Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Sex Life of William 'Braveheart' Wallace

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

If you've seen the film Braveheart, you might have certain expectations about the real history of William Wallace.Separating fact from fiction can be tricky, but what do we really know about this iconic Scot, and the supposed relationships that sparked his rebellion against the English?Today Kate is joined by author and host of Gone Medieval, Eleanor Janega, to find out the truth behind William Wallace.How does his life tie into the Scottish Wars of Independence? Why did he receive such gruesome treatment? And why is the film Braveheart so irritating to medieval historians?This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producers were Stuart Beckwith, Sophie Gee and Joseph Knight. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here to care for you, look after you, nurture you, and keep you all safe and wrapped up and squishy. And in order to do that, you need a fair do's warning. Here it is.

This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. Feel safer, I know I do, let's do it. Day betwixters, you join me on a balmy summer's day in London. The year is 1305, the sun is shining brightly, and crowds have gathered in their hundreds. Moments ago, the brutal execution of William Wallace took place, and it was brutal even by the standards of the day. It's not quite the day out that I had in mind.

I fancy just a summer stroll through the capital, an ice cream, except ice cream hasn't been invented yet, but that's what I was after. And whilst in years to come, William Wallace's final moments would be immortalised in the film Braveheart, crying out freedom! I can tell you that a fair amount of creative licence was at play. But his story is most definitely one of defiance, especially in the face of King Edward I, whom Wallace refused to acknowledge as his king. Fair play. And it was a defiance that would inspire the fight for Scottish independence for generations. to come. But just how much creative license was taken in the film Braveheart when it comes to William Wallace's sex life? Hmm? Well, I am ready to find out if you are.

What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful done. Goodness, has nothing to do with it, Derry. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society, with me, Kate Lister.

Let's face it, one of the main contributors to historical myth is Hollywood. Fancy embellishing a story, not a problem. And whilst it's a favourite pastime of mind to see historians get all riled up and froth at the mouth at the depictions of history on film, there is work to be done when it comes to unpicking the truth, or as close as the truth as we can get, to what really happened. The story of William Wallace is a classic example of this,

with the 90s blockbuster brave heart having an awful lot to answer for. Did William Wallace really paint himself blue? Did the murder of his lover inspire an uprising against the English and were his last words really freedom? Joining me today is longtime friend of the show and medieval master that is Eleanor Janager, co-host of our sister podcast, Gone Medieval. Kiltz at the ready betwixters. Let's do this.

Welcome back to Betwix the Sheets. It's my favorite, Eleanor. How are you doing? Do you know, I'm better every time I see your delightful face, Kate. I'm just randomly plucking medieval-ish topics out of the end, just so I can get you. We can see the sweat on this one. It's just like, what can we get Eleanor to rant about? I don't know.

I don't know, like literally anything. This one I'm quite looking forward to, though, William Wallace. I'll tell you for why, because I went to go and see Braveheart at the cinema when it came out as a very, very young person. And horrible histories weren't a thing, so I didn't know what had happened to William Wallace. And I didn't realize it was real history. So when he got, I'm drawn and quoted in the end, I was devastated. So that doesn't happen in movies. Yeah, it's an interesting one too, because so I'm off.

while and out about Braveheart, which is a technical historical term. Because the trouble is that it has this core of historical accuracy, stuff like him being hung dry and unquartered, about a five-minute walk from where I'm recording right now, in fact. Wow. Like literally in the first couple of seconds, they get the history wrong. Like they've got incorrect dates. And also they've sexed him up, but have they? Well, yes. And you know what? Fair play. We all want a sexy guy in our movie. And that's fine. And I actually don't think that there's a problem with making movies that don't have

history correct. My issue is when people see it and then go, oh, yeah, okay, like uncritically take every single thing on board. And they were like, oh, yeah. William Wall, Shaggin and Queen Isabella. How about that? How about that? Could I've forgotten that happened. As a historian, I do, I try very hard not to sit there and watch films and bitch about them. A lot of the time, it's low-hanging fruit. And it's like, it's a film. They have to have creative license. It's a different medium. Should up. If you don't like it, read a book. But I think that Braveheart might, might win the most irritating film to historians award. Because there's so much in it that is just, nope, nope, nope, nope, that didn't happen.

