Braveheart -Movie vs. Real Life Essay

This Essay is about the differences in the movie BraveHeart vs. accual events in the life of William Wallace(AKA BraveHeart) a Scottish peasant and freedom fighter fighting for his country’s freedom from the unfair rule of the English King Edward II(Longshanks). It goes over differences such as the battle of Stirling Bridge and when and how Hollywood came into play. This essay was assigned in my history class after watching the movie BraveHeart and reading about the life of William Wallace in our text books. The idea was to learn about his fight for freedom†¦. Braveheart -Movie vs. Real Life The name Braveheart refers to a Scottish peasant named William Wallace whom which fought for Scotland’s freedom against the English King, Longshanks (Edward II). There is little true knowledge known about William Wallace, and what is known is questionable. Recently there was a movie made about the life of William Wallace, which was titled Braveheart. Overall, the movie portrayed a very clear picture of William Wallace’s life, but there were also some things that happened in the movie that were fiction. Such as there wasn’t a bridge at the battle of Stirling Bridge, the relationship between the Princess and William Wallace, and the Hollywood stuff in the movie. In this essay I will talk about these ways in which I feel that some of the movie was fictional. The first thing is the battle of Stirling Bridge. In real life, the battle took place on a bridge. In the movie, however the battle took place on a large grassy battlefield. The Scottish were quite quick to attack the English who were trying to assemble on the other side of the bridge. That was the way the Scottish won in the actual battle. However in the movie, the Scottish just got lucky and won the highly outnumbered battle. This is probably the most noticeable piece of history poorly portrayed in the movie. The second is the relationship that William Wallace had with the Princess of England. This is ridiculous for several reasons. First, a royal princess would most likely never touch a dirty, Scottish peasant; forget having a  serious relationship with him. And second the princess would have only been about 6 or 7 years old when this situation would’ve taken place. So that is another thing that was quite fictional in Braveheart. The last difference that I want to point out is that there were a lot of little things that I think didn’t happen in real life, and were used because it was a Hollywood movie. An example is that when they were in battle all of the Scottish mooned the English. It is possible because of their ancestor’s, the Kilts, fighting style, but it still seems unlikely to me. Also there is the way that William Wallace killed the Scottish Nobles. He just charged on his horse into their bedrooms in the middle of the night and slit their throats. Things like that probably didn’t happen at all. So in conclusion, Braveheart was a quite informative and entertaining movie that showed a good idea of the life of William Wallace. However there were several things such as there wasn’t a bridge at the battle of Stirling Bridge, the relationship between the Princess and William Wallace, and the Hollywood stuff in the movie, that made the movie less factual than possible. No matter what it was still a good movie, and I would recommend it to somebody wanting to learn about Scotland’s past andor the life of William Wallace.