Film Star Ben-Hur Made Peace With Frisian Raiders

Who does not know the epic movie Ben-Hur, released on the big screen in 1959? A movie in which Hollywood actor and civil rights activist Charlton Heston (1923–2008) played the role of Judah Ben-Hur, for which he was awarded an Oscar. Six years later, Heston played Chrysagon in The War Lord—a much braver role than that of Ben-Hur, as a mere galley slave and charioteer. In the movie The War Lord, Heston had to battle frightful Frisians and, of course, was forced to cut a deal with these heathen barbarians dressed in simple jute. Nonetheless, with a grand gesture, the Frisians eventually helped Chrysagon and his lover.

The War Lord

The Universal Pictures movie The War Lord was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (1920–1989) and released in 1965, set in the eleventh century. The plot is based on The Lovers, a play written by Leslie Clark Stevens (1924–1998) in 1957. Like Heston, Schaffner was no newcomer to Hollywood; among other movies, he directed Planet of the Apes (1968) and Patton (1969). Although critics were generally positive about The War Lord, the movie never quite entered the collective cinematic consciousness. Reviews praised the cast, the quality of the acting, and the relatively historically accurate costumes—including Charlton Heston’s charming haircut, which drew particular attention. In fact, The War Lord was the first Hollywood movie to attempt a more realistic, less stereotyped, and less trivial portrayal of the Middle Ages.

Original Cinema Quad Poster—Movie Posters (NBCUniversal)

The story of The War Lord follows a knight named Chrysagon de la Creux—a man weary after twenty years of battle and bloodshed. In recognition of his service and loyalty, the Duke of Normandy, William of Ghent, granted him a small fiefdom of marshland in a remote area along the coast of Flanders, where druidism and pagan rituals were still widespread. Chrysagon’s mission: to civilize the local population—a task that, in some ways, remains necessary to this day...

The area was plagued by raiding Frisians from the north. During one attack, Chrysagon and his brother Draco successfully drive off the raiders. The Frisian leader, a prince played by British actor Henry Wilcoxon (1905–1984), is never named in the film. He brings with him his young, blond-haired son. During the raid, Chrysagon and the Frisian prince engage in a duel, recognizing each other from previous battles—the prince exclaims, “De La Creux!” upon seeing Chrysagon. However, the prince is wounded and loses consciousness, carried by his men to a ship. In their retreat to the open sea, the Frisians inadvertently leave the prince’s son behind—a minor detail in the chaos of battle.

Lord Chrysagon and his small force have taken control of the donjon of the village—a large, freestanding Norman stone tower near the seashore. Not long after his arrival, he encounters a beautiful girl named Bronwyn during a hunting party, a role played by Canadian actress Rosemary Forsyth (born 1943). She is simple yet striking, but already promised in marriage to Marc, a local farmer. Despite this, the powerful Chrysagon cannot get her out of his mind—and that is where all the ensuing misery begins.

As their lord, Chrysagon is entitled under local pagan tradition to le Droit de Seigneur, or in Latin, jus primae noctis—the privilege of claiming the virgin bride on the first night of her wedding. On the day of Bronwyn’s wedding, Chrysagon takes her to his loft in the tower, much to the protest and deep grief of farmer Marc. Naturally, the wedding festivities are dampened by the tension. Yet, instead of the expected tragedy, love blossoms between Chrysagon and Bronwyn, and the next day he refuses to return her to Marc. This, of course, exceeds the traditional bounds of le Droit de Seigneur, which only applied for a single night. Not more.

Marc seeks revenge. He discovers that the Frisian boy from the previous raid is of royal Frisian descent. Determined, Marc travels north to alert the Frisians of the boy’s whereabouts and rally them to take vengeance on the warlord. With a large fleet, the Frisians sail to the village and, joining forces with the still-angry villagers, attack the tower. Draco rides out to the Duke of Normandy to request reinforcements, while his brother Chrysagon struggles to defend the tower alone. Using fire, he creates spectacular scenes of combat to hold back the attackers. Draco and the reinforcements arrive just in time to aid Chrysagon and turn the tide of the battle.

the Tower, remote Flemish coast (NBCUniversal)

However, it soon becomes clear that Draco has betrayed his brother while at the Duke of Normandy seeking reinforcements. Having spent many years at the duke’s court, Draco is promised the Flemish fiefdom for himself, on the grounds that Chrysagon is supposedly incapable of managing it. When the brothers confront each other, Draco strikes first with his sword, and in the ensuing struggle, Chrysagon accidentally kills him with a dagger. Now, Chrysagon is determined to end all the bloodshed—a chain of events set in motion the day he took Bronwyn from Marc on her wedding.

Chrysagon rides to the Frisian camp and returns the boy to his father, the Frisian prince. In exchange, the prince agrees to give Bronwyn shelter in Frisia (a nod to the Faroe Islands, where Frisians are remembered for taking their women to Friesland—see our blog post Latið meg ei á Frísaland fordervast! and the murder of a bishop). This enrages Marc once more, and in a desperate attempt to stop Chrysagon from taking Bronwyn to Frisian lands, he wounds the warlord. Marc then charges at Bronwyn with a sickle, but before he can reach her, he is slain by Chrysagon’s most loyal warrior—perhaps simply because Marc’s relentless, aggrieved antics had become unbearable for this warrior.

The movie concludes with the priest escorting Bronwyn to the Frisians. Chrysagon vows to follow her, but first he must settle matters with the Duke of Normandy. In a final, classic Western-style shot, Chrysagon rides off on his black horse toward the duke’s court.

The Lovers

As said, the movie The War Lord is based upon the play The Lovers written by Leslie Stevens in 1957. Besides having been married five times in his life, Stevens was also an accomplished producer, writer, and director. He is said to be the godfather of the television series Battlestar Galactica.