Like, I think that you're probably bang on. And it's, again, it's, I think it's a presentation thing. Because, like, you know, every single medieval historian, every one of us will line up to tell you all about how much we love a night's tale. Yes. Night's tale, yes, whenever that happened. And, you know, it's completely historically inaccurate, but it's not pretending that it isn't. Whereas Braveheart is like,

oh, you're about to see a very serious historical movie that is also sexy. And it's like, come on, buddy. Like, pick one. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. One of the things it did get right, and it's quite a central tenet to it,

is there really was someone called William Wallace, which I'm glad that they got that bit. Correct. There was. There was. It is out. Who was he? I'm going to have a shame that it didn't like,

Gibson in a kilt. Yeah, well, one of the things that's really sad is that he probably didn't even wear a kilt. And there's a reason for this. And that's because, so, you know, like, our details of William Wallace's early life before he gets himself in trouble are what I would call sketchy at best. Ah, right. So we know that he comes from a family of, like, he's like lower nobility, right? So, like, he's fancy, but not like, we own a string of castles fancy. Like, he's kind of middling fancy. So definitely not a commoner as he's in the film then. definitely not a commoner. And so the reason why this means that he's not wearing a kilt is that members of the nobility in Scotland kind of look like members of the nobility elsewhere. You know, if he goes into battle, he'll be wearing armor. And we know that he probably has some military training of some sort. His personal seal, which we do have, has an archer on it. Wow. So it is probable that he knows something about warmaking, which is cool. But he really kind of goes. on to the scene when it all kind of starts kicking off with the Scottish Wars of Independence.

And that's when we start getting really good records about him. Because, you know, sometimes our records for Scotland are not the best. There are a lot of reasons for this, you know, like in the first place, you know, stuff do be burning down. Yeah, we do be doing that quite a lot. Yeah. And, you know, like when there's multiple wars back and forth, which there are in Scotland and England a lot, we lose records. People aren't saving the paperwork. Yeah. So, you know, we, he kind of comes up more in a context of like when the English are big mad. That's when you get it. And that kind of happens as a result of the Scottish Wars of Independence.

Do we have any idea when William was born, roughly? It's one of these things that we're like sometime around 1270 or so. Okay. So 1270-ish. Yeah. So it's like he was in his 30s when he gets killed. We know that. And this is super common.

You know, like we don't always. have a great handle on people's birthdays unless they are really quite highfalutant indeed. It's like, in there, in there, right? Okay, so he's bombed sometime around there, and he's definitely Scottish, and he's definitely called William Wallace. We know this much. I don't actually know all that much about what the Scottish Wars of Independence were beyond just, it was the English being shit again, wasn't it?

That's sort of my entire historical understanding is like it was lesbian dicks. I mean, well, you're bang on, you know. Print it. I'm moving on. That's it. Okay, so it's a complex one. So basically, there was a Scottish king, King Alexander, who widely was regarded as a really cool guy and everybody liked him. But he dies a real classic rich guy death in 1286.

He falls off his horse. Now, the heir to the throne was supposed to be his granddaughter, Margaret, the maid of Norway. And this is super common for Scottish people. because they are so far north, they've got great links with like Norway, Sweden, you know. Yeah, yeah. Everyone's waiting for Margaret to come over from Norway. Now, unfortunately, when she comes over from Norway, she dies in the Orkneys in about 1290. And so now everyone is like, well, shit.

And they basically have a kind of like X factor search for like who's going to be the next game. There's 13 different contenders. And there's kind of like two major ones. there's Robert Bruce who is not Robert the Bruce. He's Robert the Bruce. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Right.

