A Lesbian Queen of England!? How Historically Accurate is The Favourite? [CC]

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Hello lovely people!
I went to see the film The Favourite this weekend, the latest costume drama with lesbians,
and it sparked so many things flying around in my brain that I just had to make a video
about it!
I’m going to discuss the film itself- without spoilers- and who on earth Queen Anne actually
was and then we’ll move onto the spoilery bit with how historically accurate the film
really was and my thoughts on it. I’ll put the timecodes in the description down below
and on screen at the start of each segment
So if you'd like to remain unspoiled you can
You can also skip ahead, or backwards depending on what you want to see.
I felt I had to make this video because I am both a bit of a history buff and-
Super gay.
If you enjoy history, gayness or optimistic messages of disability awareness with occasional
sass then please subscribe.
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The Favourite came out in December in the US but it’s only just come out in the UK
and it is up for a whole slew of awards so I would really recommend seeing it if you
haven’t already.
It’s. Really. Good.
The Favourite is not, however, a film that is super-concerned with historical accuracy
when it comes to the filming style itself- you’ll be shocked by how many times the
director whips out a GoPro
and the casual, snarky way people converse. It’s darned
hilarious, brisk fun however as director, Yorgos Lanthimos creates an 18th-century All
About Eve in which, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-
Played by Rachel Weisz
- the childhood companion to Queen Anne-
Played by Olivia Coleman
- vies for her affection with newcomer and recent servant Abigail Hill-
Played by Emma Stone
- who also happens to be Sarah’s cousin.
So it's a thing...
Sarah has known the Queen all of her life and acts like it: she’s older, she’s harsh
and she’s honest but they have a lot of inside jokes. Abigail on the other hand is
much younger than the queen and much softer than Sarah. She was born a lady but her family
have fallen on hard times-
Really hard times. Her father lost her in a bet when she was 15 and then he burnt the
whole house down with the rest of her family in it.
Along with some political jockying for power between the two main English political parties
at the time: the Whigs, who Sarah favours, and the Tories, who Anne is naturally inclined
to follow when she can pull two thoughts together-
She’s not the brightest spark
- the film is mainly about the relationships between these three women.
Will Queen Anne choose her whip-smart childhood friend and lover who helps her with all the
scary actually running a country stuff? Or the new girl, who is sweet, doesn’t care
about politics, and is technically actually just a servant?
Let’s discuss…
But first!
A history primer: Who actually is Queen Anne?
Anne reigned from 1702 to 1714 and was also actually the last Queen of England. And the
last Monarch of England as the 1707 Acts of Union brought together the Kingdom of Scotland
and the Kingdom of England (which already included Wales and Ireland) to create the
Kingdom of Great Britain.
So she was also the first Queen of Great Britain!
Semantics.
Does anyone care? I care.
Anne was the final monarch from the royal House of Stuart,Formerly just the monarchy
of Scotland. I could go into details here but the brief version of that is:
we had a Queen, Elizabeth I, she had no children, she died, her first cousin twice removed, who just happened
to be King James 6th of Scotland, succeeded her. Great! Good! He was really Protestant
and he had lots of children so everyone was very happy! Particularly because they hated
Catholics and question-marks over the line of succession.
Done.
Okay that’s not the whole story: see the Mary Queen of Scots film for more information.
Want me to make a video about historical inaccuracies in that film because I already have A LOT
to say about the trailer?!
So, James became King James 1st of England.
[clap] lovely, lovely, lovely.
But James 1st, known for relatively peaceful times and low taxation was succeeded by his
son, Charles 1st… who was a stonking idiot, started our civil war and got his head chopped
off. Drama.
Charles did have a lot of children though: 9 of them. His wife was also Roman Catholic
which, if you’re an English monarch, is just asking for trouble. Said children hightailed
it over to France, the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands.
And thus we come to the 11 years in which England had no monarchy. 1649 to 1660 was…
pretty rocky.
It was okay for a while but then it all started to go downhill so Parliament
decided that actually they did quite like having a King after all and could they possibly
have one back?
They asked Charles 1st’s oldest son, Charles 2nd to come back from France and take over
once again. And it was all going to be great, and everyone was so happy, and he had loads
of kids-
Granted they were all illegitimate… and he spent most of his money on parties and
women but…
Yeah, I guess people weren’t that happy.
But at least he died and then his brother could be king!
Meet James the 2nd! Anne’s dad! Things are definitely going to go well now, right?
Oh. He got overthrown? After less than four years? Because he was a Catholic too?