In Stevens' play The Lovers, Bronwyn is named Douane. The main character’s name is almost the same, namely Chrysagon de la Crux, and he is riding a black stallion. His brother Draco is described as "young, lean, and sculptured with hot eyes and blond, poll-cropped hair. And that the ancestral strain of Nordic barbarians shows in him."

The whole conflict with the Frisians, however, is not part of the play at all. This is, of course, historically more truthful than all those barbaric Frisian pirates in the movie The War Lord. Frisians, as everyone knows, always were such peace-loving people in the Middle Ages. Indeed, the only reference to Frisians in the play The Lovers can be found in Act III, where Chrysagon says to Douane—as said earlier, known as Bronwyn in the movie The War Lord:

“Douane, I have a water-castle in the Frisian lands—set out on the sea. We can live there through the snow—the summer—You will forget the village and they will forget you.”

This Frisia or Friesland thing somehow must have sprouted out of Stevens imagination. But how did this American writer come up with Frisia of all places? Another interesting question is, where did Schaffner get this idea of medieval Frisian pirates from back in the '50s? How was he better educated in regional history than most school kids in Germany and the Netherlands about the Middle Ages?

Our guess is from the Gesta Normannorum Ducum (GND) by William of Jumièges, written in 1070 or 1071. It includes the ingredients raiders, Normandy, and Frisia, just like the play and the movie. The GND is one of the most important historical sources about the medieval history of Normandy. It tells about the campaigns of Rollo, also known as Hrólfr, ruler of Normandy, and the raiding expeditions in Flanders and Frisia. According to chronicler Dudo of Saint Quentin, who wrote the Historia Normannorum around the year 1000, warlord Rollo arrived by chance, during a storm, on the island of Walcheren in West Frisia, which led to fights between the Norsemen and the Zeelandic Frisians. After some plundering in this part of Frisia, Rollo moved to Normandy. Also interesting, and implying a (raiding) connection between Frisians and Normans, is that Rollo was mentioned as the leader of the Scaldi, also known as Scaldingi, which were the River Scheldt Vikings of Zeelandic Frisia (Van der Tuuk 2025). Check for more of our blog posts Frisia, a Viking graveyard and Walcheren Island. Once the Sodom and Gomorrah of the North Sea.

Another possibility is that Schaffner somehow picked up something from the high and late medieval tradition, especially in French literature, whereby Frise or Frize (‘Friesland’) represented a powerful, distant, and thus fairy-like principality or kingdom, with the Frisians being fierce warriors. The term Frise became synonymous with foreign and exotic. Where this distant Frise was located exactly was vague; often the whole of the Netherlands north of the River Rhine was more or less included, maybe referring to the Early Middle Ages when Frisian kings fought the Frankish Empire. The kings of Frisia even belonged to the same gang as the kings of Aragon, Cyprus, Sicily, and Bohemia. Even King Philip the Good (1396-1467) wanted to restore the illustrious northern kingdom and had the ambition to hold ‘king of Frisia’ as his title (Janse 1993).

fLtR Charlton Heston (Chyrsagon), Rosemary Forsyth (Bronwyn/Douane), Henry Wilcoxon (Frisian Prince)

The End

The real bitter end is, everyone forgot about the Frisian lands but does remember Bronwyn (Douane) instead. The only northern comfort is knowing that in 1965, Judah Ben-Hur, that is, Charlton Heston, stood face-to-face with a bunch of shabby-looking Frisian plunderers dressed in jute sacks and a lot of leather, somewhere on a sweaty film set in the state of California. Let's hold on to that.

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Note 1 — Rosemary's family name Forsyth should not be confused with the early-medieval, Frisian idol Fo(r)site. Purely coincidence—of course—Rosemary Forsyth leaves for Frisia to live the rest of her life there. We stress, purely coincidence, and no room for conspiracy theories. For more about the Frisian god Fo(r)site, read our blog post Well, the Thing is...

Note 2 — The Frisian prince is never given a name in the film, which is a pity, as it might have offered clues about how Schaffner or Stevens imagined these Frisian pirates. Perhaps his name was Corsold. Corsold was also a leader of a band of Frisians who had settled in nearby Brittany, likely at the start of the sixth century. At that time, Corsold and his followers were driven out by the Celtic king Riwal from Brittany. Interestingly, just as in The War Lord, Corsold had a brother who betrayed him, and a beautiful woman lay at the heart of all the ensuing misery. For more on the parallels with the movie, see our blog post A Frisian Warlord Who Ruled in Brittany, Until His Wife Cheated on Him.

Note 3 — For those readers who want to have a more realistic impression of how Frisians looked like in the Middle Ages, including their haircuts, check our blog post Haute Couture From the Salt Marshes.

Suggested music

Moross, J., Theme The War Lord (1965)

Rolling Stones, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965)

Credit roll

Crowther, B., Battle Scenes Enliven Medieval Romance: Several Other Movies Begin N.Y. Runs (1965)

Dickerson, M.T., The Finnsburg Encounter (1991)

Hicks-Jenkins, C., The Tower (2014)

Janse, A., Grenzen aan de macht. De Friese oorlog van de graven van Holland omstreeks 1400 (1993)

Larsen, A.E., The War Lord: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (2014)

Richard, J., Swordsmen of the screen (2014)

Stevens, L., The Lovers. A play in three acts (1957)

Tuuk, van der L., Ubbi de Fries. Scheldevikingen in het grote heidense leger (2025)

Wijngaarden, A., The War Lord (1965) (website)

Featured image Chrysagon and the Frisians by NBC Universal.