Braveheart Trivia
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59 free Braveheart trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
47 free Braveheart trivia questions with answers. Braveheart won five Oscars, sent tourists flooding to Stirling and was voted the worst Best Picture winner ever by the same magazine that had called it the best film of 1995. This quiz covers the whole story: how Randall Wallace's script escaped MGM, why Terry Gilliam turned it down and Brad Pitt was nearly the lead, the 1,600 Irish army reservists who played both armies, James Horner's score, the NC-17 fight, the box office and the awards. It then turns to what the film got wrong (the kilts, jus primae noctis, a Stirling Bridge with no bridge, an Isabella who was a child in France) and to the real William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and Edward Longshanks, right down to who betrayed Wallace at Robroyston and where Bruce's heart is buried. Easy questions open it and the last stretch is for people who know their schiltrons. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry on the film, the battle or the person, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Braveheart's battle scenes, what colour is the war paint on William Wallace's face?
Blue
Blue. The woad-style paint is one of many liberties with history that led The Times, in 2009, to rank Braveheart second on its list of the most inaccurate films.
Q 02Who wrote the Braveheart screenplay, sharing a surname with its hero?
Randall Wallace
Randall Wallace. The American came across the story on a trip to Scotland, and in 2002 he teamed up with Mel Gibson again, directing him in We Were Soldiers.
Q 03Braveheart drew on a 15th-century epic poem about Wallace by which Scottish minstrel?
Blind Harry
Blind Harry. He wrote more than 150 years after Wallace died and filled the gaps with legend, which is why many of the best-known stories about the hero have no document behind them.
Q 04Which French actress plays Princess Isabelle in Braveheart?
Sophie Marceau
Sophie Marceau. The romance is invented: the real Isabella was a small child in France while Wallace was fighting, and she only came to England to marry after his death.
Q 05Which actor plays King Edward Longshanks in Braveheart?
Patrick McGoohan
Patrick McGoohan. His king dies just as Wallace is executed, but the real Edward I outlived him by almost two years and died marching north for one more campaign.
Q 06Who plays Wallace's secretly wed bride, Murron MacClannough?
Catherine McCormack
Catherine McCormack. Murron's execution by the English is what turns Wallace from farmer to rebel: he and the villagers wipe out the garrison in revenge, and the uprising spreads.
Q 07Which Scottish actor plays Robert the Bruce?
Angus Macfadyen
Angus Macfadyen came back to the part 24 years later: he co-wrote, produced and starred in the 2019 sequel Robert the Bruce, which picks up where Braveheart ends.
Q 08Which Irish actor plays Wallace's giant childhood friend Hamish?
Brendan Gleeson
Brendan Gleeson had spent about a decade as a schoolteacher in Dublin, and gave up the classroom for full-time acting only a few years before he was cast as Hamish.
Q 09Which studio put up two-thirds of Braveheart's budget in exchange for foreign distribution rights?
20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox backed the right half: nearly two-thirds of the film's box office came from outside the US and Canada.
Q 10Which director turned down the chance to direct Braveheart?
Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam, co-director of the medieval spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail, said no; Gibson, who had at first passed on the script himself, ended up directing.
Q 11Which actor did Gibson consider for the lead in Braveheart when he planned only to direct?
Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt was the name Gibson toyed with, because he felt about a decade too old to play Wallace himself; he took the part reluctantly to get the film financed.
Q 12Most of the shoot moved from the UK to which country after it offered 1,600 army reservists as extras?
Ireland
The reservists were allowed to grow beards, and to save money the same extras played both the Scottish and English armies.
Q 13Which Ron Howard film lost the Best Picture Oscar to Braveheart?
Apollo 13
Apollo 13. Braveheart's win was an upset: it had lost every major best-picture prize handed out before the Oscars.
Q 21In Braveheart, how does the grown Wallace win his rock-throwing contest with Hamish?
He hits him with a small stone
He hits him with a small stone, square on the forehead, after standing still while Hamish's boulder sails past: his point is that a fight is won with the head, not the arm.
