History Literature / ArnTheKnightTemplar

* RecycledPremise: The basic plot is the same as ''[[TheRavenTrilogy The White Viking]]'': a young man is forced to commit to a crusade as a punishment, while his beloved (who is pregnant) is locked in a monastery, the man being given a symbol of female divinity as protection during his quest, and the beloved receiving false news of his death, while in fact he has been saved by the leader of the opponents to Christianity.

* PoliticallyCorrectHistory:
** The Swedes are multicultural, allowing people of different race and religion living in their country in the 13th century. No one complains or raises a question.
** The books work with this a bit more, but basically it boils down to this: As far as most people in Scandinavia at this time are concerned, all Muslims have horns and tails, live on a diet consisting of Christian babies and nothing else, and their religion consists of human sacrifice and sodomy. Arn figures that to most people, one FunnyForeigner is much like any other, and some funny foreigners have funny customs like refusing to eat pork (there are no pigs in their homeland, so they probably prefer lamb...) and pray five times a day. By the time someone actually figures out that the brown-skinned guys who don't eat pork are Muslims, they know them so well they'll be willing to judge them on their own merits (Brother Guilbert calls this gambit dangerous, but goes along with it). It also helps that most of the Scandinavians they interact with are either Arn's thralls and students, who worship the ground Arn walks on and are willing to run with his ideas, or political power players who see that Arn is using his foreign employees to build up a technological and economic powerbase for the war with the Sverkers and Denmark everyone knows will come sooner or later, and are willing to indulge his and his skilled workers' whimsies.
** It's also worth noting that the Swedes, like the Danes and the Norwegians, had a large amount of interaction with Muslim cultures, both through trade missions as well as mercenary contracts, and that some had even converted to Islam. The presence of a multicultural Sweden is slightly anachronistic, but the presence of people of color is not.

* CombatByChampion: Arn defeats Sverker champion Emund Ulvbane this way.
* CombatPragmatist: Arn himself.

* MasterSwordsman: Most of the Knights Templar, but Arn and Brother Guilbert (and later Arn's students) are the ones most remarked upon by other characters.

* OneSteveLimit: Averted and played with; Cecilia Algotsdotter and Cecilia Ulfsdotter are lay sisters as the same time, and are told apart by nicknaming them after their hair colors; red-haired Cecilia Rosa and blonde Cecilia Blanka. They keep these nicknames for the rest of their lives.

* ThePatriarch: Birger Brosa
* RatedMForManly: As it so often is with Guillou's works.

* SiblingYinYang: Arn and Eskil, as adults. Arn is a devoted warrior and a man of God, Eskil is a cunning merchant with a fondness for swearing, food and beer. Despite this, they get along very well.

--> We Knights Templar make deals where the strangest of goods are shifted, and can cut deals with the Devil himself, or even with a Norseman, if it comes to that!

* SwordFight

* TrueCompanions: Cecilia Rosa and Cecilia Blanka.

* WorldsBestWarrior: Discussed by Arn, Eskil and Harald.
--> Harald: There is no warrior in the world who is your brother's match. This I swear by the Holy Virgin.
--> Arn: DO NOT DESECRATE OUR LADY! Remember men like Guy de Carcassonne, Sergio de Livorne and above all Ernesto de Navarra!
--> Harald: And you should remember that since we got off the ship I am your Norwegian brother, and not your ''sergeant'' to command. And to you, Eskil, I say that the names Arn mentioned are the names of the greatest of swordsmen, but they are now dead and he is not.
--> Arn: That I am alive has nothing to do with sword and shield, but with the fact that Our Lady held her mild and protecting hands over me.
--> Eskil: Living swordsman is better than dead.

--> Your father killed my grandfather. My father killed yours. Let it end here. Give me your crown and return to Denmark in peace.

* AudibleSharpness
* DiagonalCut
* DoNotGoGentle
* FinishHim: Arn quickly establishes himself as a hero by refusing.
* GodBeforeDogma: Arn lives by this.

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade / HistoricalVillainUpgrade: The Erik and Sverker houses. In the film, Erik the Holy is assasinated in Västra Götaland by Karl Sverkersson and his nasty henchman Emund Ulvbane. In actual history, he was killed in Uppsala by a Danish noble called Magnus Henriksson and his allies (the Sverkers ''might'' have been part of them). This was pretty unpopular among the peasantry and he was killed at Örebro. ''Then'' Karl Sverkersson, who was already king in Östra Götaland, took over the throne. It's worth to note that some medieval sources claim that Karl Sverkersson's own father also had been killed on Magnus Henriksson's order. Then Knut (or at least his men) murdered Karl Sverkersson. In the film, Knuts killing of the king becomes a straight up [[YouKilledMyFather revenge killing]] and puts the Sverkers in a bad light and the Eriks in a much better one.

