J'accuse Braveheart.

They’re showing Braveheart on British terrestrial TV again tonight. It’s a celebrated film; it won Oscars. It’s about this honest, brave young Scottish chap who takes on the might of mega-thug Edward I and his English war machine, and nearly wins. The Scottish cause is just and the Scots are all good guys. The English are all a bunch of snobbish, brutal bad guys who deserve a good thrashing. It’s fine as a work of romantic fiction, but people don’t see it that way. They think it’s an accurate telling of history, and that’s the problem. There was a reported upsurge of anti-English feeling in Scotland after that film came out. I gather there were attacks on English-owned property; maybe there were even personal assaults, I don’t know. What I do know is that people should be a bit above that sort of thing, especially when you look at what we know of the facts.

Mediaeval politics were similar to modern day gang warfare. Leaders were expected to be tough, brutal and uncompromising. William Wallace’s predecessor, King Alexander III, committed the most hideous acts of cruelty; and his successor, Robert the Bruce, murdered his political rival in a church before engaging in what was a form of extensive ethnic cleansing. And when Edward I’s son, Edward II, failed to live up to these ideals, even his own wife connived in his disposal. Kings were also expected to extend their area of influence; it was considered the right and proper thing to do. Edward I was simply very, very good at being what a mediaeval king was expected to be good at.

And it must be remembered that he had some slight right of succession to the Scottish crown after the death of Alexander III through his relationship to Alexander’s queen. And yet he didn’t try to seize the crown. He tried merely to establish overlordship, as was expected of a powerful king, bloodlessly through a legal agreement. The Scottish dignitaries all signed the agreement, and then they reneged on it. What was a red blooded gang leader supposed to do? Go home and have a nice cup of tea?

And what of Wallace himself? Was he really the fine, upstanding figure that Gibson presents us with? Hardly. Many of the Scottish dignitaries were uneasy about having him as their leader. He was a criminal, an outlaw. But his case won the day because he was recognised as being as tough and thuggish as Edward, and they felt that like was needed to fight like. After his victory at Stirling Bridge, he had a leading English cleric laid face down and the skin flayed from his back. He had the skin made into a sword belt. I admit that his sentence of execution was probably legally dubious, but he must have been aware of the biblical text ‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’ That was how things worked then, on both sides.

We can learn a lot about human nature from a study of history. But it needs to be an honest, open appraisal based on what we know of the facts, not a superficial, romanticised version presented by Hollywood. And if the facts run counter to our nationalistic (or other) prejudices, it's the prejudices that should go, not the facts. The human condition is far too complex to be judged by the simplistic ramblings of a Mel Gibson.