesting than the nonsense that Hollywood screenwriters churn out. But now I’ve gotten what I wished for. The film tries adhere to the actual events in the life of Robert the Bruce, and it succeeds far more in accomplishing that than, for example, The Scottish Movie does. But it’s just an awful film.

 

So Who’s This Bruce Guy?

For those who don’t know, Robert the Bruce (d.1329) was a claimant to the Scottish throne during the period when Edward I and Edward II of England were trying to conquer Scotland. (And to address any confusion about his name, it’s an Anglicization of the French family name de Brus; the ‘the’ doesn’t really signify anything special.)

He supported William Wallace’s rebellion and after Wallace resigned his office of Guardian of Scotland (after his defeat at the battle of Falkirk), he and a rival claimaint to the throne, John Comyn, were appointed to the post, but they couldn’t agree and eventually Bruce resigned as well. In 1304, Bruce and all of the other major nobles in Scotland surrendered to Edward I.

This is not what Robert the Bruce actually looked like

 

In 1305, Comyn made an agreement with Bruce that if Bruce rebelled, Comyn was exchange his claim to the throne for all of Bruce’s lands in Scotland. Exactly what happened is unclear, but it appears that Comyn then revealed the deal to Edward, prompting Edward to order Bruce’s arrest. But Bruce was warned and fled the English court. A year later, Bruce and Comyn met up in a monastery church in Dumfries; a quarrel ensued and Bruce either stabbed Comyn to death before the altar or gravely wounded him and left him to be finished off by one of his men.

After that, Bruce claimed the throne of Scotland and underwent coronation by Bishop Wishart of Glasgow. The next seven years saw Bruce waging a series of campaigns to secure his control of Scotland (including slaughtered most of the supporters of the Comyn family) as well as to force out the English, who were now ruled by Edward II. In 1306, one of surviving the Comyn supporters seized Bruce’s wife Elizabeth (as well as a female cousin of his) and sent her to Edward, who held her as a capture until 1314.

He didn’t look like this either

 

Eventually in 1314, Bruce’s brother laid siege to the English-held castle at Stirling. The commander of the castle, in a fairly typical maneuver for the period, agreed that if Edward did not relieve the siege by midsummer, he would surrender the castle to Bruce. This forced Edward II to move to relieve the siege. The result was the Battle of Bannockburn.

The Bannock Burn is a tributary of the River Forth, which runs past Stirling Castle. The swampiness of the Burn made it a good defensible position for the Scots, who took up a position on the northwest side of the stream with a forest at their backs, while the English approached from the south and east.

Or this. Basically, we have no idea what he looked like

 

On the first day of battle, the English cavalry crossed the Burn, only to be repulsed by the Scots, who had formed up pikemen in a formation known as a schiltrom. Wallace had successfully employed this formation at the battle of Stirling Bridge, and unsuccessfully at the battle of Falkirk. Here is proved successful; the English cavalry were turned back. One English knight, Sir Henry de Bohun, made a lance charge at Bruce, who side-stepped the attack and split de Bohun’s head open with an axe.

One reconstruction of the first day of the battle

 

During the night, the English crossed the Burn and took up a new position closer to Bruce’s forces. The next morning, Bruce took an enormous risk and ordered his pikemen to advance, and was able to start forcing the English back. An attempt by the English longbowmen to break up the schiltroms failed when the Scottish cavalry charged them. Caught between the Burn and the advancing schiltroms, the English forces broke ranks. Edward II’s bodyguard, realizing he was in danger, grabbed the reins of the king’s horse and literally forced the king off the battlefield. But the king’s departure panicked his men and the English army routed.

At this point, Bruce was aided by another group of people who charged into the battle. Traditionally, the sources are read to suggest that this group was the Scottish camp followers, meaning the servants, cooks, laundresses, and other non-combattants who travel with an army, the idea being that they wanted to participate in the rout of the English forces. Recent historians, however, have suggested this group was actually a unit of Highland foot soldiers, too undisciplined to fight in a schiltrom but ideal for a shock attack. Regardless, the arrival of this group was the final straw. The shattered English army was slaughtered trying to get back across the stream. Edward was forced to pull out of Scotland and Bruce established (through his daughter Marjorie) a new dynasty that ruled Scotland down into the 16^th century.

