Reason First: William Wallace

The inspiration behind the film Braveheart (1995), William Wallace had been discovered as a murderer and thief by Westminster Hall officials. His punishment? Officials stripped him naked. They then put him on two horses to be hanged. But that wasn’t enough. Trash and filth landed on his body during the trip to the gallows.

He had been hanged with breath still in his lungs. Then, his foes ripped off his genitals. His stomach had been sliced open significantly. Next, the executioner displayed his entrails, liver and lungs before the crowd.

Mind you, Wallace was still alive through all of this. In one last show of explicit violence, the executioner extracted Wallace’s beating heart. At last, the executioner beheaded Wallace and dipped it in pitch to prevent spoilage. His remaining body had been quartered and shown throughout four cities.

Wallace had been called the “Guardian of Scotland and Leader of its Armies.” He had run afoul of William Heselrig and took his life. When English authorities found out about this, they felt displeased.

The whole idea consisted of one leader yearning for a king to replace another king. The ideas of freedom and liberty had been subjugated for just picking a slightly less brutal brute.

Wallace fought valiantly for Scotland but it just led to his own ruin. All of that brought him to London where he had not enjoyed the journey.

After a loss in Falkirk, Wallace ran away to France. It didn’t matter, though. A fellow Scot brought him to the hands of Englishmen.

These bloody excursions which also inspired poems and books, made Wallace into a hero. But what was he seeking to preserve? To be ruled by one monarch or another means that you will never fully understand being a full individual.

To just battle over a king to select another king is counterproductive. In a time when most kings actually held sway over political affairs, this was a time of deep resentment. Everyone seemed to be at the other’s throat on a greater scale than today.

Wallace just represented the delusional criminal who felt like he could transform his world with a new king in the other’s place. With the knowledge of the way that Wallace had been disgraced in such graphic fashion, it makes the political vitriol of today seem regular.

The way that Wallace lived his life, in his mind, seemed like a patriot. The title given to him reflected his actions. There is no fate or destiny so his actions led to his poor choices and vicious actions.

In the vein of attempting to be the savior of the day, Wallace attempted to produce a spirit of battle. He not only discovered that his thoughts would be transferred into acts that he couldn’t take back.

If Wallace had wanted to advocate for real freedom, he should have devised documents. By writing out his thoughts, he could have chipped away at the ugly, bloody battles that precipitated in that region.

With a few strokes of a plume, he could have charted a course for himself to be free. The Scottish fellow could have been spared if he had just used reason. The ideas that he could have conveyed would have allowed him to breathe breath another day.

Instead, he chose brute force and met a grisly end. When he had the chance to be a statesman and someone of thought, he decided to tread down the path of destruction.

He had every opportunity to grab hold of the reins of his mind and express his ideas. That’s how you get your beating heart to be displayed before a roaring crowd.