* MasterSwordsman: Arn and his teacher.
* OneHitKill: Arn is quite good at them.
* PoliticallyCorrectHistory: The Swedes are multicultural, allowing people of different race and religion living in their country in the 13th century. No one complains or raises a question.

* SingleStrokeBattle
* SwordPlant

* ArrangedMarriage: Due to the setting, there's a whole slew of these; Arn and Cecilia's betrothal is a variation, although they're actually in love and are punished for becoming impatient and sleeping together before their wedding. There is also the later issue of [[spoiler: Arn, once having returned home from Palestine, almost being married off to Sverker maiden Ingrid Ylva, when he'd rather marry Cecilia like he was supposed to all along. In the end, it's arranged for their son Magnus to marry Ingrid Ylva instead, and he has no objection.]]

*** Arn and Magnus actually discuss this at one point. Arn wonders if Magnus is truly willing to marry a woman he has never met, but Magnus is perfectly willing.
--> Magnus: I am not like you, father. The tale of your and my mother's love is beautiful, and still sung in taverns and at fairs, but when I marry, it will be for honour and for my clan. I have never considered anything else.

* AllStarCast: An odd case. If you are a Swede, or Scandinavian for that matter, the cast is certainly this. In the case of international audiences tho, see the Retroactive Recognition entry below.

* RetroactiveRecognition: To Swedish audiences, [[Series/BronBroen Sofia Helin]], [[Film/SuicideSquad2016 Joel Kinnaman]], [[Series/MrRobot Martin Wallström]] and Valter Skarsgård were not well known when they appeared in this film, getting their breaks a few years later.
** To international audiences a large portion of the cast would be much more recognisable in 2016 than in the early 2000's. Micheal Nyqvist had yet to appear in John Wick or Mission Impossible, Sofia Helin had not appeared in Bron|Broen, Creator/GustafSkarsgard had not become Floki, little Bill Skarsgård had not shown up in [[Series/HemlockGrove Hemlock Grove]] nor played Pennywise, Thomas W. Gabrielsson had not had his run as Guthrum in TheLastKingdom and Martin Wallström had not been in ''Series/MrRobot''.

** There is a NotSoDifferent moment involved: Arn explains that, as castellan of Gaza, he had to be as much MerchantPrince, judge, politician and diplomat as a soldier.

* TrueCompanions: Cecilia Rosa and Cecilia Blanka
* YouKilledMyFather: Two subversions:
** Inverted when Erik Knutsson meets up with King Sverker Karlsson, after the battle of Lena.
--> Your father killed my grandfather. My father killed yours. Let it end here. Give me your crown and return to Denmark in peace.
** A source of friction between Cecilia Rosa and her friend Ulvhilde. Cecilia is betrothed to Arn, who was responsible for maiming (and, Ulvhilde believes, killing) her father, Emund Wolfbane. When Arn comes home, he gets to explain; when he maimed Emund he was a sixteen-year-old boy answering an insult to his family while trying to keep everyone involved, ''including Emund'', alive, and taking Emund's sword-hand was the best he could do. When it came to the killing of Emund, a completely separate incident, his friends were involved, and Arn was at the crime scene but was purposefully kept out of the actual killing and sent home before Emund died.

* CoolOldGuy: Brother Guilbert. His personal CrowningMomentOfAwesome occurs at Arn's bachelor party. Stag nights in this period involved a contest of arms, with seven events. In spite of never having practiced two of the events (throwing spears and throwing axes) and going up against men a third of his age, he still manages to place second.

* DiagonalCut as a CrowningMomentOfAwesome.

* TheRightfulKingReturns: Subverted. Eskil informs Harald that as Oystein Moyla's son, he could make a claim to the throne of Norway and attempt to seize it from the current king, his father's comrade-in-arms Sverre. Harald thinks about it, but eventually decides against it and goes to Norway with a letter of safe conduct. Sverre is overjoyed to have his old friend's son back, and Harald eventually becomes one of Sverre's most trusted advisors.