The second day of the battle

 

The Bruce in The Bruce

The Bruce follows the story of Robert the Bruce (Sandy Welch) from about 1305 down to the battle of Bannockburn. It gets the politics and the major events basically correct, although it makes up a battle in 1305 in which John Comyn (Pavel Douglas) lures Bruce into a battle with Edward I (Brian Blessed, being his Brian Blessedest) and knocks him unconscious on the battlefield. Luck for Bruce, his brother Nigel drags him off and hides him in a pigsty, only to get killed himself afterward. This seems to be the film’s way to explaining Bruce’s decision to kill Comyn, perhaps because it doesn’t want to admit that the real Bruce submitted to Edward I. But after the confrontation with Comyn, the film basically adheres to fact.

Brian Blessed, doing a rather apoplectic Edward I

 

The film includes a famous story that early on in his wars, Bruce was on the run from the English and hid in a cave, where he saw a spider trying repeatedly to make a web. After numerous failures, the spider eventually succeeded and Bruce learned a lesson in determination from the spider that helped him continue his struggle for years until he succeeded. The story, however, was not originally told of Bruce, but of Sir James Douglas, one of Bruce’s allies. In 1828, Sir Walter Scott repurposed the story and applied it to Bruce.

The film simplifies the battle of Bannockburn down to one day, and employs the traditional camp followers, who make a most unconvincing attack on the English. And de Bohun gets killed late in the battle, after Edward II has been dragged off the field. (But, to the film’s credit, they correctly pronounce his name as ‘day Boon’ and not ‘day Bow-hun’.)

 

So What’s Wrong with the Film?

I think most of the problems with the film stem from the fact that it was made on an extremely tight budget, reportedly £500,000, and a lot of that money was raised from the historical re-enactors who comprise the extras. The list of ‘Associate Producers’ at the end of the film is almost as long as the rest of the credits put together. I think that the donors must have been contractually promised 3 seconds of screen time each, because that would explain the agonizingly long scenes in which peasant extras wander around leading lives of virtuous simplicity and Scottishness.

Nobody slaughters Scotsmen like Brian Blessed does

 

Apparently the budget didn’t allow for some things we normally get with movies. Among the things the production of The Bruce couldn’t afford:

A film editor. The film easily has half an hour of footage in which no one with a speaking role does anything important.

Stunt men. The fight scenes look like the director told the extras “just go in there and wave your sword around and look like you’re fighting.” It didn’t work.

A fight co-ordinator. The credits say they had one, but I think it was Angus from down at the end of the bar, who spends his time fixing motorcycles and who knows a few things about throwing a punch. But only a few. I’ve seen third grade productions of Little Red Riding Hood with more engaging violence. The climactic Battle of Bannockburn scene is therefore boringly staged, incompetently executed, and not really edited at all. And it NEVER ENDS, because all the extras had to get their 3 seconds of screen time.

A historical consultant. Instead, they just invited re-enactors to show up with their gear. As a result, we get lots of highlanders in kilts three hundred years too early. And guys playing bodhrans, which won’t be invented for about half a millennium. Oh, and brace yourself for gratuitous modern bagpipes. They had a piper, and they were gonna get damn good use out of him.

A hair dresser. No one looks good in this film. I mean No One. Well, ok, Oliver Reed and Brian Blessed look decent. Everyone else looks like they ran out of shampoo about a week ago and just decided to let it air dry.

A decent script. Most of the scenes consist of long-winded conversations during which you can easily get up, go to the bathroom, make some more popcorn, and catch up on your email before the end of the scene.

Charisma. I’m unclear why anyone would want to watch this cast. Except Brian Blessed, who is always a pleasure to watch, because you get to relive the best moments of Flash Gordon. All two of them.

But, in the film’s favor, it did have one heck of a good Spider Wrangler. He was so good, they used that spider twice, just in case you didn’t get the message the first time.

 

Oh, and There’s This Little Gem of a Prop

 

Want to Know More?

You could watch this film on Amazon, but honestly, if you’re really in need of curing your insomnia, do it for free at Youtube.

If you want to know more about Robert the Bruce, a good place to start is Michael Penman’s Robert the Bruce: King of the Scots. It’s a bit long, and some readers find it a little too academic. If you want something more readable, consider Ronald MacNair Scott’s Robert the Bruce. Scott isn’t a scholar, but a novelist, and tells the story well with a minimum of mistakes.

