The Favourite


The favorite is an ahistorical historical drama. It is about the relationship between three women - Anne, Sarah, and Abigail. Sarah and Abigail are cousins, and Anne is the Queen of England. The filmmakers chose to dwell on the most salacious details of this relationship - the rumors that the queen was in a sexual relationship with Abigail were spread by her rival Sarah in real life. The film interprets these rumors to mean that the queen was indeed a lesbian and that Sarah and Anne had a relationship and then later abigail and Anne had a relationship. But whether the queen had a lesbian relationship with a close advisor is the least interesting thing about Queen Anne. She was Queen at a very dangerous time for England - her father James was a Catholic and certain elite members of English society basically staged a coup called the Glorious Revolution to get rid of him in favor of his oldest Protestant daughter and her husband William of Orange. She abandoned her father and allied herself with the coup, a choice which would eventually lead her to becoming queen of England. She had a strange relationship with her older sister, and her power was reduced for fear that she would aid in her father's return to the throne. Her sister then died, and then she patched up her relationship with William the current King, and because they didn't have any heirs she was next in line. When she ascended to the throne, she was a very stubborn, yet capable monarch. She attended the most sessions of parliament of any monarch before or since - she oversaw the British army establishing itself as a power, and she forced through the Union of Scotland and England creating the British Empire. The movie ignores all of this background to portray the Queen as an ailing, petulant, incompetent woman. While it is true that she was very ailing, and she did have 17 failed pregnancies or children who died very young, she wasn't as incompetent as the film makes the viewer believe. Also, a major plot point in this film is that Abigail is a scheming woman, and she plots to get rid of her cousin, so she can secure the favour of the monarch. But the truth is probably something along the lines that Sarah was a remarkably strong-headed individual who forgot at times she was speaking to the Queen of England. In one instance, she told her to shut up, in public, in front of other people who could hear them. So it wasn't that Abigail plotted her demise, it was that she was too opinionated and had rubbed the Queen the wrong way for one too many a time. And Abigail looked better in the fact that her personality was more calm and more reserved. This is seen in the fact that Sarah's later life was full of the drama that it had had when the queen was alive. I think the problem with such films is when you are a casual film goer, and you are not interested in history, you may take away from this that this is a more or less truthful interpretation of historical events. I think that this does a great disservice to real people who lived. A movie doesn't have to be 100% historically accurate, but if it takes such large liberties with its subjects, shouldn't there be some sort of disclaimer that it's mostly true or that it's an interpretation? 

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