Random Least Accurate Movies About Historical Royals (14 items)

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  (#1) The Private Life of Henry VIII

  • Charles Laughton, Merle Oberon, Elsa Lanchester, Robert Donat, Miles Mander, John Loder, Claud Allister, William Austin, Gibb McLaughlin, Franklin Dyall, Laurence Hanray, Sam Livesey, Helen Maud Holt

  What It Gets Wrong: This film emphasizes the titillating bits of Henry VIII's chaotic personal life while ignoring some of the most significant developments in English history, like the English Reformation. It also incorrectly depicts Henry as an uncouth glutton. By contrast, Henry VIII's court was celebrated for what an ambassador from Venice described as "elegant manners."

  Its depiction of Anne of Cleves, Henry's fourth wife, is especially misguided. The film portrays her as actively trying to get out of the marriage, a representation that basically absolves the real Henry of his role in divorcing Anne. In actuality, he rejected her in part because he didn't find her attractive.

  Where It's Surprisingly Accurate: By centering on the king's private life, the film acknowledges that Tudor power was often negotiated through personal interactions. In other words, the personal was political.
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  (#8) Marie Antoinette

  • Kirsten Dunst, Tom Hardy, Rose Byrne, Molly Shannon, Jason Schwartzman, Marianne Faithfull, Jamie Dornan, Asia Argento, Steve Coogan, Rip Torn, David Walliams, Judy Davis, Danny Huston, Shirley Henderson, Mathieu Amalric, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Mary Nighy, Aurore Clément, Guillaume Gallienne, Sebastian Armesto, Clementine Poidatz

  What It Gets Wrong: Though Marie Antoinette focuses on a crucial era of French history, it lacks any meaningful political context. It also reduces Marie Antoinette's famously extravagant clothing tastes to frothy window dressing. In reality, her fashion choices were politically charged statements.

  Where It's Surprisingly Accurate: Director Sofia Coppola depicts a number of historical details correctly, from the cumbersome rituals that defined life at Versailles to the intimacy problems in the early years of Marie Antoinette's marriage to King Louis XVI.

  Though Marie Antoinette was in love with the Swedish officer Axel von Fersen, historians still aren't sure if their relationship was physical. The movie argues it was.
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  (#3) The Young Victoria

  • Emily Blunt, Mark Strong, Paul Bettany, Jim Broadbent, Miranda Richardson, Rupert Friend, Julian Glover, Thomas Kretschmann, Princess Beatrice of York, Michiel Huisman, Harriet Walter, Michael Maloney, Jesper Christensen, Rachael Stirling, Genevieve O'Reilly, Jeanette Hain

  What It Gets Wrong: This period film - which features a royal cameo - is a sympathetic look at Queen Victoria as a young woman and her budding romance with Prince Albert. But one of the most dramatic scenes in the movie never happened in real life.

  In the film, Albert proves his devotion to Victoria by selflessly throwing himself in front of a bullet meant for her. While there were several attempts on Queen Victoria's life throughout her reign, Albert never acted as a human shield for her.

  Where It's Surprisingly Accurate: As shown in the film, the so-called "Kensington System" - rules and regulations about what Victoria could do - limited the young princess's freedoms in Kensington Palace, her childhood home. The film also depicts the tensions that defined the first years of her reign, including the political fallout surrounding her close relationship with Prime Minister Lord Melbourne and his Whig party.

  As in the movie, Queen Victoria really was deeply in love with Prince Albert, even if they had marital problems just like any other couple.
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  (#2) The Other Boleyn Girl

  • Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Eric Bana, Andrew Garfield, Eddie Redmayne, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juno Temple, David Morrissey, Jim Sturgess, Alfie Allen, Mark Rylance, Joanna Scanlan, Michael Smiley, Ana Torrent, Mark Lewis Jones, Bill Wallis, Iain Mitchell, Maisie Smith, Tiffany Freisberg, Joseph Moore, Oliver Coleman, Montserrat Roig De Puig, Daisy Doidge-Hill, Corinne Galloway, Tom Cox, Brodie Judge, Poppy Hurst, Oscar Negus, Emma Noakes, Constance Stride, Kizzy Fassett, Finton Reilly

  What It Gets Wrong: The star-studded film is based on a novel by Philippa Gregory. Both the novel and the adaptation wrongly take politically motivated allegations and rumors from the Tudor court as historical fact.

  Riffing off a probably false allegation that Anne had relations with her brother George, for example, the film depicts her trying to convince him to impregnate her. 

  Where It's Surprisingly Accurate: Mary Boleyn really was one of Henry VIII's mistresses before he took her younger and more famous sister Anne as his second wife.
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  (#12) Lady Jane

  • Helena Bonham Carter, Patrick Stewart, Cary Elwes, Joss Ackland, Richard Johnson, Michael Hordern, John Wood, Richard Vernon, Sara Kestelman, Jane Lapotaire, Jill Bennett, Lee Montague, Ian Hogg, Warren Saire

  What It Gets Wrong: The emotional heart of the film centers around Lady Jane Grey and her husband Guildford Dudley. Over the course of the film, they go from a pair of resentful teenagers who are forced into marriage to resolute allies who fall in love with one another.

  The reality was quite different, however: Jane couldn't stand her husband. She later admitted, "I was compelled to act as a woman who is obliged to live on good terms with her husband," despite her claim that she was "maltreated" by both Dudley and his mother. Indeed, Jane feared for her life when she was around the Dudleys.

  Where It's Surprisingly Accurate: Teenage Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England for only nine days in 1553. As the film makes clear, she did not want to be queen, a fact that made her swift downfall and eventual execution truly tragic.
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  (#9) It's All Romance - And No Political Complications - In Madonna's 'W.E.'

  What It Gets Wrong: Like The King's Speech, the Madonna-directed W.E. downplays the extent to which King Edward VIII and his mistress-turned-wife Wallis Simpson sympathized with Third Reich politics. Their sympathies were so worrying that the British government actually surveilled the couple and considered them a liability. 

  Where It's Surprisingly Accurate: King Edward VIII and the American divorcée Wallis Simpson launched into a tumultuous love affair when he was still the Prince of Wales. Their relationship really did bring down his reign: Edward abdicated the throne when it was clear that the British public would not accept her as their queen. 

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