Braveheart: Why Braveheart is Actually a Porn Film

Tags

Braveheart, Droit du Seigneur, Edward II, Isabella of France, ius prima noctis, Medieval Scotland, Mel Gibson, Movies I Hate, Sophie Marceau, William Wallace

One of the frequently remarked-on inaccuracies of Braveheart (1995, dir. Mel Gibson) deals with Princess Isabella (Sophie Marceau). In the film, Isabella is an adult woman (her age is unclear; Marceau was 29 at the time, but Isabella seems to be younger, perhaps early 20s), who gets married to Prince Edward (the future Edward II) during the course of the film. She falls in love with Wallace (Mel Gibson), has sex with him, and at the end of the film taunts Edward I by telling him that she is carrying Wallace’ baby and that her child will eventually supplant Edward II as king.

Sophie Marceau as Isabella

In reality, Isabella was born in 1295, and since the film is set around 1297, that means she was 2 years old and living in France at the time. She married Edward II in 1308, at the age of 13, and hadn’t even been to England when Wallace rebelled. So this romance is entirely fictitious. It’s easy to discount this as simply the sort of obligatory romance that every Hollywood action film has to include; Gibson, in the DVD commentary track, dismisses it as just exactly this. But if we assumed that, we’d be entirely wrong. The romance between Isabella and Wallace is, in fact, critical to the entire film; without it, this movie couldn’t have been made in 1990s Hollywood.

Trigger Warning: This post discusses rape.

A Bummer of an Action Film On the surface, Wallace’ story is poor fodder for Hollywood. He was a rebel in a political dispute that happened 700 years ago that Americans would not have had any real understanding of. He had one major military success that wasn’t fully his, got defeated at his next major battle, and was eventually captured, tortured and executed. The end.

In other words, Wallace lost. His rebellion achieved comparatively little of lasting impact, although it helped to stir up Scottish resistance against the English and laid seeds for Robert Bruce to harvest more than a decade later. That’s not the sort of story that Hollywood likes to tell. It rarely offers films in which the hero dies at the end (among recent action films, Gladiator is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head), but if the hero dies, he must certainly die victorious.

So how can one pull a serious victory out of Wallace’ story? The film certainly builds up the idea that Wallace inspired Bruce to make his rebellion, but that’s still a fairly intangible sort of victory by Hollywood standards. To supplement that, Braveheart’s screen-writer Randall Wallace (note the last name) added the Wallace-Isabella romance so that Wallace can impregnate Isabella and thereby eventually supplant the villainous Edward I and his pathetic son Edward II.

Quite simply, Wallace wins by knocking up Isabella. His military victory is entirely irrelevant to the story, except insofar as it inspires Isabella’s love. In other words, what actually matters in the film in terms of the ending is Wallace’s sexual prowess, not his military prowess. Without the Wallace-Isabella romance, Wallace simply loses, and that’s not acceptable in a Hollywood film. So while the film pretends to be a war movie, it’s actually a porn film in which the whole plot is a contest to see who’s get to boink the leading lady.  

Lights! Camera! *Ahem* Action! Once you start to realize what the real plot of the film is, it begins to read very differently. It’s really about a competition to see who is more sexually potent, the Scottish or the English. Early on, King Edward (Patrick McGoohan) announces that “the problem with Scotland is that it’s full of Scots!” and then declares that he will remedy this problem by reinstituting what the film calls ius prima noctis. This “right of the first night”, more properly called by the French term droit du seigneur (“the lord’s right”), was a fictitious notion that medieval nobles had the legal right to sleep with a peasant woman on her marriage night before her husband did. It’s completely fictitious; no medieval noble every enjoyed a formal legal right like that. But as the movie presents it, it is this fact that triggers the Scottish rebellion. The Scots rebel because the English want to sleep with Scottish women.

But the film thinks that this mass rape of Scottish women is not enough to have inspired Wallace; his rebellion has to be personal. So in the film, Wallace rebels not because of ius prima noctis but because an English soldier tries to rape Wallace’s wife, Murron (Catherine McCormack). The soldier is unsuccessful; Murron fights so hard he’s unable to accomplish his goal, but she gets arrested and executed. So the film doubly determines the film’s rebellion as being about the English desire to have sex with Scottish women.

