The blue paint, though, that had to have been a thing, right? 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. Now granted, the bagpipes in that Braveheart scene are only seen in silhouette, but they do look an awful lot like modern bagpipes. 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. But military uniforms cost money, and they require an awful lot of time and resources to produce, and in the middle ages no one had a lot of time or resources. Or could he? There's not, though. 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. This time. According to Scotia Pipers, bagpipes were played at the Battle of Banockburn in 1314, but those bagpipes weren't like the ones used in Scotland today. That plaid skirt that can somehow make a Scottish guy look super manly. When Edward II became king he made Gaveston the Earl of Cornwall and then got in trouble with his barons for making Gaveston the Earl of Cornwall. So in the film, the two armies charge each other on an open field instead. According to Albanach, this practice was from the 2nd century, more than a thousand years before the birth of William Wallace. According to Albanach, the kilt didn't start to show up in the historical record until the 16th century, 300 years after the events depicted in Braveheart. 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. They were both oppressed by the English. 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. Nope. Braveheart seems to take great delight in portraying Prince Edward as a gay stereotype. That nickname belonged to Robert the Bruce. Alas, you only got one of those two things with Braveheart, and it wasn't no education. Edward's buddy in Braveheart is called Philip, but he's clearly a facsimile of Piers Gaveston. Evidently, Randall Wallace (the writer of Braveheart) thought this would have made for boring cinema, or maybe a river battle would have been more difficult to shoot. He went north to learn guerilla warfare from Wallace, but he wasn't the betrayer. 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. After King Edward had a bunch of Welsh rioters killed by his cavalrymen, they declared that they might go join the Scots. 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. Didn't happen, though. A side effect of that was that half the English army got massacred on the other side of the river, but hey, that's the cost of war. Argyle tells Wallace that the men are "playing outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes.". Cute. 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). © 2020 Grunge.com. Menteith refused on the grounds that he already had a master and couldn't make the same promise to two different kings. Perhaps he didn't like the way he chaffed when he was sitting on that hard leather saddle. So nope. One of the more forgivable mistakes in Braveheart is the attire of the English soldiers. And when they did, they were mostly wasting them on lavish banquets and expensive clothes for the royal family. 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. What would the medieval Scots have worn into battle? So Robert the Bruce imprisoned him instead of killing him, and upon Edward's death, Menteith swore fealty to the Bruce. William Wallace had a brave heart, but he wasn't actually "Braveheart." During the real battle, the English forces had to cross the narrow bridge over the river Forth in pairs. The man who handed Wallace over to King Edward was John Menteith, the Scottish nobleman who held Dumbarton Castle for the English. Bright yellow shirts dyed with — wait for it — horse urine. 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. But despite being super manly and also Scottish, William Wallace never wore a kilt. So if it was something that regularly happened, there would have been at least a handful of instances that survived into the modern record. But that was a lie, because Wallace was not born into poverty. References to the practice of primae noctis exist in the historical record, but not as individual incidents. So naturally, when they were given the opportunity to face them at the Battle of Falkirk, they fought alongside each other. According to Scotland Now, the Bruce got the nickname after his death in 1320. So really, that whole scene was just inserted into the movie to give us viewers a sense of moral outrage. According to Scotia Pipers, bagpipes were played at the Battle of Banockburn in 1314, but those bagpipes weren't like the ones used in Scotland today. 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. Also, Wallace's uncle Argyle was totally made up for the movie. In fact soldiers just kind of had to just throw together whatever they could find with whatever means they had, and for a common foot soldier, that usually wasn't much. You'd throw a glass of champagne in his face and have your bridesmaids throw him and his dumb horse to the curb. How accurate is it, though? Yeaaah!! The more inexcusable part of the scene is the "outlawed pipes" bit, though.