No worries, at least his daughters were Protestant!
Like the ones from his first marriage that is. In 1677, James reluctantly consented to his
daughter Mary's marriage to the Protestant Prince William III of Orange (who was also
James's nephew, the son of his sister).
Royal inbreeding, what you gonna do?
Parliament weren’t too happy about James being a Catholic but they were relieved his
heir was Protestant… until he had a new son with his equally Catholic wife and everyone
freaked out! They chucked James off the throne, asked his daughter Mary and her husband William
to be joint King and Queen and bared any Catholics from ruling England. Ever. Again.
Ever.
Still.
So there we go, nice new King and Queen, hopefully they’ll have some children… right? Or
at least be vaguely nice to Mary’s little sister Anne (star of our film) since she’s
the heir… right?
No...
William and Mary thought Anne was so boring that they hardly spoke to her, and
she was excluded from court in the early years of their reign.
The film notes that Anne was bullied horribly as a child and the history books confirm it.
But then Mary died and William had to be nice to Anne since she was going to be Queen once
he died. Or at least vaguely nicer.
Maybe he just smiled at her once a year?
Anne had to fight for everything she got, despite being a Princess and the next Queen.
She wasn’t given a proper allowance nor rooms in the best palaces. So fight she-
Did not.
But thankfully she had her friend Sarah to do that for her!
Why am I telling you all this? Isn’t it just useless information? Well... no. I think
this background information gives you a greater insight into the power play within the film.
Since William and Mary had no children and none of Anne’s survived-
Side note, Anne did actually have a husband but he was written out of the film because…
no one cares. Almost literally no one. Probably literally no one.
Fight me.
The next heir to Anne’s throne was a very distant elderly cousin, Sophia, who had loads
of sons who had their own sons so no worries, everyone, we can all calm down. It’s going
to be fine. And so people were largely just waiting for Anne to be done with this whole
‘being alive’ thing and the new royal family could move in.
And it would be great yeah...
Anne was popular, unthreatening, very English and proudly Protestant. She’s not really
remembered for much other than possibly being into Sarah Churchill in ‘more than a straight
girl’ way… despite the Act of Union thing which brought all of Britain together but,
sure, let’s go with the lesbian thing instead.
Historian Edward Potts Cheyney summed her up as “a good woman, but not very bright,
nor was she very strong-willed,” in 1904’s Short History of England. More modern writers
agree with Peter Ackroyd in Revolution describing her as “cautious by temperament, never wholly
trusting her own judgement or those of others,”
That’s how history sums her up, but how is she portrayed in the film?
Well here we come to our spoiler-free film summary. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen
the film yet, I’m not giving away anything you won’t find out from the trailer...
Olivia Colman plays Anne as soft and kind but rather dim and helpless. She spends much
of the film in a wheelchair or using crutches as she was plagued by gout (which is what
eventually killed her). Mentally she isn’t the brightest crayon in the box and has to
rely on her lover Sarah for almost all political decisions and the day-to-day running of the
country.
Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough, is... pretty swashbuckling: She wears men’s clothes unless
she absolutely has to wear a dress, she has a no-nonsense sense of things and she’s
alternately tender and harsh to Queen Anne. Plus she’s played by Rachel Weisz so…
I’m already hot under the collar!
The film begins with Sarah seeming like a conniving and mean antagonist to our potential
lead Abigail, a young cousin of Sarah’s who arrives at the palace in “diminished
circumstances”- ie. dirt poor and has to work in the kitchens.
Maybe it’s just because she’s played by the ever-wonderful Emma Stone but Abigail
seems sweet and guileless, with just a hint of cheeky fun. She’s funny and a wonderful
character to follow around on little adventures, whereas scenes with Sarah are generally about
politics or complex relationships.
Of course that all changes soon enough when Abigail is promoted to Lady in Waiting to
Queen Anne and realises that Sarah is more than just a friend to the Queen and that maybe
there’s an opportunity for her there too!
Along the way she also falls into politics as Parliament is split into two halves: The
Whigs, headed by Sarah’s friend Godolphin and The Tories, whose head Robert Harley realises
that getting the Queen a new favourite will help his party…
And help them to end the costly war that mainly Tories are paying for but is headed by Sarah’s
husband, Lord Marlborough, who gets all the glory for the battles won.
More on that in a minute…
Without going into spoilers, I would just like to say that these three actresses deserve
all of the awards for their performances. The three portrayals are all so wonderfully
different and nuanced even though it might be easy for them to slip into caricatures:
The harsh kind of butch woman, driven by power The young ingenue who slowly gets drunk on
power The dim royal who is fat and...
