Kingdom of Heaven/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Balian: What is Jerusalem worth?
Saladin: Nothing. (He walks away then turns around) Everything!

  • Canon Sue: The main character, mostly by making everyone else Too Dumb to Live, [1]
    • A brief scene in the directors cut has him designing a fortification centuries ahead of it's time in style.
  • Complete Monster: Raynald de Chatillon, who leads attacks on innocent Arab villages in orgies of rape and head-chopping, just to provoke Saladin. It doesn't work until he cruelly and personally murders Saladin's sister.
    • And drinking water meant for King Guy gets his throat slit.
      • Saladin was going to kill him anyway, but offering water invokes Sacred Hospitality. "I did not give the cup to you."
  • Ending Fatigue: The epilogue was especially prominent in the shorter theatrical release.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Even (or maybe especially) in the poorly-received theatrical cut, Edward Norton's King Baldwin impressed critics and audiences.
  • Europeans Love Saladin
  • Iron Woobie: King Baldwin.
  • Marty Stu: Balian, to some extent.
  • Mary Tzu: Balian is often accused of being this by people who haven't seen the Directors Cut because in the theatrical version he is presented as a humble blacksmith who seems to inexplicably have a lot of knowledge about war. The better-received Director's Cut restores deleted scenes in which he explains that he was an engineer who worked with the army and built war machines before retiring to a simpler life as a blacksmith.
  • Memetic Badass: Saladin.
  • Purity Sue: King Baldwin IV, based on his historical reputation.
  1. The director's cut explains that he fought in several battles in the past and used to build siege engines.