That's his granddad. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's this other guy, John Balliol. Okay. And so they're trying to figure out who to do it. And some bright spark is like, okay, we need a ref for this. So we're going to get King Edward the first up from England to sort of ref all of this,

which is like, here's your first mistake. Never invite an English guy over the border. Like, you know, why would you do that? Why would you do that? No, don't tell him, we don't appear to have a king. Would you like to come and help us out? No. So basically, he gets up there and he says, well, before I ref, you all need to agree that I'm the

Lord Paramount of Scotland. That doesn't sound good. Yeah. But they all kind of do it because they're like, oh yeah, but when I'm king, then, you know, it's all going to kind of come back, right? They get together in this castle at Barrick, and eventually they choose John Balliol as the king. And John Balliol gets picked because he's got a super strong claim, based on primogeniture,

which is kind of the like, what happens when first men are involved. But it's not about like proximity of blood because basically Robert Bruce, he's got closer links, but it's through the ladies. Oh, I see. I see.

So it's like looking at the family tree and going, well, there are more men who are more closely related on this guys, even though the women, right, okay, okay. Yeah, that sounds stupid. Yeah, and it doesn't go over well. Let's put it that way. and Edward then proceeds to be a real dick about it. And like he basically makes John come down to London

and like stand before the English court as a plaintiff. Basically he's just kind of like swinging things around like, I'm really the ruler of Scotland, you know, and everyone is like, I don't like how John Belial is doing this. Like he should just been like, all right, you did your job sought off. I'm not going to do this. But because there's the somewhat tenuous claim to the throne, he's like, whatever you say, your majesty is.

you know, kind of like scuttling around, right? So the Scottish don't like this, and they make a new council called the council of 12. And it's kind of like a panel of guys who are like, no, sorry, we're not doing this anymore. And they go down to France, and they're like, hey, guys, who up hate in the English?

Would you like to get together? Yeah, and do something. And so, no, obviously, Edward is livid, and he comes on up to Barrick, and this kicks off all the wars, right? a couple of castles are taken. He goes up to John, like there's a fashion crime here. We have a wardrobe malfunction.

He goes up and like tears the arms of Scotland off of John Balliol's surcoat. Ooh. He's like messing with his fashion. And basically he's like, I'm the king of Scotland now. To which about 1800 or so Scottish nobles capitulate. But other people do not like that. This is Edward de Longshanks? Yes, that's Edward Deveras.

He sounds like a massive shit. Was he a massive? of shit. Because he was in the film, you know, the may as well have been like evil Vader music

whatever he turned up. Was he really shitty? I mean, the thing is like all kings suck, don't they? But he did really suck. I mean, like, when your alternative nickname

other than Longshanks is Hammer of the Scots, oh, fuck. Yeah. It's not great. It's not great. Like, let's just put it that way. You know, I think I personally

wouldn't hammer Scots. No. Unless he got the nickname before the Scottish Wars of Independence. And then he would have been like, well, this is prophetic. I guess I better get up there and earn this nickname. But that's not what happened. Yeah, exactly.

And basically everyone agrees that he's a real dick. He's rude to people at court. And it's also funny because like this whole thing about him being like, whoa, this guy's so tall. He's like 6'2. Like I'm not saying that's not tall, but it's not like remarkable anymore. No. Is that why he was called Longshanks?

Is that what that means? It's just that he was included. Oh, right. Okay. I wasn't sure if it was a penis joke. Yeah. Might be. I don't know.

It's like, you know, he's also like the guy who expelled all the Jewish people from England. No. You know, which I'm not a fan of. So, yeah, he's responsible for the Jewish expulsion in 1290. So like a dick, right? Yeah, okay. Yeah, he is. And busy as well.

He's getting a lot of atrocities done. I mean, he really knows how to be a hater. I will say that for him. It's like, how do you get anything done in between all the atrocities, right? So, yeah. So he's up in Scotland tearing John's T-shirt off, and then what happens? Okay, so then it all kicks off, right? Some people are licking boots and going with it, and other people are not.

And William Wallace is one of the ones who is not going with it. So he kicks things off in 1297. William Wallace kind of comes to our attention because he pulls a Bob Marley, which is to say he kills the High Sheriff of Lanark, William de Hesselrig. Wow. And so suddenly he's on the map because everyone's like, oh, ho, we're out here killing sheriffs now. Okay. And then he hooks up then with the Lord of Douglas and they do a thing called the Raid of Scone, which is not like when I do it.

