#8 - "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story"

Depiction of William Wallace

We are all aware of how loosely the term "based on a true story" is used in Hollywood. Erin and I found just how loosely it was used for the movie Braveheart while on a tour of the Scottish Highlands. Apparently the term Braveheart never actually referred to William Wallace at all, but Robert the Bruce. Wallace never would have worn a kilt as he was born in the Scottish lowlands and the kilt of that era looked nothing like the kilts of today. Our tour guide also mentioned about Mel Gibson's Scottish dialect saying he wasn't certain that William Wallace spoke with a 20th century Glasgow accent. Despite the historical inaccuracies it seems that everyone here loves the movie, after all, it makes the Scots look good and the English look bad.

Yesterday we had the chance to visit Rosslyn Chapel. This was a relatively unknown tourist attraction before a 2003 novel called The Da Vinci Code was written and it's subsequent movie released. If you've seen the movie then you know that Rosslyn Chapel is associated with the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail and is visited by Tom Hank's character. Our tour guide revealed to us that before the movie was released the chapel received 30,000 visitors a year, afterwards, it grew to over 150,000. There was even an incident where a man came crashing in to the chapel with an axe in hand, destined to destroy the pillar that supposedly houses the Holy Grail. He was quickly arrested and taken away without fulfilling his quest. There are some similarities between the chapel and the free masons but after touring it didn't take long to find out that Dan Brown and Hollywood took numerous liberties in stating the facts. 

Although Hollywood tells good stories, we have found that Scotland is a true epic of its own.