* RetroactiveRecognition: To Swedish audiences, [[BronBroen Sofia Helin]], [[Film/SuicideSquad2016 Joel Kinnaman]], [[MrRobot Martin Wallström]] and Valter Skarsgård were not well known when they appeared in this film, getting their breaks a few years later.
** To international audiences a large portion of the cast would be much more recognisable in 2016 than in the early 2000's. Micheal Nyqvist had yet to appear in John Wick or Mission Impossible, Sofia Helin had not appeared in Bron|Broen, Gustaf Skarsgård had not become Floki, little Bill Skarsgård had not shown up in [[HemlockGrove Hemlock Grove]] nor played Pennywise, Thomas W. Gabrielsson had not had his run as Guthrum in TheLastKingdom and Martin Wallström had not been in Series/MrRobot.

* ActionPrologue

** To international audiences a large portion of the cast would be much more recognisable in 2016 than in the early 2000's. Micheal Nyqvist had yet to appear in John Wick or Mission Impossible, Sofia Helin had not appeared in Bron|Broen, Gustaf Skarsgård had not become Floki, little Bill Skarsgård had not shown up in [[HemlockGrove Hemlock Grove]], Thomas W. Gabrielsson had not had his run as Guthrum in TheLastKingdom and Martin Wallström had not been in Series/MrRobot.

* RecycledPremise: The basic plot is the same as ''[[TheRavenTrilogy The White Viking]]'': a young man is forced to commit to a crusade as a punishment, while his beloved (who is pregnant) is locked into a monestary, the man being given a symbol of female divinity as protection during his quest, the beloved recieving the false news of his death, while in fact he has been saved by the leader of the opposition of christianity.

--> Arn: DO NOT DESECRATE OUR LADY! Remember men like Guy de Carcasonne, Sergio de Livorne and above all Ernesto de Navarra!

** The books work with this a bit more, but basically it boils down to this: As far as most people in Scandinavia at this time are concerned, all Muslims have horns and tails, live on a diet consisting of Christian babies and nothing else, and their religion consists of human sacrifice and sodomy. Arn figures that to most people, one FunnyForeigner is much like any other, and some funny foreigners have funny customs like refusing to eat pork (There are no pigs in their homeland, so they probably prefer lamb...)and pray five times a day. By the time someone actually figures out that the brown-skinned guys who don't eat pork are Muslims, they know them so well they'll be willing to judge them on their own merits (Brother Guilbert calls this gambit dangerous, but goes along with it). It also helps that most of the Scandinavians they interact with are either Arn's thralls and students, who worship the ground Arn walks on and are willing to run with his ideas, or political power players who see that Arn is using his foreign employees to build up a technological and economic powerbase for the war with the Sverkers and Denmark everyone knows will come sooner or later, and are willing to indulge his and his skilled workers' whimsies.
** It's also worth noting that the Swedes, like the Danes and the Norwegians, had a large amount of interaction with Muslim cultures, both through trade missions as well as mercenary contracts, and that some had even converted to Islam. The presence of a multicultural Sweden is slightly anachronistic, the presence of people of color is not.

* RetroactiveRecognition: To Swedish Audiences, [[BronBroen Sofia Hellin]], [[Film/SuicideSquad2016 Joel Kinnaman]], [[MrRobot Martin Wallström]] and Valter Skarsgård where not well known when they appeared in this film, getting their breaks a few years later.
** To international audiences a large portion of the cast would be much more recognisable in 2016 than in the early 2000's. Micheal Nyqvist had yet to appear in John Wick or Mission Impossible, Sofia Hellin had not appeared in Bron|Broen, Gustaf Skarsgård had not become Floki, little Bill Skarsgård had not shown up in [[HemlockGrove Hemlock Grove]], Thomas W. Gabrielsson had not had his run as Guthrum in TheLastKingdom and Martin Wallström had not been in Mr. Robot.

This film has received a mixed reception, [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837106/ earning a 6.4 on IMDB at the time of writing.]]

* UngratefulBastard: In the second film, Arn stops a rogue crusader from attacking innocent Saracens by using non-lethal methods, knocking him to the ground, then offering him his hand afterwards to show him mercy. In return, the rogue crusader [[ShootTheDog kills Arn's horse]]. Arn promptly snaps and kills the crusader and his henchmen for it.

* RetroactiveRecognition: To Swedish Audiences, [[BronBroen Sofia Hellin]], [[SuicideSquad Joel Kinnaman]], [[MrRobot Martin Wallström]] and Valter Skarsgård where not well known when they appeared in this film, getting their breaks a few years later.