And he just go M&S and get like four cheese ones and eat them all. And then everyone's like, yeah, fantastic. There are a bunch of more rebellions that break out as a result of this across Scotland. and they also go after a lot of the Scottish people who submit it, right? Ooh, scabs. Yeah, like basically it's a scab thing, right? So basically then you have a couple of big battles, including the Battle of Stirling Bridge,

which does what it says on the tin. This was a really kind of smart bit of tactics. It's a fairly narrow bridge. You can't get people to cross it more than about three at a time. And the Scottish just stood there on one end and we're like, No, you come over here. Like, classic medieval warfare, the English were like, oh, well, it wouldn't be sporting if we didn't. The thing that always kind of makes me wonder about it.

I think this is kind of like the English got a little cocky. That doesn't sound like this. I know. I can't believe it. You know, where it's like, you know, I would simply not cross the obvious trap bridge. No. But the English were like, no, we're doing it. And so they basically, the Scots just stood there.

And like, when the next three guys would make it across, they killed them. And then they killed the next ones. And then they killed the next ones. part of the bridge collapses during all of this. A bunch of people just straight up drown. And it's like a marked victory. Edwards' treasurer in Scotland dies during it. So it's pretty significant.

It's really interesting because there is a possibly apocryphal story about William Walls here. So when he kills Edward's treasurer, there is like people saying that he then took like a strip of his skin and like made a baldrick for his sword out of it. Oh, that's gruesome. Yeah, it's gruesome. I don't know that we can necessarily say that that's true. To me, it seems like they're trying to play William Wallace up as a barbarian or something like that. So, yeah, as a result of this, everyone is like, oh, hey, William Wallace and this other guy, Moray, these guys are cool. And we are going to call them the Guardians of the Kingdom of Scotland.

And they are kind of representing John Balliol, okay? But then, Moray dies from wounds from the battle. field. And so then that just makes William Wallace, the guardian of the kingdom of Scotland, right? What's John Balliol doing while all this is going on? Just hanging out? What's he up to? He is certainly like around and on the scene, but it's a really kind of a difficult one, right? Because he feels as though Edward has kind of pipped him, right? So in a way he'd kind of abdicated already at this point in time. That's what Edward wanted. Edward was like, okay, well, I took your little seal off and like, that's that for you.

And there's all of these rebellions going on. And people are saying, we're doing this for John Balliol. And John Balliol is like basically a prisoner at this point in. Oh, okay. He is like in the Tower of London. Sometimes he's at Dover. Sometimes the Pope has custody of him. It's basically agreed to throughout Europe that this guy is important.

Like obviously the English are like, yeah, we need to keep an eye on it. But even the Pope is like, oh, lads, you know. So like this is why you need William Wallace to be a quote unquote protector of Scotland in terms of the cause. Because otherwise, who's running the joint other than Edward. And so there needs to be someone viable. But they also kind of need to keep saying that Balliol is the king because then otherwise, Edward is able to say who does and doesn't get to be monarch, right? And that's the whole point.

They're like, no, he doesn't. Like, he's not the boss of me. I'll be back with Eleanor and William after this short break. So there's the weird bridge battle, which now I've heard you explain it, feels less like a decisive military victory and more like the English being stupid fuckers. That's a big victory. The Scots must have been properly buoyed up. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where was more this base? In the film, he's kind of like, you know, living in the highlands and sleeping and Heather bushes, stuff like that. And that's the thing. It's like, Homeboy is like Southwest. Right. Again, like, it's sexy.

I mean, in the, in the movie, too, they're all like, oh, he's just like, just a humble peasant. I was like, no. He's not, though, is he? Granted, this is the thing. It's a somewhat believable story because, hey, well, most Scottish people in the 13th and 14th century are peasants. By 80% of them are going to be a peasant of some kind.

We only get to just sort of like know about rich people because that's who people write about. So you could understand why it's a sense. story that gets told. And it also sort of appeals to our understanding of like a David and Goliath battle as modern people. You know, we want him to be completely downtrodden. And I'm like, you don't need to go that far, right? You could just be like, actually, the English can be a dick to any number of people. You know, they've got that ability. It's true. We don't need you to be poor. We will equal opportunity assholes, quite frankly. I'm going to imagine at this point, this is when King Edward really starts to think, oh, shit, shit.

