Castle DunBroch: The Heart of the Highlands

Merida and her family live at Castle DunBroch, which is situated on a promontory overlooking the sea. Castle DunBroch is not like traditional fairytale castles, which are often designed as fantastical grand palaces with high turrets and gleaming white walls. It was instead designed to look as if it had been part of the landscape for centuries, despite castles being relatively new in Britain when the film takes place. For inspiration Pixar visited Dunnottar Castle and Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland (Pixar Wiki, n.d.).  

Like most fairytales Brave is set in an imagined version of the past, amalgamated together from several conceptualisations of medieval times (Bayless, 2012). The archetypal fairytale castle is rooted in historicist and romanticist movements in 19th century Germany. Castles such as Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria were designed not as fortresses but as displays of grandeur and entertainment (Barna, 2016, Howse, 2015). This served as the basis for the Disneyland castle which would become a symbol of Disney itself (The Walt Disney Family Museum, n.d.).