Scandalous Review: A Royal Affair

Title:  A Royal Affair

Cast

Mads Mikkelsen as Johann Friedrich Struensee

Alicia Vikander as Caroline Mathilde
Mikkel Følsgaard as Christian VII
David Dencik as Ove Høegh-Guldberg
Søren Malling as Hartmann
Trine Dyrholm as Juliane Marie
William Jøhnk Nielsen as Frederik VI
Cyron Bjørn Melville as Enevold Brandt
Rosalinde Mynster as Natasha
Laura Bro as Louise von Plessen
Bent Mejding as J.H.E. Bernstorff
Thomas W. Gabrielsson as Schack Carl Rantzau
Søren Spanning as Münster
John Martinus as Ditlev Reventlow
Erika Guntherová as Hofdame
Harriet Walter as Augusta, Princess of Wales
Klaus Tange as Minister

Director & Screenwriter – Nicolaj Arcel

Distributed by:  Nordisk Film, Magnolia Pictures (US)

Based on Princesse af blodet by Bodil Steensen-Leth

What it’s about:  The story is set in the 18th century, at the court of the mentally ill King Christian VII of Denmark, and focuses on the romance between the queen and the royal physician Struensee.

My thoughts:  I first discovered the love triangle of Caroline Matilda, Johann Struensee and Christian VIII in Eleanor Herman’s Sex with the Queen several years and was fascinated by the story. So much so that I blogged about it here. So I was very excited to discover that there was a new film coming out called A Royal Affair (this is not the first time Caroline Matilda’s story has been dramatized.  Apparently there is a 1935 British film called The Dictator about the love triangle.  Yet another film that I will be emailing TCM about!).

The film starts out with Caroline Matilda writing a letter to her children from her exile in Celle, detailing the story of her love affair with Struensee.  The film then flashes back to the 15 year old Caroline Matilda in Britain just before she’s about to embark on her journey to Denmark to meet her husband for the first time.  Her mother, Augusta, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales, gives her a little bit of marital advice.  Caroline Matilda embarks on her journey with great hopes for her marriage, which are quickly abused once she meets her groom, King Christian VII.  She first meets him hiding behind a tree displaying an odd giggle; he's mentally deranged and infantile. Being the dutiful princess she is, she does her duty in the marital bed with her reluctant husband.  I wish the filmmakers had included Christian’s public declaration that he couldn’t love Caroline Matilda because it was “unfashionable to love one’s wife,” instead of just having him tell Struensee in the film that she’s just boring.

 

She also discovers that some of the books that she brought with her from England were confiscated because they were banned in Denmark.  This is the first hint that the audience receives that Caroline Matilda might have ideas that are considered dangerous. While we are introduced to the principal players who become a thorn in Carolina Matilda’s side including Dowager Queen Juliana Marie, we never really get a chance to see how they tried to turn husband and wife against each other.  We also don’t see her chafing under the strictures of the puritanical Danish court or how Caroline Matilda managed to get around them.  One of the things that she did that was considered scandalous was that she used to take walks in Copenhagen, royal and noble Danish women normally only traveled by carriage. Caroline Matilda’s lady in waiting Louise von Plessen is exiled from court but we never learn why in the film.

Before too long the audience is introduced to Johann Friedrich Struensee, a German physician living in the Danish province of Altona.  Struensee is handsome, charismatic and burning with Enlightenment ideas.  He is the protégée of two exiles from the Danish court who put him forth as the ideal physician for the young King as he travels throughout Europe. Struensee agrees to the job and soon finds that the King is highly susceptible to his suggestions.  Caroline Matilda is not so taken with her husband’s new friend but Struensee soon finds the way to her heart by not just listening to her but taking her riding, and sharing his ideas with her.  There is a lovely scene where he slips her some anonymous pamphlets that he had written. Soon Caroline has fallen head over heels for the doctor and takes the scandalous step of inviting him into her bed.

This is where the film really takes off.  Princess Diana famously said “there were three of us in this marriage and it was a bit crowded.” In the case of Struensee, Caroline Matilda and Christian, he’s the glue that keeps the royal couple together.  He’s a father figure to Christian (whose own father died when he was 17), and a lover and accomplice of Caroline Matilda.  Although the couple are passionate lovers, they are equally as passionate about how they can change the kingdom. With Struensee’s help, Christian begins to act like a King, dissolving the council when they refuse to push through his reforms much to everyone’s dismay.  The puppet king, who sat in dull silence at council meetings, signing documents without reading them, is no more.