That sets up a theme of sexual competition between the Scots and the English, in which the issue is which side is sexually superior. And the answer to that question is fairly clear. The Scots are sexually skilled and the English are sexually inept. The English soldier fails to conquer Murron. Later in the film, Isabella’s handmaiden comments that she spent the whole night with an English noble, but all he did was talk, because “the English do not know what to do with their tongues”. In contrast, Wallace is so sexually compelling, Isabella falls in love with him before she meets him; in one of the few actually medieval-feeling details of the film, the first time she hears his name, she is so overwhelmed she has to sit down. And, of course, Wallace spends an awful lot of time waving that anachronistic great sword around…

Ok, so let’s get all Freudian. The film repeatedly invokes sexual imagery during its battle scenes. I’ve already explored how badly wrong the film’s version of the battle of Stirling Bridge is. Instead of the historical battle, the film’s battle is structured as a series of efforts to prove sexual prowess. The Scots taunt the English by flipping up their kilts and displaying their penises; the English, being dressed differently, can’t do the same. Instead, they respond with a couple volleys of arrows that mostly fail to penetrate the Scots, although one Scot is hit in the ass. The Scots respond with further sexual taunting, and the English retaliate by making a rather foolish lance change. Yet this attempt to penetrate the Scots also fails, because the Scots successfully penetrate the English with their spears. During the battle, there’s a brief shot of a Scotsman driving his sword into an Englishman’s groin, symbolically penetrating and castrating him at the same time.

Lest you think I’m reading too much into this, shortly before the battle scene, Wallace meets with his men in a forest to discuss strategy. Hamish, one of Wallace’s lieutenants, makes a joke about the size of his dick, just after Wallace looks up at the long, straight tree-trunks around them and hits upon the idea of making them into spears. So the film pretty much tells us that the spears are really Scottish cocks.

Another example of the film’s Freudianism comes a little after the battle of Stirling. Wallace’ men lay siege to York (which didn’t happen), and they take a battering ram to the gate. They struggle to force their way in, especially since the English are pouring flaming oil on them, but Wallace jumps in to lend a hand. A moment later, the gates are knocked in and there is an eruption of fire. I dare you to watch that scene and not think of ejaculation.

See what I mean?

So for Braveheart, war is all about sex. Wallace is fighting Edward I, but he’s not just fighting him militarily. The two men are locked in a competition to see who gets to sleep with Princess Isabella. The film repeatedly suggests that Edward I has carnal thoughts about his daughter-in-law. In fact, when he declares the revival of ius prima noctis, he does so while he’s looking straight at Isabella. His lust for her inspires the actions that lead to the Scottish rebellion. But Edward doesn’t get to sleep with Isabella; Wallace does. Edward may fantasize about boning her, but Wallace is the one who actually knocks her up. That’s why Isabella’s pregnancy is such a powerful symbol; Wallace gets to have what Edward wants, and the long-term consequences are that Edward’s line is supplanted by Wallace’ seed.

And Here’s Where the Film Gets Ugly In many Hollywood films, the female lead is the prize for victory. But not in Braveheart. Wallace gets Isabella, but he doesn’t get to keep her, because he’s executed. Instead of being the prize, Isabella is just a tool for Wallace’ victory (along with Wallace’ tool, that is). The film treats her like a brood mare or a field to be plowed and sown with seed.

However, unlike her namesake in Ironclad, Isabella has some real agency. She chooses to offer Wallace strategic information, and at the end of the film she announces her intentions to destroy Edward I’s family line. The problem, however, is that her agency is entirely devoted to helping and avenging Wallace.

The film’s only other important female character, Wallace’s wife Murron (where the hell did Randall Wallace come up with that name? It makes her sound like a cattle disease. The woman’s real name was allegedly Marion.), is similarly devoted to Wallace. She is sexually faithful to him to the point of preferring death over being raped. Obviously a woman might make such a difficult choice even if she weren’t committed to her husband, but Murron’s fidelity is reinforced in other scenes. Her faithfulness is supernaturally strong; she returns to him twice after her death, both times to offer him reassurance at difficult moments. While the film is ambiguous about whether Wallace is just dreaming her up or whether her ghost is actually there, the overall impression is that she’s come back from the dead because of her love for him.

