The King Behind the Mask

Our page on The Message and Kingdom of Heaven looks at how two films told the story of faith and Jerusalem. This one goes deeper into Ridley Scott's film, and the history behind it, for anyone planning to watch it with friends.

Watch the long one

The studio had Scott cut about 45 minutes before the film's release in 2005. The director's cut, released later that year and restored in full in 2014, runs about three hours and fourteen minutes, with an overture and an interval, and critics agreed the missing scenes explain why the characters do what they do. Scott has since said he regrets the shorter version. If you are showing it, show the long one, and check which cut your streaming service has. One restored storyline is heavy: a young king's death, which is invented. Know it is coming. Both versions are rated 15.

The real leper king

The film's most memorable figure is Baldwin IV, the young King of Jerusalem behind a silver mask. He was real. His tutor, the chronicler William of Tyre, noticed as a child that he felt no pain when pinched: the first sign of leprosy. At about sixteen he defeated Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard in 1177. Three years later he agreed a truce with him. He died in 1185, in his early twenties, and was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The mask is the film's invention. People who knew him describe a king who kept leading, not one who hid.

2 October 1187: mercy, ransom and slavery

The film ends with the surrender of Jerusalem. What happened is more complicated, and worth knowing. Balian of Ibelin, defending the city, threatened to kill thousands of Muslim prisoners and destroy the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa unless the people inside were spared. Saladin consulted his advisers and agreed terms: a ransom for each person, with forty days to pay. Many of the poor who could not pay were let go, against his treasurers' wishes. His brother asked for a thousand captives and freed them on the spot. Saladin later invited Jews back into the city. And about fifteen thousand people who could not be ransomed were taken into slavery. The mercy was real, and so was the enslavement. Remembering a hero honestly means holding both.

Saladin in Christian memory

Medieval Christians admired him. Dante placed him among the virtuous non-Christians in the gentlest part of the afterlife. Boccaccio wrote of him warmly. A German poet urged his own king to be as generous as Saladin. Walter Scott's novel The Talisman (1825) fixed the chivalrous Saladin in English minds. His own Muslim biographer, Ibn Shaddad, who knew him, remembered him as devout, and devoted to defending the land.

How each side received the film

The film did well in Arabic-speaking countries. The Lebanese-French novelist Amin Maalouf said it clearly stands against religious fanaticism, and an Egyptian critic saw it as an attempt to heal old wounds. Some Christian reviewers felt it treated church leaders unfairly; the real Patriarch of Jerusalem, shown in the film as a coward, in fact helped raise ransom money. Both faiths' viewers felt their side was misjudged. That may be a sign the film got something right.

Where the film and history part

The film's hero is a modern conscience in medieval armour, a blacksmith rather than the leading baron Balian really was. Its Saladin is closer to Walter Scott's romantic knight than to the historical sultan. And its gentle ending leaves out the people who were enslaved.