Times Braveheart Lied To You

Everyone loves an underdog story, so when you're writing historical fiction, you should make your totally not-an-underdog protagonist into an underdog, so your audience will root for him. That appears to be the school of thought writer Randall Wallace was working from when he decided to make William Wallace a poor kid from the wattle and daubs. But that was a lie, because Wallace was not born into poverty. His father was a Scottish knight and a minor landowner; so the family wasn't rolling around in silver coins or anything, but they weren't peasants, either.

William was the younger son of Alan Wallace (not Malcolm, as depicted in the movie — maybe "Alan" wasn't Scottish enough or something). Alan wasn't killed when Wallace was a boy, and neither was Wallace's brother John, who was actually executed about a year after his famous brother. Also, Wallace's uncle Argyle was totally made up for the movie. According to the BBC, Wallace did have an uncle who might have helped educate him, but he was a priest, so not really the sort who'd have taught his nephew the fine art of swordplay.

But you know, William Wallace's early years were mostly unrecorded, so if there was going to be a good place to insert some artistic license, it was definitely in those childhood scenes. But don't kid yourself that Wallace was an underdog — he wasn't.

The blue paint, though, that had to have been a thing, right? Because when they donned the blue paint, those Scottish warriors were transformed from a bunch of guys in historically inaccurate skirts to a badass band of warriors. 

But no, the blue paint wasn't a thing either — at least not in 13th century Scotland. According to Albanach, this practice was from the 2nd century, more than a thousand years before the birth of William Wallace. The stuff was called "woad," and it was mentioned in Julius Caesar's 55 BCE description of the Britons, which might not have even been a firsthand account. But many modern scholars doubt that the Picts used woad at all, so not only is the whole blue face thing not something that would have been done during the time of William Wallace, it might not even be something that would have been done a thousand years before that.

So when you see Wallace galloping along the front lines with his face slathered in woad, well, that's pure fiction.

So imagine if, moments after saying "I do," some creepy old dude on a horse rides up and tells you he's got the right to take your new husband's place on your wedding night. You'd throw a glass of champagne in his face and have your bridesmaids throw him and his dumb horse to the curb. Well, back in the 13th century, the lord of whatever field you were farming could do exactly that, and no bridesmaid could say "boo" about it. Or could he?

References to the practice of primae noctis exist in the historical record, but not as individual incidents. According to Today I Found Out, people who love this idea often argue that there would be no reason to record singular incidents because peasant women were basically nobodies, and nobodies don't end up in the history books. But the lords who were supposedly engaged in this practice weren't nobodies, and there would have occasionally been some dire consequences, like pissed off peasant grooms and bastard children or court cases addressing the issue. So if it was something that regularly happened, there would have been at least a handful of instances that survived into the modern record.

There's not, though. References to primae noctis mostly exist in works of fiction, or in fictionalized works of history, and there isn't even a credible piece of evidence suggesting it might have been practiced anywhere, ever. So nope.

The Scots and the Irish were natural allies. They were both oppressed by the English. So naturally, when they were given the opportunity to face them at the Battle of Falkirk, they fought alongside each other. In the movie, we see King Edward's regiment of Irish foot soldiers advancing on the Scots, and then just as it looks like they're about to start slaughtering each other, the two groups meet in the field and shake hands and clap each other on the backs, to the dismay of the Edward and his army. Cute.

Didn't happen, though. According to the American Legion, there may have been Irish infantry at the battle of Falkirk, but they fought with the English; there was no switching of sides. In fact the closest anyone got to switching sides was the Welsh, who got drunk on wine that arrived on English supply ships and clashed with English soldiers. After King Edward had a bunch of Welsh rioters killed by his cavalrymen, they declared that they might go join the Scots. Which was cool with Edward, who evidently groused, "We shall defeat the whole lot of them in one go."

Another key part of the story was the romance between William Wallace and Isabella of France, who was married to King Edward's son and heir, the future Edward II of hot poker fame (which is, itself, probably not accurate). But the real Isabella of France never met William Wallace, and was also only ten years old when he was executed. Granted, she did marry Edward II when she was only 12, so in the middle ages being ten didn't exactly preclude you from becoming some horrible, horrible person's love interest. But apart from that, Isabella of France was a lot more than she was depicted in the film: according to historian Colin Falconer, by the time she was 30, she was tired of Edward and his not-very-kingly antics, so she raised an army, defeated her husband in a bloodless coup, and named herself Queen Regent. And none of that had anything to do with the Scots.

Incidentally, the whole "heir to the throne was actually the son of some other guy" trope is a favorite of historical fiction, where the princess defies all the medieval laws of modesty and becomes pregnant at great risk to herself by some not especially noble person, thus secretly breaking the royal bloodline (the History Channel's Vikings did the same thing when they implied that Alfred the Great was actually the son of a monk-turned-viking-turned-monk-again).

For William Wallace, the low point of the story is that moment where a helmeted Robert the Bruce knocks him off his horse and is revealed as a betrayer. Defeated, Wallace collapses in the grass and waits for the English soldiers to come for him, but then Robert has a change of heart and helps him escape.

Did this really happen? Nope. According to The Scotsman, Robert was inspired by stories of William Wallace and his (at first) successful campaign against the English. He went north to learn guerilla warfare from Wallace, but he wasn't the betrayer. The man who handed Wallace over to King Edward was John Menteith, the Scottish nobleman who held Dumbarton Castle for the English. 

The idea that the Bruce betrayed Wallace does have some very, very small basis in fact, though. Two years after Wallace's death, the Bruce captured John Menteith and asked him to swear fealty or die. Menteith refused on the grounds that he already had a master and couldn't make the same promise to two different kings. So Robert the Bruce imprisoned him instead of killing him, and upon Edward's death, Menteith swore fealty to the Bruce. So in a way, Robert was guilty of betraying Wallace by not executing the man who had actually betrayed him.