Ridley Scott’s masterful Crusades epic Kingdom of Heaven from 2005 is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. I don’t mean it’s a comedic film where people are cracking jokes or dropping their pants—although its star, Orlando Bloom, would do exactly the latter in some iconic paddleboard paparazzi photos 11 years later. No, I’m talking about how Kingdom of Heaven‘s profound historical inaccuracy doesn’t impact my enjoyment of the film. Normally, I despise movies that take such galling historical liberties. But Kingdom of Heaven‘s ahistorical choices have strangely never limited my appreciation for the film; in fact, they’ve enhanced it. Or to put it another way, I love Kingdom of Heaven not in spite of its historical inaccuracies but because of them. They ruin its ability to operate as a serious statement about its history, sure. But they allow it to become something equally meaningful to me these days: An emotionally resonant fantasy about escaping its weight.
When I say that Kingdom of Heaven takes major liberties with the record, I am not simply talking about individual details here and there. King Baldwin IV didn’t actually wear a mask to hide his leprosy-induced disfigurement as Edward Norton’s version does in the film. But who gives a shit? It doesn’t affect anything structural about the story or its message. And besides, it looks really cool.
For the purposes of this essay, I am focusing much more on how the film imposes modern values onto its ancient subject matter. Several of Kingdom of Heaven‘s characters express opinions and take actions aligned with contemporary rather than medieval thinking. Ridley Scott and screenwriter William Monaghan obviously needed to treat the material this way to make the film resonate with today’s viewers. But even still, the worldviews several of the main characters profess would have been anathema to their real-life counterparts.
Norton’s King Baldwin, for instance, is portrayed as deeply supportive of the ideals of co-existence and meritocracy. He admirably attempts to prevent the near-psychopathic Guy of Lusignan (Marton Csokas) from ascending to the throne and breaking a fragile peace Baldwin has struck with the Muslim leader Saladin (Ghassan Massoud). He does this mainly by encouraging Bloom’s Balian to marry his sister Sybilla (Eva Green), who is Guy’s wife through an arranged marriage. Baldwin’s thinking is that if Balian agrees to the marriage and ascends to the throne, then he (Baldwin) will be free to kill the loose-cannon Guy without reservation. Jerusalem’s army would then come under Balian’s cool-headed control and a lasting “kingdom of heaven” would finally be within reach.
Monaghan’s script creates an undeniably compelling portrait of this fascinating historical figure. Norton’s performance also adds considerable layers and speaks to the depth of his talent. But there is no denying that it is a treatment completely at odds with the historical record. There is some evidence that Baldwin was less extremist than other crusader kings. He accepted a two-year truce offered by Saladin in 1180, but even still, he remained a product of his time.
For one thing, like other leaders of the crusader states, Baldwin was firmly committed to Christian dominance of the Levant. He routinely warred with Saladin throughout his reign. In addition, Baldwin fought other campaigns during the 1170s that penetrated deep into what is today modern Syria. These included striking into Damascene territory, raids within the Beqaa Valley, and launching other campaigns near Bosra.
More critically, Baldwin was emblematic of an iron-clad social order structured around hierarchical and dynastic social rule. He would never have allowed much less encouraged someone like Balian, who is depicted as a commoner and blacksmith in the film who has only inherited his title and lands, to be elevated to King of Jerusalem. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes the monarch’s commitment to dynastic rule like so: “In an attempt to keep the succession to the throne, the childless Baldwin crowned his nephew King Baldwin V in November 1183.”1 In Kingdom of Heaven, Baldwin makes this decision based on Bloom’s Balian’s philosophical merit. In reality, Baldwin lacked the ability to even contemplate such a concept much less use it to inform his decision-making.
Baldwin’s sister, Princess Sybilla of Jerusalem (Eva Green), is similarly motivated by modern ideals, namely self-determination. Prior to the film’s events, Sybilla was married off to Guy in an arranged marriage to reinforce the power of Baldwin’s faction within the Holy City. She deeply resents this predicament. Despite knowing Guy’s knights are critical to her family’s continued reign, she risks personal and political disaster by romantically pursuing Bloom’s Balian. In a lovely scene, she explains how she wants to live free from Christian Europe’s sclerotic strictures, where titles are paramount and love must forever take a backseat to politics. “I’m not here with you because I am bored or wicked,” she says lyrically to Balian before they sleep together for the first time. “I’m here because, because in the East, between one person and another, there is only light.”
Similar to her brother, this characterization of Sybilla is almost laughably antithetical to who the real woman was. Like in the movie, Sybilla was married off to Guy at a very young age. And as in the movie, the intention behind the marriage was to ensure that the Baldwin dynasty persevered beyond Baldwin IV’s premature death from leprosy. But the similarities end here. The real Sybilla remained completely loyal to Guy even after he fell out of favor with Baldwin in 1183 and the monarch tried to separate the couple. There is no evidence that she entertained modernist notions of relationships that prioritize shared interests, emotional compatibility and mutual affection over materialist realities.