And he's going to move stuff up now to try and get Wallace. So what happens after this battle? You have another big battle. This is the battle of Falcirk. And you are right. Edward is like, okay, well, that is it. Like, I'm paying off mercenaries. He pays all of these Welsh people to go up.

And he's got something like 1,500 horses, which is a lot. And they start hitting various areas. Like they plunder Lothian. they hit a bunch of castles. And what they're kind of attempting to do is like goad Wallace into doing something. And basically you get the battle of Falkirk. And because they've got all these Welsh longbowmen this time, they have a slight tactical advantage because Wallace has like a lot of spearmen.

But if you've got longbow men, they can just shoot you. And that's the trouble. So eventually the Scots lose a lot of men. but Wallace gets away. Right. And like at this point in time, he's feeling bad about it. He resigns and he's no longer guardian of Scotland.

That's the standard of my notice. I know. He's like, that's it. I've shamed us all. It can't be me anymore. And this is when you get Robert the Bruce. So Rob turns up. Yeah, Rob turns up.

He will become the king. Fantastic. And we don't really know what is going on at this point. Maybe he went down to, France to ask Philip the 4th to like send some soldiers or whatever, you know, went out there to say, please help. We do know there is a letter that the French king sends to Rome where he's got envoys being like, you should help the Scottish out. Like, come on, what's going on? So, there is some reporting from some various spies on the English side where they're saying that

Wallace is in France. Okay. But anyway, by 1304, he's back. There are various skirmishes. And we know that that's going on. But then he gets captured. So 1305, a snitch hands him in. Thumbs down to John Dementeeth. Like, we got your snitch name. He lives in infamy. Bad guy. In the film, it was Robert the Bruce that did it, wasn't it? Which was an odd historical take. Yeah, I don't really know why they would do that. Like, are you trying to suggest that he's, like, jealous or something? And like, calm down. Before we get to what happened after he'd been caught, in the film, William Mollison gets to York and he sacks York and it's a whole big, oh my God, Wallace has sacked York. Did that happen? Did he get as far down south as York or was that creative license as well? I think that's

creative license. Like, so, you know, we know that he's like hitting up hapru, he's hitting up urnside, places like that. And they do kind of like raid across the border, but I think that perhaps the farthest north that anyone in America knows exists. I'm allowed to say it. I'm allowed to It's got to be somewhere that people have heard of. It's in York or Manchester? It's one of the two. Yeah, it's got to be one or the other, you know, so they've gone with York. So this guy snitches on him.

Do we know how he gets caught? Does the guy, what was his name? Snitchy McSnitch. Yeah, John Dementy. Yeah, and so he is Scottish, but he is Team Edward for whatever reason. So basically, he kidnaps him essentially and has him over to the English side. I'm at Rob Woiston, which is kind of like near Glasgow. And there's a monument to it.

Wow. And at that point in time, he gets sent down to London, which is where it all goes terribly wrong. Yeah, and he's tried as a traitor. Tell me what happens. This is a really interesting legal point, right? Because William Wallace is like, I'm not a traitor. I did not swear fealty. That's a good point.

So like, you know, you could go ahead and do that to like the snitch that turned me in, but I never bent the need of you. So how could I have possibly been a traitor? Edward does not take the point. Basically, they say that, oh, he committed all these atrocities. Like they said that, you know, he was killing monks and nuns and, you know, women and children. And, you know, hey, ho, maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't.

But, you know, basically the entire thing is they want to paint him as a monster. But it is interesting because essentially this gets brought up a lot in terms of legal scholarship because they're saying that he's more or less on trial for war crimes. Wow. Okay. Because like you shouldn't kill women and children. You shouldn't kill monks and nuns. You shouldn't do like non-combatant stuff.

Right. Which is interesting because, you know, people did. Yeah. A lot. So, you know, it's just because they, the English are out here being like very pious about it. And I was like, okay, Edward. Hammer of the Scots.

