King Baldwin IV Hand Raise

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About

King Baldwin IV Hand Raise, also known as the King Baldwin Wave, refers to a scene from the 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven in which the masked character King Baldwin IV (played by actor Edward Norton) raises his hand in the air to say, "Stop." Baldwin IV, also known as the Leper King, was the King of Jerusalem in the 12th century. A King Baldwin IV edit with the scene went viral on TikTok in early 2024, prompting memes with King Baldwin raising his hand. The image later became the subject of the Silence X, a Y Is Talking template.

Origin

On May 6th, 2005, the film Kingdom of Heaven was released in American theaters. Starring in the movie were famous actors like Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson, as well as actor Edward Norton who played King Baldwin IV.^[1]

In one scene, King Baldwin is assembling his army in a hall. At one point, he raises his hand to quiet the crowd (YouTube^[2] upload shown below).

Edits using the scene of King Baldwin raising his hand first surfaced on TikTok in 2021. Currently, the first known edit using the scene was posted by TikToker^[3] @adella.yo on September 26th, 2021, gaining over 1.6 million plays and 151,200 likes in three years (shown below).

Spread

More edits surfaced on TikTok^[4]^[5] in 2022 and 2023. On January 29th, 2023, YouTuber^[6] jameater posted a King Baldwin edit that received over 287,600 views in one year (shown below, left).

A similar edit with phonk music was posted by YouTuber^[7] HACKS VITAE on May 27th, 2023, gaining over 35,000 views in 11 months (shown below, right).

On February 23rd, 2023, Tumblr^[8] user pickled0ctopus shared a GIF of King Baldwin's hand raise, earning over 3,000 notes in a year (shown below).

Memes using the scene predominantly surfaced in early 2024, following a video shared by TikToker^[9] @sev7enalt on March 30th, 2024, who captioned their edit, "When the clutch is so fabulous that you just sit there and revive you teammate like nothing happened," receiving over 9.8 million plays and 2 million likes in four days (shown below).

Also on March 30th, TikToker^[10] @relatabledome posted a Slow Fade-In meme with King Baldwin, with text reading, "When you genuinely in the wrong and have to pull out one of these," earning over 3.3 million plays and 728,500 likes in four days (since deleted).

Memes using King Baldwin's Hand Raise also surfaced on Instagram^[11] in April 2024.

Silence X, a Y Is Talking

Silence X, a Y Is Talking refers an exploitable meme template showing the King Baldwin IV Hand Raise image paired with a top and bottom caption reading the aforementioned phrasal template in which meme creators recaption the X and Y spot to read two opposing archetypes. For instance, one of the most notable examples read, "Silence Pothead, an Alcoholic Is Talking." The meme trended en masse in mid-2024 predominantly on Twitter / X.