Fat
To be fair, most characters who are larger don’t tend to have many characteristics
Do they? Beyond ‘easy to laugh at’.
But this film really shows all facets of these women. Yes, Sarah and Abigail are highly intelligent
and go through big character arcs, from Sarah bottling up her feelings in icy malevolence
to pouring them all out and Abigail’s sweet openness to smug condescension, but Anne has
depth to her character too:
Maybe she comes off as a bit too much of a simpleton sometimes but it’s clear her childishness
is born from permanent discombobulation as she constantly struggles to locate her own
thoughts.
As someone who deals with a lot of health issues that give me near-perennial brain fog
I really relate to that. A few days ago I sat and cried because I couldn’t
work out how to turn the bathroom tap off but I’m now about to tell you everything
I know about the whigs and tories conflict at the start of the 17oos, which apparently...
is a lot.
One final thing before we end the film summary however: Olivia Coleman is amazing and I really
hate GoPro shots.
A large part of this film involves-
Lesbianism
But also politics-
Affected by lesbianism
You may be missing the point.
If you’re not from the UK or know nothing about our politics in the 18th century (which:
fair) you probably don’t know about the Whigs and Tories and their fight over England
going to war with France at the time of the film.
Here is a handy little primer so you can better enjoy the film:
… not that the film is technically correct. And their dates are a bit- never mind!
At that time the English parliament was split into two halves, and these were spiritual
descendants of the two sides in the English Civil War.
The Whigs, who are very puritanical, capitalistic, city-dwellers who believe the elected officials
in Parliament should run things.
And the Tories, who are showy, traditionalist, country land-owners who believe in the power
of the monarchy.
Sometimes they worked together, as they had in kicking Anne’s father off the throne,
because he was both a believer in the divine right of kings, which upset the pro-Parliament
Whigs, and a Catholic, which upset the very Protestant Tories.
and everyone else!
Once he was off the throne however they got right back to arguing and the political climate
became very similar to what we see in America today with two very separate parties and Members
voting along party lines rather than following their own beliefs.
The religious and political
differences were so extreme that they created two very separate cultures, which is something
the film shows wonderfully through costume design.
See here:
Whigs.
Tories.
Now, by nature, Anne is a Tory: she’s a jolly, traditional, religious land-owner too
after all. But the monarch’s own political beliefs are becoming less and less important
and she generally wants to go with whatever Sarah says anyway.
And Sarah is the Whig darling of the day. The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were the
Whig power couple. (Sir Winston Churchill and Princess Diana are among their descendants.)
He was head of the army and so the war with France was seen as a generally Whig project.
As is mentioned numerous times in the film: Tory land-owners were paying a lot of money
at the demand of Whig politicians to pay Whig generals and said borrowing was making the
Whig bankers rich.
You can see why there was a drama and why who was the Queen’s favourite played into
this.
Will Queen Anne follow her own inclination and end the war whilst taking sweet Abigail
into her bed or will she agree with her lifelong friend and lover Sarah and continue the war…?
Time for spoilers!
So how historically accurate is this whole thing anyway?
Well, yes, although The Marlboroughs had originally been Tories, they were the Whig couple of
the age. Marlborough was actually a pretty great general and his many victories in the
War of Spanish Succession led to Anne giving the couple a gigantic house, Blenheim Palace,
as a gift, as we see at the start of the film.
That thing is huge!
The Favourite’s depiction of Anne’s relationship with Sarah are largely true to history: Sarah
filled Anne’s need for a close female confidante- a role Anne’s sister Mary had no interest in playing
She in fact kicked her a lot instead
They had met when Anne was a child and Sarah a teenager, and as Anne Somerset
writes in Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion, the future monarch found herself “irresistibly
drawn to this self-assured and dynamic woman.”
Sarah skillfully maneuvered herself into Anne’s favor but she was always the one in control.
It was even said at the time that “While Anne ruled England, it was … Lady Marlborough
who ruled the queen.” Sarah was said to frequently criticized the queen so harshly
so as to reduce her to tears, and dictated just what she should say and do under certain
circumstances.
I mean it wasn't the healthiest of relationships
Is there any actual evidence that they were lovers…?
Well, is there any evidence that most couples who cannot conceive together were lovers?
Unless one of them wrote it down or someone saw them?
No!
But one of them did write it down! Ha!
Sarah at one point threatened to leak certain personal letters from the queen and is quoted
as warning her: “Such things are in my power that if known … might lose a crown.”