 

The film is lush, old-fashioned romance, and intellectual bodice ripper.  Mads Mikkelsen, known to American audiences as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, proves capable of doing more than just being a heavy in films.  Like the historical Struensee, he has unconventional good looks, and a towering masculine presence. Unlike the overly dressed and manicured courtiers, Mikkelsen’s Struensee favors dark, plain clothing and wears his hair unpowdered.  In Mikkelsen’s performance it’s easy to see who both Christian and Caroline Matilda could be seduced. His Mikkelsen is ambitious but he genuinely seems to care for the royal couple, they are not just a means to an end. Unlike the real Caroline Matilda, Alicia Vikander is gorgeous and she looks amazing in the costumes. She’s also a lot more knowing and sophisticated that I think the original Caroline Matilda was.  However, she glows whenever she’s on screen, and she and Mikkelsen have incredible chemistry in their scenes together. The film takes its time developing their relationship; Vikander ably portrays an unhappy woman ripe for seduction. The real find in the film is Mikkel Følsgaard who plays Christian VII. Truthfully his is the hardest role to play, Christian VII is not the brightest bulb on the tree, and he is willful and childlike, prone to tantrums with a cruel streak. The historical Christian was also psychologically abused by his tutor.  Folsgaard manages to convey someone who clearly has mental problems but who also needs someone to take a firm but gentle hand with him. One of the saddest scenes in the film is at the end, when he’s basically told by the head of the council to go play in a corner,  that he’s not needed.

The movie is a little bit too long and it sort of glosses over the fact that King ends up divorcing Caroline Matilda, and that Struensee confessed to his crimes because he thought she had confessed.  Also Caroline Matilda died in Celle two years after the events in the film not five. These are small quibbles because the film is just so sumptuous and wonderful, particularly after the disappointment that was Farewell, My Queen.  It also gets a little heavy handed at times with the mentions of Hamlet and the love triangle of Lancelot, Guinevere and King Arthur.

The Verdict:  Well worth seeing but it might be helpful to bone up a little on the background before seeing it.  There is no mention of the fact that Caroline Matilda and Christian are cousins or that her brother is King George III.

Scandalous Women around the Blogosphere

Just a quick round up of some links relating to various Scandalous Women.

Historian Tracy Borman, whose new book Matilda: Queen of the Conqueror, was published by Jonathan Cape on 1 September, has a great podcast over at BBC History Magazine about Matilda. Borman is one of the History Chicks, along with Alison Weir, Kate Williams, and Sarah Gristwood, who lecture in the UK.  How I long to be included in that group!

At History Today, there is a great article about Louis XV's mistress Madame de Pompadour, entitled Madame de Pompadour: The Other Cheek, detailing some of the obscene and irreverent 18th-century drawings targetting the royal mistress.  Thanks to Kathrynn Dennis of The History Hoydens for finding the article.  I would love to read a historical fiction novel from the POV of Madame de Pompadour.

Robert K. Massie, whose new biography of Catherine the Great, just came out this month has an interesting article over at The Wall Street Journal entitled: Catherine the Great's Lessons for Despots.

Speaking of women in power, TIME magazine had a nice cover story on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Was Jane Austen murdered? That's what crime novelist Lindsay Ashford wants to know.

Another fascinating article on the Bronte Sisters.  Why has no one filmed a miniseries or a film about the sisters? I had heard rumors that Michelle Williams was involved in a project but there's nothing on Internet Movie Database.  I, personally, think that James McAvoy would make an interesting Branwell Bronte, and I would definitely cast Cary Mulligan as either Charlotte or Anne. Given the interest in remaking Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights ad nauseum, you would think a film about the sisters would be a slam dunk.

The Scandalous Royal Romance of Caroline Matilda and Johann Struensee

"I would marry him I loved,  and give up my throne and my country," Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark (1751-1775)

The life of a royal princess is often an unhappy one, destined to be a pawn in the shifting alliances among nations, forced to leave her home, and family to live in a foreign country where she more often than not didn't know the language, isolated from anything familiar, it was a wonder more of them didn't go bonkers from the strain and tension they were under. For every Eleanor of Aquitaine, strong-willed and more capable than most men, or Catherine the Great in history, there were princesses like Catherine of Braganza and Maria Theresa of France who found their place at court usurped by a revolving door of glittering mistresses.