Like, oh, he's got religion suddenly. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So he eventually gets taken to the Tower of London. And then this is when they do some torturing. So first, he gets stripped naked and dragged through London. We think to Smithfield, this is what's kind of confusing.

Because there are kind of two major execution places. There is Smithfield. And then there is also the Tyburn, which is kind of over where marble arch is now. But they're sort of called the same thing. Okay. But we're assuming it'll be Smithfield because, like, if they took them all the way from the Tower of London over to the Tyburn, That would just take an ages. So we think it's probably Smithfield.

Then he is hung, drawn, and quartered. And what this involves, in his case, they go particularly hard. So they start hanging him and strangle him, but don't let him die. They chop his junk off. Then they eviscerated him and put his guts onto a fire in front of him and made him watch that. And then they cut his head off. It's really grim. and they took his head, they dip it in tarp,

they put it on London Bridge, which is kind of common for people who have done crimes against the king, and then they cut his body into four parts and they send his limbs to Newcastle, barrack, Sterling and Perth

to make a point. They cut off his arms and legs and they sent him to the four corners of the kingdom basically. Who did they send them to? Was it just like addressed to the people of Perth and it was just a leg or was there an actual recipient there

waiting to take care of the leg. Yeah, basically someone who is a representative of Edward will take it up there and they go out and they do the whole hear-you-he-he-you thing. And they're like, check it out, we got a leg. Oh, that makes more sense than just a leg turning up. Right. Because otherwise, no one would know who it belonged to or anything.

Oh, it's grim. So this is horrible and grim, and it was meant to be horrible and grim, and this is exceptional. This is a sort of torture and killing that wouldn't ordinarily happen in most of the medieval world. This is something specifically reserved

for someone who is considered to be a super major threat. Like, this isn't going to happen to a common person who steals a sheep, although they might be hung. This is like above and beyond. And part of the reason you have super gruesome things like this or even, you know, why you would hang someone who steals a sheep is because people don't get caught very often for crime in the medieval period.

So when you do get caught for crime, they're like, okay, we've got to go all out. Like, we've got to be like, this is what will happen. And so Edward has to go in really hard on William Walls to be like, I hear y'all like rebelling, no rebelling, this is what will happen to you. Like, he has to go as hard as he possibly can. Wow. So this is the worst thing they could dream up.

It's not like this is standard practice in any way, shape, or form. No. Yeah. So he makes a very sticky and painful end. We'll only have to hope that he was semi-conscious throughout most of it. But can I ask you? It's very sad to cut his junk off, because I'm going to ask you about his love life, because obviously that was very central to the film, wasn't it?

And as you right, I completely forgotten in the film, he shags Queen Isabella. But do we know? Spoiler, no, that doesn't happen. Yeah, so Queen Isabella is two at the time. So there is kind of rumors about his love life, in particular what we sort of know about him for this and the rumors about it, come from a late 15th century romance that's written about him by somebody called Blind Harry or Harry the Minstrel.

And this is called The Wallace. And Harry the Minstrel goes in hard about how sexy Willie Wallace is. He's given him the Mel Gibson treatment. He says that he is a tall man with the body of a giant. He has lengthy flanks, is broad in the hips with strong arms and legs, and all of his limbs were strong and firm. He says that William Wallace is six foot fucking seven, which I don't know, probably not,

and that he's like gorgeous, he's got Auburn hair, he's got blue eyes. He does like the full medieval description of beauty. He's like, his brows and lashes are light and his lips are round and full. Like he goes in, Boudoir. Wow.

This has written 200 years after the fact by a guy who says he's blind. Yeah, exactly, right? And it's normal, right? So given that we're talking about how hot he is, right, basically there is also a story about what makes him rebel. And he says that he had been married to a woman called Marian Bradfoot, who was the heiress of Lamington, and that they had a daughter, and that basically the English killed them. and that's what drives William to rebel. This is probably unlikely.

And part of this also kind of comes from the idea that maybe the daughter survived and that she married into the Belial family and then someone from them then married into Clan Shaw. And Clan Shaw likes to bring this up and be like, uh, uh, we're connected to the Wallace's, right? And it's like, probably they're just making up a story, right? It's just like a way of attaching yourself to a more important family to make yourself look big.