(these are the letters that in the film’s universe were the cause of the rift between
the two women after Sara says she is going to tell everyone
That Anne wants to see her naked
In actuality they never admitted publicly why they had fallen out and the letters
threat came afterwards)
Also, historian Jonathan Swift’s observed of Queen Anne at the time that “there was
not, perhaps in all England, a person who understood more artfully to disguise her passions.”
I’m just saying: that’s pretty gay to me!
The film is also correct that Abigail Hill was a cousin of Sarah Churchill, but completely
ignores that she was also related to the Tory leader Robert Harley- instead they make it
seem as if the two have no knowledge of each other.
Just kinda bumped into each other
Side note: Nicholas Hoult is amazing in this film, his eyes are so expressive that just
a tiny flick of his eyebrow conveys a huge amount.
But also Harley was in his 40s at this time and not a young, fancy 20-something.
It’s very possible that Harley pushed Abigail to join Sarah’s service but however it happened
Sarah certainly didn’t notice just how close she had become to the Queen until it was too
late.
And no, Abigail did not poison her cousin so she was kidnapped for a number of days.
But she did get married in secret whilst Sarah was away with only the Queen and Harley’s
knowledge. Sarah found out about Abigail's marriage several months after it had occurred,
and immediately went to the Queen – with the intention of informing her of the event.
It was then Anne accidentally slipped up and said she’d known all along, which clued
Sarah in to just how close Anne and Abigail had become.
Drama
Abigail was noted for her kind, flattering disposition and the change it made from Sarah’s
domineering and blunt nature. Sarah later claimed in her memoirs that she had raised
Abigail "in all regards as a sister", though there were implications that she only assisted
her cousin due to her embarrassment of her difficult circumstance and not because she
actually cared or anything…
It’s true that Abigail never pressured the Queen openly about politics but she certainly
only let the people who shared her own viewpoint near to the Queen.
Kinda the same thing.
Again, it isn’t known for sure that Anne and Abigail were lovers but Sarah definitely
spread rumors that they were. She was a huge fan of a ribald ballad written about Abigail
by the Whig journalist Arthur Maynwaring, which sang of a “dirty chambermaid” who
entranced the queen through “dark deeds at night.”
Unfortunately this actually turned out to be Sarah’s undoing.
Sarah told Anne about the ballad and similar works, hoping it would spur the queen to cut
ties with her young favorite. Instead, it only made Anne turn further against her.
Is this proof?
Well, romantic friendships between women were common in this era but the consummation of
such isn’t exactly something one writes in a journal to be kept for all posterity.
Whilst Sarah spread rumours about Abigail she was careful to strike down the implication
that her own relationship with Anne had also been physical. To Sarah, “lesbianism was
apparently a disgusting vice, with which she had never been tainted,”
Uh huh
Sure hun
I’m also not going to count pregnancy as proof someone was not a lesbian as, funnily
enough, lesbians can also conceive. Also, absolutely no one had the choice to just not
get married at that time. See how well Elizabeth 1st turned out?
I suppose we could also note that most other kings in Anne’s family had been called gay…
and calling someone gay was a fairly common way to slander your political opponents in
the early modern period. BUT the fact Sarah herself was spreading these rumours, precisely
because she had been passed over for another woman, well…
Seems pretty gay to me.
One positive: as historian Laura Gowing has noted, “the eroticization of female friendship
shifted the way in which lesbianism was represented … Gossip about Queen Anne, Marie Antoinette
or society women made it publicly clear that lesbian acts did not necessarily involve of
the performance of ‘female masculinity.’”
For which this femme lesbian says:
Thanks rainbow monarchs!
Even if you’re not actually gay and the film just kind of makes that up a bit…
As I mentioned earlier: The Favourite is not a film that’s overly-concerned with historical
accuracy… but then that’s part of the fun. The characters speak to each other in
an incredibly modern way, they’re sarcastic and often on the edge of that surly marker
of the post-creation of the teenager: the eyeroll.
It’s fabulous. I would like to own this film on DVD.
I would also like to own a DVD player. My Buffy DVDs are pretty sad about not being
played.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at historical accuracy in The Favourite! Let me know which
film you’d like me to review next.
[cute gasp]
Please one with lesbians. Or history. Or historic lesbians.
I… have a genre.
Also: Queen Anne did not keep 17 pet bunnies to represent her dead children! Rabbits were
food!
Goodbye friends, see you in my next video on Monday.
[kiss]