Q 22What became of the Gibson-as-Wallace statue that stood for over a decade at the Wallace Monument car park?
Returned to its sculptor
Returned to its sculptor when its lease ran out. Critics hated seeing Scotland's hero with a film star's face, but he says the tourists loved it.
Q 23Historian Sharon Krossa complains that Braveheart's Scots wear what, unknown before the 16th century?
Q 14Which flower does the young Murron give William at his father's burial in Braveheart?
A thistle
A thistle. William keeps it for years, and when he comes home as a grown man he hands the dried flower back to Murron wrapped in cloth.
Q 15Who composed Braveheart's score, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra?
James Horner
James Horner was up against himself at the Oscars that year: two of the nominated dramatic scores were his, and both lost to Il Postino.
Q 16In Braveheart, to whom does Wallace say "Every man dies, not every man really lives"?
Isabelle
Isabelle. Wallace says it in his cell the night before his execution, when the princess begs him to swear allegiance and be spared, and the line became the film's tagline.
Q 17Which film beat Braveheart to the Original Screenplay Oscar?
The Usual Suspects
The Usual Suspects. Braveheart's script had won the Writers Guild award days earlier, but Oscar voters preferred Christopher McQuarrie's whodunit.
Q 18Which directing prize did Mel Gibson win for Braveheart in the run-up to the Oscars?
Golden Globe for Best Director
Golden Globe for Best Director. Gibson took it even though the film itself lost the Globe for best drama to Sense and Sensibility; at the Oscars it won both prizes.
Q 19In Braveheart, how does Longshanks dispose of Phillip, his son's newly named high counsellor?
Throws him from a window
Throws him from a window, moments after asking what military advice he would offer; the prince pulls a dagger on his father in reply and is beaten down.
Q 20Which British film magazine's 2005 poll named Braveheart the worst film ever to win Best Picture?
Empire
Empire. The turnaround took a decade: the magazine's readers had voted Braveheart the best film of 1995 at the first Empire Awards.
Belted plaid
Belted plaid, and wrong twice over: when Highlanders did adopt it centuries later, they never wore it the film's way. Krossa compared it to colonial Americans in back-to-front business suits.
Q 24Which supposed feudal right, invoked by Longshanks in Braveheart, do medieval scholars regard as a myth?
Jus primae noctis
Jus primae noctis, a lord's supposed claim on a bride's wedding night. Scholars who call it a myth point out that the writers asserting it never cite any trustworthy evidence.
Q 25Braveheart's version of the Scots' 1297 victory near Stirling leaves out which key feature?
The bridge
The bridge. The real Scots won by trapping the English as they crossed a narrow bridge over the Forth; the film stages a head-on clash in an open field.
Q 26Braveheart shows Irish conscripts in Edward I's army at Falkirk, but much of his real infantry there was what?
Welsh
Welsh. On the march north his Welsh and English troops came to blows, and the Welsh threatened to walk out and join the Scots.
Q 27Braveheart gives Robert the Bruce's father which affliction, which the real Robert allegedly had late in life?
Leprosy
Leprosy. In the film this leper father arranges Wallace's capture, but the real elder Bruce had died in 1304, the year before Wallace was taken.
Q 28Braveheart implies Wallace fathered which future English king, who was really born seven years after Wallace died?
Edward III
Edward III. The real Isabella was a child still living in France during Wallace's revolt, and she married Edward II only in 1308, three years after Wallace's execution.
Q 29Braveheart's portrayal of Longshanks' son, Prince Edward, drew accusations of what against Gibson?
Homophobia
Homophobia. The gay-rights group GLAAD took aim at the film before it had even opened, over the king killing his son's lover; Gibson has denied that the film is homophobic.
Q 30What does Wallace shout at his execution in Braveheart instead of begging for mercy?
Freedom!
Freedom! The magistrate promises a quick death if he will only cry mercy, and by the end the watching crowd is calling the word out for him.