ROBERT the Bruce remains one of Scotland’s most famous kings and his story has featured in several films, from Braveheart in 1995 to Outlaw King in 2018. A lesser-known movie, The Bruce, released in 1996, is the only attempt to tell the full story of his reign on screen, but how close to history is it?

The film begins in Egypt, with crusaders carrying Bruce’s heart in battle against a group of Muslims. The fight soon ends with all the Christians slain. This scene is based on Scottish knight Sir James Douglas’s crusade. After Bruce died in 1329, Douglas, one of his most loyal supporters, took the king’s embalmed heart with him on crusade, probably aiming to deliver it to the Church of the

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Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, purportedly the site of Jesus’s tomb and therefore one of the most holy Christian sites in the world.

The expedition eventually arrived in Spain to join Alfonso XI of Castile’s campaign against the Muslim sultan of Granada, and helped the Castilians besiege the castle of Teba. But during the siege, Douglas and all the other Scots with him were killed. Bruce’s heart was returned to Scotland and buried beneath the high altar of Melrose Abbey.

The rest of the film follows the events leading up to Bruce’s seizure of the throne and his victory over Edward II of England at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

At the start of the film, Bruce (Sandy Welch) has not yet claimed the throne and is allied with John Comyn (Pavel Douglas), to whom he has promised his lands if Comyn helps him become king.

With James Douglas (Kern Falconer), Comyn later betrays Bruce by attacking him during a battle with the English. In reality, Comyn probably still supported the Balliol claim to the throne and was rarely on good terms with the Bruce, while Douglas did not join Bruce’s cause until after he was crowned king.

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We soon see Edward I (Brian Blessed, above) leading a battle against the Scots. Before this, he raises the dragon banner, a black flag with a fire-breathing white dragon on it, which the king says symbolises that the enemy should be given no mercy.

The dragon banner was a real English war banner and its use seems to have meant no quarter would be given. Its only recorded use in Scotland, however, was by one of the king’s lieutenants, Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, rather than by Edward himself. The only detailed description we have of an English royal dragon banner, from 1244, suggests it was red and shaped more like a dragon-faced windsock with a fiery tongue.

Following Comyn’s betrayal, Bruce goes on the run and seeks shelter in a cave, where he sees the famous spider trying again and again to spin its web until it eventually succeeds. This story, originally recorded by Sir Walter Scott in 1828 in his Tales of a Grandfather, is usually timed after the Bruce has become king and is on the run from the English in the Hebrides.

The spider’s persistence inspires Bruce to keep fighting against England. Instead, the film has it inspire Bruce to return and murder Comyn in a church. The real fatal meeting between the two, at Greyfriars Kirk in Dumfries, was instead an attempt by Robert to persuade Comyn to back his claim to the throne, not in revenge for an attempted battlefield assassination.

One of Bruce’s chief advisers and supporters is “Bishop Wisharton” (Oliver Reed), a combination of two different real figures – Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, and William Lamberton, Bishop of St Andrews, both important backers of the king.

READ MORE: Robert the Bruce was a broken warrior and triumphant king

Bruce claims Wisharton served as head of the Knights Templar for 20 years but when the bishop fights at Bannockburn, he is shown wearing the outfit of a different military-religious order, the Teutonic Knights.

Wisharton claims he even served alongside Edward I on his crusade to the Holy Land and swore then not to raise arms against him in future. Neither Wishart nor Lamberton had any links to the Templars or had been on crusade, though they did both swear fealty to Edward in the 1290s when he first invaded Scotland and deposed its king, John Balliol.

Nor did either bishop die at Bannockburn, as Wisharton does. Wishart was not even in Scotland at the time. He had been captured in the summer of 1306 and was then held prisoner in England.

He was only released a year after Bannockburn.

However, Wishart did take part in the fighting before his capture. Edward I had given Wishart timber to help repair the bell tower of Glasgow Cathedral, something he no doubt regretted when the bishop sided with Bruce and used it instead to build siege engines to attack English-held castles.

The film presents the battle of Bannockburn as part of a trick by Edward II (Richard Brimblecombe) to bring the Bruce to battle. Edward has Bruce’s queen, Elizabeth de Burgh (Conor Chamberlain), imprisoned in Stirling Castle in the hope Bruce will try to free her.

In reality, the events leading to the battle were set in motion by one of Bruce’s brothers, Edward. He had been besieging the castle since spring 1313. At Midsummer, the commander of the English garrison, Philip Mowbray, promised Edward Bruce that he would surrender if no re-inforcements came within a year and a day.

Edward II’s army arrived a day before the deadline, leading to the battle of Bannockburn outside the Stirling Castle, a key fortress not because it held the Bruce’s queen, actually imprisoned in England, but because it controlled the easternmost crossing of the Forth, making it one of the most strategically important sites in the kingdom.

Overall, the film offers a very jumbled timeline of Bruce’s reign, with some relatively obscure historical details, such as the dragon banner, mixed with several blatant historical inaccuracies such as the events behind the battle of Bannockburn or “Wisharton” being a former Templar.