The portrayal of the Crusades in the film Kingdom of Heaven is above all an oversimplified, romanticised, version of a very serious part of history. The four main Crusades were nothing to reduce in importance, each one left thousands dead and only fueled the divide between Christians and Muslims. To begin the characters themselves were real people but in the film they are severely altered: Balian is the combination of several historical figures (such as his own brother), Sybilla was actually madly in love with her husband Guy and never had an affair with Balian, Godfrey was not a real person, and Baldwin V was not murdered by his mother. The only redemption (for me at least) was how Saladin was portrayed in this film, in the film he is portrayed