And then there was Caroline Mathilde, Queen of Denmark, married off to her first cousin Christian VII at the tender age of 15. Born postumously to Augusta, Princess of Wales after the unexpected death of her husband, Frederick, Prince of Wales, Caroline Matilda grew up at Kew and at Leicester House in London. Having never known her father, she didn't lack for substitutes in her four brothers. By most accounts, she had an idyllic childhood which ended abruptly with her bethrothal to Christian VII. The Danish Ambassador did quite the snow job, convincing the Princess's brother George III that Christian was a sober, amiable virtuous Prince, the model King but it didn't really matter if he barked like a dog, the marriage was to shore up the traditional ties between the two countries, the check the power of France and to strengthen the Protesant religion.  No doubt George III though that Caroline Matilda should be flattered that she would get to be a Queen, since her eldest sister Augusta had to settle for the Duke of Brunswick.

The royal couple were married by proxy in October of 1766, her brother standing in for the groom. Caroline sobbed through out the ceremony, and she sobbed all the way to Copenhagen. It would have been amazing if she had any tears left to sob when she met her husband for the first time. King Christian of Denmark was not only cuckoo for coco puffs but he didn't even want to be king. He looked like a child, slender, with hair so pale that he didn't need to powder it.

As a boy, Christian's tutors had beaten and tortured him, trying to make a man out of him.  In order to survive Christian had retreated into a fantasy world, filled with strange dreams. He had inherited the throne at the age of 17, and after a good start, he became bored by the responsibilities, leaving piles of paperwork unread for days, while and his companions spent their time playing practical jokes. At night he spent most of his time in the brothels of Copenhagen, and indulging his taste for destruction. He also was known to be violent towards women, but the courtiers at the royal court felt that he would settle down down once he got married.

Caroline Matilda had been raised far from court and had no idea how to navigate the complexities of court life.  Like Marie Antoinette a few years later, she was not allowed to bring a single lady in waiting with her from London. Only her trousseau and a letter from her brother to read, lecturing her on how to behave as she traveled on the royal yacht.  The one friend she did make, Louise van Preussen, was sent away in disgrace. The viper in the nest was Christian's step-mother Juliane-Marie, who in the incestuous ways of European royalty was the sister-in-law of Caroline Matilda's sister Princess Augusta. Juliane-Marie was a stiff-necked pious woman whose one goal in life was to see her own son on the throne. It was reported that she had even tried to poison Prince Christian as a child, but he was saved by a quick thinking maid. If Caroline Matilda had hoped to find a sympathetic mother-in-law, she was barking up the wrong tree.


At first Caroline Matilda had hope that her marriage might be a success after all. Christian, entranced by his new bride, rushed to embrace her when they first met.  His ministers breathed a sigh of relief.

But within days, Christian decided that he didn't like being married.  He went back to his old bachelor ways of hitting the hot spots with his entourage, destroying patterns and picking fights.  Caroline Matilda was unhappy and discontented, and made sure her brother knew it in her thinly veiled letters. However, she made it clear that she didn't want or need his advice, that she would rely on her own judgement. Caroline applied herself to life at court, learning Danish. Bored with being cooped up in doors all day, she took to walking the streets of Copenhagen accompanied by a footman and lady-in-waiting.  Since the Prince refused to come to her bed, she couldn't even fulfill her most basic role, giving the kingdom an heir. Caroline Matilda while not beautiful was charming and vivacious. Buxom and blonde, she had a peaches and cream complexion that was the envy of many. While her husband wasn't interested, there were plenty of men at court who were, and would have been more than happy to console the depressed Queen.

 It was only the quick thinking of Christian's ministers that saved the day.  They whispered in his ear that the lack of an heir might convince his subjects that he was impotent.  That was enough to get her husband back in her bed long enough for her to concieve the long awaited heir who was named, what else, Frederick. Still the birth of an heir did nothing to change Christian's louche ways or to stablizie his mental instability.  In fact he was getting worse.  While traveling incognito through Europe to England, Christian met a German doctor named Johann Struensee, who had been investigating mental disorders.  He seemed to have a soothing effect on the King.  Christian was so taken with him that he insisted that Struensee come along for the rest of the tour.

At 30, the King's new friend was handsome and ambitious, almost six feet tall, broad-shouldered with piercing blue eyes. Streunsee, who had been toiling in the provinces, seized his chance to make a name for himself. He had a calming effect on the young prince, mixing up hangover remedies, coaxing him to take an interest in his paperwork. His prescription of fresh air, exercise, and cutting back on the drinking which began to work wonders. Struensee affected a modest and humble demeanor but anyone who bothered to delve deeper would ntoice the raw ambition lurking in his deep blue eyes.

