In 1184 France, Balian, a blacksmith, is haunted by the recent suicide of his wife. A Crusader passing through the village introduces himself as Baron Godfrey of Ibelin, Balian's father, and asks him to return to the Holy Land with him, but Balian declines. Balian kills him and flees the village after the town priest (Balian's half-brother) reveals that he ordered Balian's wife decapitated before burial.
Hoping to obtain forgiveness and salvation for himself and his wife in Jerusalem, Balian joins his father. Bishop-sent soldiers arrive to arrest Balian, but Godfrey refuses to surrender him, and Godfrey is hit by an arrow that breaks off in his body in the ensuing assault, leaving a wound that would prove fatal days later.
They have a contentious encounter in Messina with Guy de Lusignan, a Knight of the Templar and the prospective future King of Jerusalem. Balian knights Godfrey, names him the new Baron of Ibelin, and commands him to serve the King of Jerusalem and protect the weak, then succumbs to his wounds. His ship runs aground in a storm during Balian's journey to Jerusalem and leaves him as the only survivor. Balian is confronted by a Muslim cavalier who assaults his horse in a fight. Balian is forced to kill the cavalier, but the servant of the man is spared, and the man informs Balian that this deed will bring him glory and honor among the Saracens.
Balian is familiar with the political arena of Jerusalem: King Baldwin IV, the leper; Tiberias, the Marshal of Jerusalem; Princess Sibylla, the sister of the King, who is Guy's wife. Guy supports the Knights Templar's anti-Muslim violence and plans to break the fragile peace between the King and Sultan Saladin in order to combat the Muslims. To the delight of its people, Balian travels to his inherited estate at Ibelin and irrigates the dry and dusty lands using his engineering skills. He is visited by Sibylla and the two become lovers.
In 1187, a Saracen caravan attacked Guy and his ally, the cruel Raynald of Châtillon, and Saladin marched on Raynald's Kerak castle in retaliation. Balian protects the villagers at the behest of the king, despite being disproportionately outnumbered. Captured, Balian meets the servant he rescued, whom he discovers is really the chancellor of Saladin, Imad ad-Din. In repayment of an earlier loan, Imad ad-Din releases Balian. Saladin arrives to besiege Kerak with his army, and Baldwin meets him. They are negotiating a Muslim retreat, and Baldwin swears to punish Raynald, although he is exhausted by the exertion of these events.
Baldwin asks Balian, knowing that they have feelings for each other, to marry Sibylla and take care of the military, but Balian refuses because it would entail the execution of Guy and the Templars. Sibylla is soon replaced by Baldwin, and Guy becomes king. Raynald is released, and gives Guy the war he wants by murdering the sister of Saladin. Guy declares war on the Saracens and tries to assassinate Balian, who narrowly survives, by sending the heads of Saladin's emissaries back to him.
In spite of Balian's advice to stay by the water, Guy marches to battle with the army. In the subsequent desert war, the Saracens annihilate the exhausted and dehydrated Crusaders. Raynald is executed by Saladin, and marches into Jerusalem. Tiberias leaves for Cyprus, thinking that Jerusalem has been lost, but Balian stays to defend the people of the city, and to inspire them to knight every fighting man.
A disappointed Saladin parleys with Balian after an attack lasting three days. When Balian reaffirms that if Saladin does not accept his surrender, he will ruin the city, Saladin agrees to allow the Christians to safely leave in exchange for Jerusalem. They are thinking about whether it would be safer if the town were lost, so there would be nothing left to fight for.
Balian finds Sibylla, who has renounced her claim to be a queen, in the marching column of people. English knights on their way back to France to retake Jerusalem pass through the city to recruit Balian, now the famous protector of Jerusalem, after returning to France. Balian tells the crusader that, again, he's just a blacksmith, and they leave. Balian is joined by Sibylla, and as they travel into the unknown, they pass by the grave of Balian's wife. An epilogue states that "nearly a thousand years later, peace in the Holy Land still remains elusive."
HISTORICAL ACCURACY
The character of Bloom, Ibelin's Balian, was a close ally of Raymond III of Tripoli, the Tiberias film, which is actually a region, and a member of that faction that sought a position in the Near East patchwork and opposed the aggressive policy of Raynald of Châtillon, the Templars, and "fanatics newly from Europe" who refused to come to terms of peace with the Muslims. Balian was a mature country. The Ibelin family was established by his father, Barisan (French 'Balian'), in the east, and probably came from Italy. Indeed, Balian and Sibylla were together in the defense of Jerusalem, but there was no intimate relationship between the two. Sibylla's stepmother, Maria Komnene, the Dowager Queen of Jerusalem and the Lady of Nablus, married Balian. At the time of Jerusalem's defeat, Nablus, rather than Ibelin, was Balian's fief.
William of Tyre's Old French Continuation (the so-called Chronicle of Ernoul) stated that Sibylla was infatuated with Ibelin's older Baldwin brother of Balian, a widower over twice her age, but this is doubtful; instead, it seems that Raymond of Tripoli attempted a coup to marry her to him in order to improve his faction's position. It seems this legend was behind the development of a romance between Sibylla and a member of the Ibelin family in the film.
