Randall Wallace - Braveheart

Now she stood on the far side of the room and heard the king’s question but didn’t turn around. She pushed open the shutters and stared outside at the wet snowflakes now swirling among the raindrops. Her breath fogged the air, and her eyes were we as the rain.

Inside the Bruce’s darkened chamber, the elder Bruce, his decaying features sagging from his face, stared across the table at his son. “I am the one who is rotting,” the old man said. “But I think your face looks graver than mine.”

“He was so brave. With courage alone he nearly won,” Robert said, his voice distant and tired.

“So more men were slaughtered uselessly!”

“He broke because of me. I saw it. He lost all will to fight.”

“We must have alliance with England to prevail here,” the elder Bruce said, pleading for his son to understand. “You achieved that! You saved your family, increased you lands! You –”

“Lands? Titles? What has this to do with that?”

“Everything.”

“Nothing!” Robert stood so suddenly his chair flew backward against the stone wall of his father’s dark chamber; the old leper sat so still that any visitor peeking in upon this private meeting might have thought the father’s skin was melting like sooted wax in the flame of the candle.

Young Robert paced back and forth in the square chamber. But he could find no words to open his heart, to let it spill out its hurt and anger. The leper spoke gently, “What I have asked of you is not easy. A king’s choices never are. But in time you will have all the power in Scotland.”

And suddenly young Robert exploded. “You understand nothing, Father! You say I own lands, title, men….. power! And you would have me own more.

Men fight for me because if they do not, I turn them off my land and starve their wives and children! Those men who bled the ground red at Falkirk, they fought for William Wallace, and he fights for something I’ll never have! And I took it from him in my betrayal. I saw it in his face on the battlefield, and it tears at me still!”

Robert shuddered; and yet he felt a strange feeling rising in him, a new strength that frightened him, threatening to overwhelm him, even as it struggled with his old weakness.

“All men betray!” his father was saying. “All lose heart. It is exactly why we make choices we make.”

“I don’t want to lose heart! I want to believe as he does!”

“My son…”

“No!!!” Robert shouted, his voice like a dagger to his father’s core. He spun to the door and looked back.

“I will never be on the wrong side again.”

He opened the door, not with the impulse of an anger that would fade but the slow calm of a man who had turned from a path he never meant to walk again. The leper did not look up, and he knew that his son did not look back.

For a long time after young Robert had gone, his father sat in his chamber and stared at the slowly dancing flame of the candle.

King Philip of France did not consider himself a decisive man. He never expressed this opinion publicly, of course; kings are expected to demonstrate some deference to God –claiming, as they do, that their right to rule flows from Him and thus they are closer to the Almighty than are other mortals –but they can never compare themselves to other men, much less do so unfavorably.

But Philip knew his history and was aware that kings are judged — when they are dead, and appraisal is allowed –- by their victories. Conflicts that remain unresolved throughout their reigns seem testaments to the limits of their abilities, and Philip had know nothing but struggle.

At the age of seventeen, he came to a throne that had been held by kings who, in retrospect, seemed to have been all powerful. They ruled the Holy Roman Empire, that political manifestation of the Catholic dream that all Christendom should be united under one temporal head, elected by the pope and his cardinals. But Philip seemed born into squabbling. His throne was attacked from within and from without. Longshanks, across the channel, claimed that he should rule both England and France, and Philip was forced to spend almost all of his time forging alliance among his own nobles to resist Longshanks’s diplomacy and armies. And in moments when Philip found breathing room from that problem, his energies were drawn to the perils of the Holy Catholic Church itself; the Vatican had fallen into so much of corruption and contention that Philip would eventually be forced, in the year 1309, to move the papacy to Avignon, and the world would have not one infallible pontiff but two, each of whom consigned the other to hell.

The demands of the throne were complicated and Philip managed the best he could. Faced with hundreds of difficult decisions that, once made, only seemed to result in the need to make other decisions, he began to consider himself indecisive, if he could truly decide something, he thought then he wouldn’t be forced to keep deciding again and again. If he could somehow make things simpler, then he might achieve a name like Charles I, who had become known as Charlemagne — Charles the Great — or Louis IX, who had been canonized as Saint Louis.

Philip IV was known as Philip the Fair.

It was midafternoon on a fine Parisian day when this handsome, dark-haired king of France was hoping he could conclude his business son enough to stroll among his gardens while the sun was still up, that Deroux, one of his many advisors, entered the palace audience chamber wearing a worried look. This was not unusual; all his advisors were forever looking troubled. The king only noted the weighty expression because he had been working since dawn and had thought the stream of troublesome matters being brought before him had finally dried up for the day. This last advisor waited his turn as Philip waded through the deliberations at his usual steady pace; but when at last the king turned to him and said, “Yes, Deroux,” The man seemed unprepared to respond.

“Sire…,” he said at last, “we have a… a….”

“A problem Deroux?”

“A visitor, sire. A man who says he is William Wallace.”

William Wallace . King Philip knew in an instant why Deroux had been hesitating. That name had cause head scratching and uncertainty in the French court since the first time it was spoken, just after the Battle of Stirling, where an English army more powerful than the ones that had been bedeviling France had been driven from Scotland in a single day. An unknown commoner? A military genius? A legendary figure who had taken an army away from the nobles who owned it and then led it to victory? Some of Philip’s advisors doubted this Wallace actually existed.

Then they had received a letter from him. It was written in clear, forceful French strictly correct if a bit academic. The letter petitioned the French king and his court to enter pacts of defense and trade. It made no mention of their common enemy but pointed out in a direct fashion the benefits to both countries of such an alliance. King Philip had often thought how advantageous it would be to utilize the military and economic potential of Longshanks’s northern neighbors; it was obvious to him that Longshanks’s efforts to crush the Scots were meant to prevent just such a possibility.

But nothing was ever simple. Philip’s advisors had told their king that it might not be prudent to respond to Wallace’s letter favorably; perhaps it was dangerous to respond at all. The Scottish nobles were distrustful and divided. Did this Wallace possess the authority to create alliances? If so, how long would his ability last?

The French stalled. The royal court studied and debated. By that time Wallace had been defeated at Falkirk, and Philip’s advisors felt vindicated in their caution. Now here he was, in France, presenting himself, requesting an audience with the king himself.