So it's probably not real. And there's a couple of ways to kind of read this story, right? And one of them is to say, okay, well, maybe he did have like a wife and daughter. And I don't know, maybe he did. And maybe this is like an oral tradition that kind of gets passed down. And that is what drove him over the edge. But you could also read the idea of Marion as sort of a way of thinking about the kingdom of Scotland, like a romantic metaphor for the country as a whole.

We don't have any real evidence that Marion existed. Oh, nothing in the contemporary sources at all. Uh-uh. Yeah, so it would be cool, but I put it on the other hand, you know, the only reason we have records of William Wallace is because everything kicked off. Is it possible? Yes.

Is it likely? No. Because I think that probably more would have been made of the fact. that she had existed had she done so. I think, like, that would be a part of the legend earlier on. Yeah. You know, it would get brought up more often. Now, whom he may have been shagging other than that,

probably some people. Like, you know, it was rather the style at the time, wasn't it? Yeah, it absolutely was. You're the protector of Scotland, like, please. Absolutely. Blumers flying down, left, right, and center. In the film, she was called Marion as well. So that's interesting that there's that kind of nod to it. Yeah, so I think that in the film,

do enough there, but it's like she should be a fancy lady. Right. She should be fancier, and he should be fancier as well. So poor old William Wallace ends up in a number of pieces in different places around the country. A may or may not have a wife that was going, oh, fucking Elle, Wallace, that was stupid of you. Yeah, not as junk, no. No. What was Wallace's legacy? I mean, did he change things in the fight for Scottish independence? In the film, one of the biggest liberties they take was that they have this thing that Robert the Bruce then led the Scots to freedom and it just kind of finishes there and it's like and they won their freedom and it's kind of like and then we stole it again very shortly afterwards but they don't mention that piece.

Well the thing of it is he is certainly a pivotal military person and what he kind of establishes is that well you can fight the English right like these people are beatable and it's certainly within the realm of possibility that you can fight back you don't have to just bend the knee or whatever. And Robert the Bruce does kind of go on to mop things up and these fights continue. And but this is kind of the story. Like if you're kind of near the border with Scotland, fighting goes back and forth pretty much throughout the entire kind of like high to late medieval people, even earlier than that. They're just always attacking each other. It's rather the done thing up there. And this doesn't really calm down until James the first becomes

king of England in the early modern period. So it is an interesting. one because there are these kind of like questions, what does it mean to be Scottish? What does it mean to be English? And it's also a really interesting one because, you know, in the medieval period, a lot of the time people don't think about themselves in these super nationalistic literally would they go around going, oh yeah, I'm Scottish me, you know, like there are all these different ways of thinking about things. But I'll tell you one thing that everyone isn't united in is they don't like the King of England telling them what to do. So like, that's what it comes down to, right? Yeah. That's it. Oh, Alan, you have been

amazing to talk to you. You always are. It's so much fun. I'm going to go and re-watch Braveheart now and I might have to get you back on and we can say why Robin Hood Prince of Thieves isn't historically accurate next time. I love that film. I love it. Oh, me.

I will let that so many liberties slide with that film. Completely. Not a problem. Alan Rickman all the way. Whatever Alan Rickman wants. Okay. As long as he's having a good time, I don't care. Absolutely. Same. Same. The Scots came down and raided show in Forrest, fine, as long as Alan says, I'm on board with that.

If people want to know more about you, if they want to hear more of what you do, where can they find you? Over on Gone Medieval every Tuesday, so you can come check me out there. If you want to hear more about what I think about beauty standards, not just for William Wallace, you can also check out my book, The Once and Future Sex, which is now out in paperback. So budget-friendly, baby, I'm around. I might show up here every five minutes. You don't know.

Thank you so much for. coming on again, and I will see you very soon. Thanks, babe. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you to Eleanor for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just fancy saying hi, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We've got episodes on everything from the real history of Budica to the history of sex work in America. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagi and produced by Stuart Beckworth.

The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.