King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who reigned from 1174 to 1185, was a leper, and his sister Sibylla, on her own initiative, married Guy of Lusignan. Baldwin IV had a falling out with Guy, so Guy was not immediately successful with Baldwin IV. Sibylla's son from her previous marriage to William of Montferrat, five-year-old Baldwin V, co-king in 1183, was crowned by Baldwin.
The little boy reigned for one year as sole king, dying at nine years of age in 1186. After the death of her son, the city was guarded by Sibylla and Guy (to whom she was devoted), and she assumed the throne. In real life, the coronation scene in the movie was more of a shock: before becoming queen, Sibylla was forced to agree to divorce Guy, with the guarantee that she would be able to choose her own consort. She chose to crown Guy as her consort after being crowned by Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem (who is unnamed until late in the film). Raymond of Tripoli was not there, but was attempting a coup in Nablus, with Balian of Ibelin, to lift to the throne the half-sister of Sibyl (Balian's stepdaughter), Princess Isabella of Jerusalem. Humphrey IV of Toron, Isabella's husband, refused to precipitate a civil war and swore allegiance to Guy.
Raymond of Tripoli was a cousin of Jerusalem's Amalric I, one of the most powerful nobles of the Kingdom, and a regent at one time. He himself had a claim to the throne, but being childless, he attempted to advance his allies in the Ibelin family instead. He was frequently in dispute with Châtillon's Guy and Raynald, who had risen to their positions by marrying wealthy heiresses and favouring the king. Contemporary sources do not endorse the film's depiction of Raynald of Châtillon as insane, although the same sources depict Raynald as a rash, violent free-booting warlord who often breached truces between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Sultanate of Egypt.
The picture of Guy's film urging Raynald of Châtillon to attack Muslim pilgrimage convoys on their way to Mecca to provoke a Saladin war is fake. Guy was a frail, indecisive king who was clearly unable to control the reckless Raynald and wanted to avoid a war with Saladin. After Raynald's attack on the Red Sea, which stunned the Muslim world by its proximity to the holiest cities of Mecca and Medina, Saladin's abortive march on Kerak followed. Muslim caravans and herders were also harassed by Guy and Raynald, and the argument that Raynald captured the sister of Saladin is based on the account given in William of Tyre's Old French Continuation.
It is widely assumed that this assertion, unsupported by any other account, is false. In reality, Saladin made sure that the next one, in which his sister was traveling, was properly guarded after Raynald's assault on one caravan: the lady came to no harm. The depiction in the Battle of Hattin movie, where the Crusader force wandered around the desert for three days without water before being ambushed, is consistent with the facts known. Even though Raymond of Tripoli and his men were still fighting in combat. The scene in the movie where Saladin hands a cup of iced water to Guy (which was a sign in the Muslim world that the victor wanted to save his prisoner's life) and then states that he did not give the cup to Raynald (indicating that Raynald was to be executed) is confirmed by the Persian historian Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani who, after the Battle of Hattin, was present with Saladin.
During the events of the Third Crusade, Balian and Sibylla remained in the Holy Land. During the Siege of Acre, Sibylla was the victim of an outbreak. Balian's relations with England's Richard I were far from friendly, since he supported Conrad of Montferrat's claim to the kingship against Richard's vassal, Guy. He and his wife, Maria, arranged for the forcible divorce of her daughter Isabella from Humphrey of Toron so that she could marry Conrad. Ambroise, who wrote a poetic account of the crusade, called Balian "falser than a goblin" and said that "should be hunted with dogs"
My Literary Critics
The film shows us how vital our faith is to God and how powerful it is, regardless of the obstacles in our lives that will test our faith. We pray and find forgiveness for all the sins he has done, for the main character called Balian, to cleanse his soul and to seek truth, to travel to Jerusalem knowing that it is a holy place, and it is a place to ask for some forgiveness and speak to God. The film also shows how valuable your integrity as a person is, it should not be sold to anyone, being brave is also one of the great things that the movie shows, brave because there is always the Lord who directs, protects and leads us to the right direction, God will never leave us alone with our fights, he is always there to raise up and start a new beginning, if we have a true faith in God.
Religion that divides people from Christians and Muslims in the film who battle the land and wealth against their territories, Christians knew that we are fighting for God, but at the end they realise that it is not God that they were fighting for it is for themselves for the land and wealth they are ashamed of, what is most important at the end is the people, their lives are what worth.
"From what Godfrey of Ibelin said in the film, and Balin also said, "Be in the face of your enemies without fear. Be brave and upright, and may God love you. Always speak the truth, even if this leads to your death. Safeguard the weak and do no wrong; your oath is that. And that's how you recall it.
Rise a knight' means God is greater than your enemies, he will fight against them and protect you from any hurt, the best sword a person can wear is to trust him with all our heart. Following God's footsteps will lead us to achievement, for evil never wins, ruling with all lies always loses at the end, it is more important for Balian to stand on the side of the truth even if it hurts us, for the truth sees God as a reflection of faith in him.
Balian also demonstrates a great leadership ruling the people in Jerusalem, he didn't get tired of encouraging and inspiring all the people from the beginning at the end of their fight, because of his way of ruling, Balian gains a strong follower.