Murron, the first time she returns from the dead

So consider what the film has done with its two female characters. Wallace’s wife is intensely, supernaturally, faithful to him. She seemingly returns from the dead twice because even though she’s dead, she’s still his wife and he needs her. Wallace, however, feels no such obligation to Murron, because he sleeps with Isabella once Murron is dead. She is faithful to him even though he is not faithful to her, and her second visitation comes as he’s being executed, after he’s essentially cheated on her. So Murron is willing to ignore his infidelity, simply because she loves him. Braveheart is offering up a classic male sexual fantasy driven by the double-standard. Women exist to provide sex, love, and emotional support and so are expected to be committed to their man, while men are able to sleep around as they choose without losing their exclusive claim on their wives. When you put that together with the fact that Isabella’s entire purpose in the film is to get knocked up so Wallace can defeat her father-in-law, it seems clear that far from being romantic, Braveheart is actually quite misogynist and demeaning to women.

While We’re At It, Let’s Be Homophobic as Well But Isabella’s decision to commit herself to Wallace has a problem with it. She’s married to another man. Broadly speaking, Hollywood morality tends to frown on adultery. Most Hollywood films tend to do one of two things with adultery. Either it is a bad choice that usually leads to worse things like a decision to murder one’s spouse, and must therefore turn out badly and be punished, or it must be presented in a sympathetic light; the marriage has to be bad, the cuckolded spouse must be neglectful or abusive, and the other man has to be obviously a better choice morally. Since Isabella’s adultery has to be presented in a sympathetic light, it has to be clear to the audience that Isabella has a really good reason for cheating on her husband, Prince Edward.

And so the film makes the choice to depict Prince Edward as a classic example of the Hollywood Sissy. Braveheart’s Prince Edward (Peter Hanly) is a slightly-built, almost delicate man. He is far more interested in his boyfriend’s clothing than in either his new wife or in manly pursuits like warfare. He can’t be dragged away from his lover long enough to participate in political councils, so he sends his wife instead. At one point, Edward I throws his son’s boyfriend out a window; when Prince Edward tries to attack him, Edward bitch-slaps him and takes his knife away with contemptuous ease (symbolically castrating him, I suppose). All-in-all, Prince Edward is a pathetic little sissy boy.

He just wants to sing!

This is completely ahistorical. The actual Edward II was a tall, handsome, physically robust and athletic man. Among his hobbies were ditch-digging and brick-laying (rather odd hobbies for a medieval noble, but clearly evidence of his physicality). He loved swimming and rough-housing, and once seriously hurt one of his companions with rough play. At the battle of Bannockburn, when it became clear the English were losing, Edward had to be physically dragged off the field because he wanted to stay and fight. Whatever his sexual preferences might have been (and scholars still debate exactly what his relationships with Piers Gaveston and the Despensers were), it’s clear that the actual Edward was not the limp-wrist he is in Braveheart.

But the historical Edward won’t do. He’s too close to the sort of man the film wants to present Wallace as. Isabella’s choice to cheat on the historical Edward II would be more puzzling, so Randall Wallace and Mel Gibson resort to the oldest and most offensive stereotype of homosexuals Hollywood knows. (To be fair, however, Randall Wallace is not the only author to demonize Edward II; most historical novelists who choose to write about him do similar things.)

I dislike Braveheart because of its numerous historical inaccuracies, its anachronistic notions of ‘freedom’ and its rather simplistic narrative. I hate it because of its deeply-rooted misogyny and homophobia. Gibson demeans women, gays, and the English all so he can run around battlefields stabbing people with his enormous penis substitutes and live out a male fantasy of sexual potency and female devotion.

Years ago, during a class on medieval warfare, some students asked me what I thought about Braveheart. That question is a sure-fire way to sidetrack me for 20 minutes, and I gave them a condensed version of this analysis. A year later, I ran into one of the students from that class. He said, “I went back and rewatched Braveheart, and you’re completely right!” So go ahead, rewatch it and tell me whether you think I’m right. Because once you start to see how Freudian the film is, you can’t stop seeing it.

Want to Know More?

Braveheartis available on Amazon.

Kathryn Warner is pretty much the leading expert on Edward II, and her book on him, Edward II: The Unconventional Kingis one of the best things written about him, although I’m not convinced by her argument that he survived his eventual deposition. Her blog about Edward II is definitely worth a look if you want to know more about him than you ever thought possible.

I wish I could recommend a book about Isabella of France, but frankly everything I’ve seen written about her is complete crap. Stay away from Alison Weir’s book.