Bloom’s heavily fictionalized version of Balian (the real man came from one of the most prominent crusader families) also acts in ways also wildly out of step with how someone of his background would have during the time period. Throughout the film, Balian hews closely to liberal humanism, where every person—Christian and Muslim alike—have equal and unassailable rights.
Even more glaringly modern is his conception of history as a secular, human-driven process. Balian reveals this view during the film’s climax, which is set during the Siege of Jerusalem in 1187. As Saladin bears down on the city, Balian outlines how the city is not facing dire straits because “God wills it!” as royal figures like Guy so often scream during the film. Instead, it is the result of the bad decisions made by these elite yet still very human men. Their hubris, cruelty and avarice have created the tit-for-tat cycle of violence that has brought destruction to Jerusalem’s gates. Despite the apocalyptic circumstances they now face, Balian urges the citizenry to still recognize the responsibility they have to one another. He advocates that it has “fallen to [them] to defend Jerusalem.” Yet he clarifies that the citizens need not defend “[the] stones” of the city that nobles have long tried to claim but the “people living within [the] walls.”
From an artistic perspective, this is a beautiful moment. It’s the apotheosis of Balian’s emotional and spiritual journey in the film, which sees the character go from believing that the “world always decides” someone’s fate to understanding that we and we alone are the resolute guardians of our souls. In this moment, his actions recall the advice given to him by Baldwin early on in the film. “Remember that even when those who move you be Kings, or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone,” the monarch says to him during their initial meeting. “When you stand before God, you cannot say, ‘But I was told by others to do thus.’ Or that, ‘Virtue was not convenient at the time.’ This will not suffice. Remember that.” When Balian rallies Jerusalem not because it is commanded by those with power but because it’s morally right, he comes to completely embody those principles.
Balian’s character is an important example of how a film’s artistic needs and its historical fidelity can often clash. In Balian’s time, people largely did not view history as an impersonal, objective process dictated by human action. It was the exact opposite. To them, the “plot of history was the unfolding of God’s will for humanity,” and that “nothing could happen that could not be explained by the providential interpretation of history.”2 It wasn’t until the Renaissance and later the Enlightenment nearly 500 years later that people started conceiving of history in a way we would recognize and the cinematic Balian so effortlessly espouses.
In short, Baldwin, Sybilla and Balian are basically post-Enlightenment, 21st-century characters existing in a 12th-century setting. With their embrace of pluralism, meritocracy, self-determination and secular history, they adhere to the idea that we don’t need to be defined by the past. In fact, we can refashion our societies and ourselves as we see fit—a largely modern notion. Normally, I hate when period pieces come off in such an ahistorical way. But with Kingdom of Heaven, I strangely had the opposite reaction.
Perhaps the main reason why is simply the time in which I discovered the movie. I first saw it during the end of the Obama era, a period when the past’s influence could not have felt more ineluctable or dominant. It’s hard to remember now, but many commentators had treated Obama’s election as an almost “escape” from history, where a nation consciously rejected its violent, racist past and moved itself forward. Of course, Obama turned out to be a disappointment of almost unimaginable proportions. He had a brief window to change the country for the better, and he blew it. His presidency also triggered a backlash that let history come roaring back in all of its racist, xenophobic and jingoistic horror. My personal life at the time was a similar story. My mother died from alcoholism in 2021, and it was hard not to look at her sad fate as another example of the long hand of history. Her childhood had been one rife with abuse, and it cast an undeniable shadow that she then tried to forget about with drink. Amidst these experiences, Kingdom of Heaven felt like a breath of fresh air. It offered a reprieve by celebrating characters who aren’t doomed to be ensnared by history but instead rise above it.
Ridley Scott’s and William Monaghan’s took a bold swing characterizing Kingdom of Heaven‘s three central protagonists this way. Their decisions removed what Simon Schama once memorably called the “quotidian mess of the human condition,” our tragic fate to mostly be expressions of rather than exceptions to our age. And this led to a historical epic where the actual history is often nowhere to be found. But even if the film often fails in terms of its historical worth, it presents a historical fantasy that is uniquely valuable. Or at least it was and still is to me.
Because the truth is history all too often wins, and there are times when you need a movie that doesn’t necessarily reflect the world as it is but the world as you wish it could be. Kingdom of Heaven presents that type of fantastical albeit beautiful cinematic landscape—a place where, unlike in history, Baldwin, Sybilla and Balian don’t simply acquiesce to their times. They don’t die out trying to bring the deluded dream of Christian dominance of the Levant to fruition. Instead, they refuse to become conduits of the crusader project that both preceded and succeeded them. And they face their era with transcendent moral purpose. This is an imaginary world that I’m so glad I get to visit whenever I want, as its characters’ triumph in a way I wish my country and my mother could have similarly realized. It is a place beyond the reach of history, where the world doesn’t always decide and the only thing between two people is light.
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Adam Mohrbacher 