Braveheart & Us

Edimburgo

About Us

Braveheart & Us

In 1995 the actor Mel Gibson released the movie Braveheart, a story which was based on the largely fictionalised novel of the same name by Randall Wallace. Reading beyond the novel however you can see that William Wallace was a real man & the sacrifice he made was indeed made for the love of his country & people. Not only was he a true patriot, but he became the first real martyr for Scottish Independence. This page is not about William Wallace however, or Braveheart come to mention it, it is all about how one movie can touch you & change your life forever. It touched me & a girl from Brasil on a very personal level & this is the story about what happened.

I first heard about Mel Gibson making a movie about the life of Sir William Wallace in 1994. I was amazed that it took so long to bring this story to the screen because it simply has to be amongst the most inspirational stories I have ever heard.

The story of Braveheart takes place against the backdrop of the 13th/14th Century Scottish Wars of Independence & is based on the book of the same name by the American Randall Wallace. Many Americans seem to have a distorted view of Scottish history.

Randall Wallace at least admitted in his novel that he had never even heard of William Wallace before visiting London, were a plaque near Smithfield Market commemorates the place of his execution. He even stated that the story he told was the way he thought things might have been.

Being a Patriotic Scot & a strong believer in Scottish identity & independence I initially wanted to see the film purely so I could pick massive holes in it & decry it as another poor attempt by Hollywood to transfer real history to the screen. From the opening titles until the closing credits I was held spellbound by this masterpiece & when the film ended the whole auditorium rose & indulged in spontaneous applause. You see, although the history was to the main part pretty much absent, the message behind the story was a universal one, would you be willing to die for the strength of your convictions?

Elsewhere in Scotland when people saw this movie at the cinema they were actually attacking English people when they left the cinema. I thought this was ridiculously silly as the events in the film were set in the past. Sure a tongue in cheek dislike of the English is acceptable these days, but when this boils over into violence then that is clearly unacceptable.

It seems that the film was not only popular in Scotland. Surprisingly enough it gained a following in England too & of course amongst the countless millions of Americans (not all thankfully) with deluded notions that they are in some way descended from an obscure clan chief it was huge.

Just after seeing the movie my brother hooked up on the internet for the first time. Well, I should say my brother & I did. My brother had the computer & we both paid an equal share to go online & surf the internet. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I automatically tried to find fan sites about Braveheart so I could gauge worldwide reaction to the movie.

It wasn't long before I was hearing from people from all over the world. Through The now defunct "Ultimate Braveheart" site I was soon making contact with people from countries as diverse as the USA & Serbia. I made some great friends on the site even if I did disappoint people when I told them the movie was mainly a work of fiction!

Just before the website folded I received an e-mail from a girl in Brasil. I had never heard from anyone in South America (though I had a friend in Mexico) before so I was overjoyed when someone from Brasil contacted me. I can remember that date well because it was 8 days before my 31st birthday in 1997. That first e-mail would change my life, more than I could know!

That person in Brasil was called Carla (Carlie) & she e-mailed me to tell me the effect the movie had on her, as indeed many people had done previously. I almost felt regret when I told Carlie that the movie was largely fictitious, though the Battles were based on real ones (even though the Battle of Stirling should have had a bridge in it & Wallace never sacked York) & I honestly thought after one e-mail from me that would be that, but Carlie wanted to find out more & I was happy to oblige her as I am always happy when someone wants to learn more about my country. I have to say she really stretched my mind because she asked me questions I had never even thought of. She saw Scotland as an "exotic" location of mists & castles which I thought was weird, because I would think of Brasil as being an exotic place & not Scotland. Through our discussions Carlie told me that Braveheart had touched her in the way it had done me & she could identify with William Wallace following what he believed in & the sacrifices that such actions could entail. She told me that the story reminded her very much of the story of Tiradentes, a famous Brasilian martyr, who died when the Inconfidencia Mineira failed in its uprising to rid Brasil of its Portuguese overlords in the 18th Century. It was at that point that I could realise the world wide appeal of this kind of story.

It soon became apparent that Carlie & Me had very much in common (such as the music we liked, Celtic mythology etc). What started as a discussion about the movie Braveheart had moved beyond that initial subject & we found one another getting more & more attracted to the other person. It got to the point that I decided to go to Brasil in 1999, to meet the girl who had managed to have such a great effect on me. That first trip led to Carlie coming to Scotland for 1 month in August later that same year.

When Carlie arrived in Scotland in August 1999, I decided I was going to ask her for her hand in marriage. We had grown so close that we realised we couldn't live apart any longer.

When we visited Stirling in August I took Carlie to see the Wallace National Monument in Stirling. This monument, situated on the Abbey Craig, holds THE original sword of William Wallace.

I asked her in front of the Wallace Sword to marry me. It seemed like the right thing to do given that Braveheart had brought us together, but more than that, the spirit of William Wallace & his ideals of Freedom lived in both our hearts.

The date that I asked Carlie to marry me, 15th August 1999, had a special significance for Carlie as it was the anniversary of the foundation of her home city in Brasil, Sorocaba. I had to ask her twice as she couldn't hear me the first time around because there was too much noise with tourists milling around trying to get their photos of the famous sword. Take it from me, kneeling on a stone floor is not good for you, not unless you know you will get a good reaction from it!

I returned to Brasil in 2000 & stayed for a month. It was at this time I had to actually ask Carlie's Dad for her hand in marriage. This would be a nerve wracking thing to do in my own language (English), but I had to do this in Portuguese which made me even more nervous. Luckily her Dad agreed, but said to her that it would be better for her to finish her University course before we got married. Knowing a good education was important to her we reluctantly both agreed & I returned to Scotland to make plans for our wedding the following year.

We got married on Carlie's birthday, 9th February, 2001. When we left the office were we registered our wedding we were surprised to be approached by a couple of reporters from Edinburgh's local newspaper, The Evening News. They asked us for a brief interview & we of course obliged. The newspaper dubbed us "Braveheart Sweetheart" & this sort of stuck to us & soon our story appeared in other newspapers like the one on the left (The Sunday Post). We were even interviewed by Scotland Today, a Scottish TV news station & our wedding became a TV news item too. You can see more details of the press coverage our wedding generated by checking out our Wedding News page.

Today we are still happily married & are still living in Edinburgh. At the start of 2004 we began working on our website "Edimburgo". We wanted to create a website which would promote primarily Edinburgh & Scotland to Brasilians as we found very little literature promoting Edinburgh to Brasilians visiting from abroad. The site soon got bigger & bigger until it grew to such an extent that it outgrew its original target audience & today we are hearing from people in other countries across the world. We even added more pages about things such as Our Favourite Brasilian Films.

All of this, from the marriage of Me & Carlie, to us creating a website would not have happened without Braveheart. I think it's a testimony to the message in the movie that Carlie had the courage to follow her dreams, if she had not then both our lives would have been a lot different for sure.