He won over Caroline Matilda after he treated her for what Eleanor Herman believes might have been a particularly painful venereal disease caught from her husband. He listened to her, the first person to do since Louise von Preussen. Ecstatic to have a friend, soon Caroline Matilda demanded that Struensee come visit her everyday, sometimes 3 or 4 times a day. It was a classic case of a young, romantic girl falling for an older, experienced man. Struensee was lover, teacher, and father figure all wrapped up in an alpha male body. He soon realized how he could turn the situation to his advantage to have not just the young King but also his Queen dependent on him. On Struensee's suggestion, Caroline Matilda took up riding, becoming a fearless horsewoman.  He now began phase two of his plan, to convince her to become more politically active. He told her that it was only a matter of time before Christian was no longer sane, and that it was up to her to seize the reigns of power before her enemies did.

By 1770, Struensee and Caroline Matilda were lovers. For Caroline Matilda, Streunsee must have seemed like a knight with a stethoscope. After the fumblings of her husband, to made love to by someone who knew what they were doing must have been a revelation. Happy and in love for the first time, Caroline Matilda could afford to be compassionate towards her husband. Christian, far from feeling betrayed, was quite happy that his wife had someone who could fulfill her needs. There were now three of them in the marriage, but none of them seemed to mind. Christian was comfortable in the company of his wife and physician, he became uneasy if they weren't around.  Struensee dined with the royal couple several times a week. While Caroline Matilda and Struensee saw to matters of government, the King could live in his own little world.  He only roused himself long enough to sign his name to official documents.

Matilda was so happy, she turned a blind eye to her lover's ambitions and to his other affairs. Encouraged by Struensee, she even began dressing in men's clothing, wearing buckskin breeches,  vest and coat, her hair hanging down in a braid, riding astride like a man. Christian, Matilda and Struensee moved to the secluded palace of Hirscholm, on a island not far from Copenhagen.  There Caroline Matilda gave birth to a daughter named Louise in 1771.  The pregnancy and birth was such a secret, that the people of Denmark were suprised to eventually learn they had a new princess.  No one at court however was fooled about who the father was, every one knew that it was Struensee although Louise was raised as a Danish princess.

Caroline Matilda appointed him her official reader and private secretary to the King, which made him a councilor. Streunsee was determined that Denmark be a modern up-to-date nation, able to compete with the rest of Europe. Unfortunately he alienated not only the clergy and nobility, powerful enemies who were appalled that this upstart German nobody was taking away their rights and privaleges. They found a welcome ear for their complaints in Christian's stepmother, Dowager Queen Juliana, who hoped that once she got rid of Struensee and Caroline Matilda, would rule as regent until Christian's son came of age. 

Soon Caroline began to believe that she and Struensee were another Catherine the Great and Potemkin, but she had neither Catherine's intelligence nor her political savvy.  He let power go to his head, luxuriating in the trappings of power. He made himself a privy councilor and a count, ordered a new gilded carriage, and ordered his servants to wear uniforms. Meanwhile their enemies at work, compiling evidence of the affair.  They sprinkled powder on the secret staircase between Struensee's room and Caroline's to check for footprints.

Armed with proof, Struensee and Caroline Matilda were arrested one night after a masked ball.  Christian had been forced to sign warrants when Juliana told him that a revolution was forming against Struensee and the Queen, and that the palace was about to be stormed. Caroline Matilda was kept away from her husband, to keep her from convincing him of her innocence. She was allowed to take little Princess Louise with her to her prison at Elsinore but not the Crown Prince who she never saw again.  When George III heard of his sister's adultery, he didn't lift a figure to help her. He ignored all her pleas and burned her correspondance.

Her lover meanwhile was tortured under interrogation. Struensee only confessed after being told that Caroline Matilda had been arrested and confessed.  They then went to Caroline Matilda and told her that her lover had confessed to everything.  At first she didn't believe them, until she saw his signed confession. She herself only signed a confession hoping that by doing so, Struensee's life might be spared. At her trial, she was found guilty and divorced from her husband.  Despite her divorce, both children were considered legitimate.  Struensee was executed on April 28, 1772.  Caroline Matilda was sent into exile in Hanover at Celle.

Despite her exile, she never stopped hoping that she would see her children again.  She gave card parties, did needlework and went to church.  On May 11, 1775, she died of scarlet fever at the age of 23. Hearing of her death, George III refused to let her be buried in Westminster Abbey.  Instead she's buried next to her great-great grandmother in Celle.  Her son ruled Denmark as King Frederick VI.

While Caroline Matilda deeply loved Struensee, the question remains whether he loved her or was it just ambition on his part?  The answer may life in what he said when he discovered that Matilda had confessed "The person I loved best in the world.... What have I done....disgrace....shame."

Sources:

Eleanor Herman.  SEX WITH THE QUEEN, Harper Collins, 2006
Stella Tillyard. A Royal Affair: George III and his Scandalous Siblings. London: Chatto & Windus, 2006