So Who Really was Queen Anne? The Truth about The Favourite's Forgotten Monarch

Period comedy-drama The Favourite has already dominated the BAFTAs and it’s got 10 nominations for the Oscars on Sunday (February 24). But, as the UK marks LGBT History Month, how realistic are the lesbian affairs depicted in the film?

What is the true, real-life story of Queen Anne and has The Favourite prioritised fact over fiction? We explore what historians have said about the period.

  Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite follows the reign of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) when England is at war with France in the early 18th century. It portrays two cousins, the Duchess of Marlborough, Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), and Abigail Masham (Emma Stone), who fight it out to be court favourites of Queen Anne, including their salacious lesbian affairs with the monarch.

The historical accuracy of the film, which has already bagged seven BAFTA awards, including best actress for Colman, has been hotly debated—from middle-aged parents discussing the lesbian romps in Aga-heated kitchens in southern England, to millenials frantically Googling the “historical accuracy of The Favourite” after watching it that afternoon in their local cinema.

So, how much of the 2019 Oscar-nominated movie The Favourite is real? According to historian Ophelia Field, author of the Sarah Churchill biography The Favourite, which recounts the historical story behind the recent film, Queen Anne’s letters to Lady Churchill were, indeed, of a romantic nature.

  Field, whose biography of Churchill was first published in 2002, before being updated to coincide with the release of the film, says she started researching Queen Anne’s letters written from the 1680s onwards, and “was struck by the fact that they were love letters.”

Field explains that she then did some reading around the topic to “try to contextualise how freakish or how typical these were for the period,” only to discover that the Restoration court—covering the period approximately from the return of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660 until the death of Queen Anne in 1714—was characterised by strong female friendships, which may have been sexual.

“What became clear was that in the Restoration court in which Anne and Sarah grew up—which was a sexually decadent place, though that’s usually been thought about more in a heterosexual way—there was a sort of mini-culture of very passionate relationships between the young maids of honour,” explains Field.

Field adds that Queen Anne’s letters to the Duchess of Marlborough have to be read “in the context of how she obviously absorbed this romantic same-sex culture of the Restoration court.” The historian goes on to highlight several women who she believes were involved in romanticising one another, including Francis Aspley, with whom, she says, Queen Anne’s older sister Princess Mary—later Queen Mary II of England—was “really in love.”

The academic reads aloud one letter from Princess Mary to Apsley, who she calls her “husband,” in which the royal says she longs to “kiss the ground on when once you go, to be your dog on a string.”

Still, Field is quick to admit, we can never know for certain whether the same-sex desire outlined in these letters was acted upon physically, as is suggested in the film.

“Whether any of these relationships were physically consummated is a whole other question—and one that we will never have a concrete answer to,” explains Field.

She highlights one moment in the film where Churchill sends a furious letter to Anne, effectively threatening to “out” her in response to her relationship with Baroness Masham, which is based on a real letter. For Field, the contents of this letter show that Churchill “fully knows that the reputational threat to Anne is the accusation of lesbianism, even if they didn’t have the word lesbian.”

But Field explains that she is frequently frustrated by certain academics who claim that such physical lesbian affairs could never have happened. “The position I take is impatience with certain male historians who infantilize the women and talk as if these letters are only between very young girls,” she adds. “Earlier biographers couldn’t even imagine the possibility that anything was felt erotically, if not acted upon.

“I think it’s not implausible to imagine that there’s some physical expression within all of this, and the intensity is certainly much closer to our modern ideas of sexual love than to our modern ideas of friendship.”

Other academics, however, maintain a more sceptical view over whether Queen Anne’s relationships with Churchill and Masham amounted to anything more than passionate friendship.

Historian Anne Somerset, author of biography Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion, says that, while the film “takes it as a complete given that Queen Anne had active lesbian relationships with the Duchess of Marlborough and Abigail,” she believes that it is “certainly not as straightforward as that.”

For Somerset, the question of whether Queen Anne actually had sexual relationships with the two women is “very complicated.”

Like Field, Somerset acknowledges that there was a “cult of female friendship” during this period in the Restoration court, noting that this has led some to wonder whether Queen Anne’s relationship with Churchill particularly was “more than friendship,” given the letters exchanged between them.

However, Somerset argues that both Anne and Churchill’s relationships with their husbands—and Anne’s 17 pregnancies—are somewhat sidelined in the film. Regarding Anne, Somerset says that her relationship with her husband George of Denmark, who died in 1708, was “just conveniently written out of existence” in The Favourite.

Somerset stresses that there is “every sign that she was absolutely devoted to him,” adding that Anne was “totally devastated” when her husband died.” Churchill, she believes, had a “very passionate marriage with her husband, too.”

“Maybe I’m very naive, but I actually don’t really believe that Anne and Sarah had a lesbian relationship,” she says, adding: “I personally think that [Anne] wasn’t a lesbian.”

Somerset does acknowledge that there was an element of tension between Churchill and Anne when Masham arrived on the scene, which is depicted as an intense love triangle in The Favourite. But, she says, Queen Anne had a “completely different” relationship with Masham, which she suggests was more formal because she addressed Masham using her surname.

Overall, Somerset believes that the film has helped trigger a heightened interest in Queen Anne’s reign, which may not have happened otherwise. And, although the historian takes issue with the film’s portrayal of Anne as “very monstrous”—claiming she “was a totally mannered woman”—she adds: “Apart from that, I keep telling myself that it’s all a good thing.”

The Favourite: The true story behind Queen Anne’s lesbian affairs in Oscar-tipped movie. By

Ella Braidwood.   Pink News,  February 23, 2019.

With Yorgos Lanthimos' film The Favourite dominating the 2019 awards season, a previously forgotten, often overshadowed and arguably unknown English queen has been thrust back into the spotlight.

Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs, reigned from 1702 until her death aged 49 in 1714. Unlike Queen Elizabeth I, Henry VIII and Charles I, little is known about her in the modern day and her life story has rarely been brought into the present - until now.

In the dramedy, Anne is portrayed wonderfully by Olivia Colman, who has already been recognised with a Golden Globe and is up for Best Actress at the BAFTAs and Oscars. The film focuses on the relationships that Anne had with two of her ladies-in-waiting, Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, played by Rachel Weisz, and Abigail Masham, who is portrayed by Emma Stone.

The Favourite's credentials and critical reception speaks for itself. Clearly, Queen Anne's story is an interesting one, suggesting that this royal doesn't really deserve her obscure place in history. She was, after all, the first Queen of Great Britain, following England and Scotland signing the Acts of Union in 1707. However, as is so often the case with historical re-tellings, artistic license often prevails when it comes to historical accuracy and, in this case, The Favourite is no different. So, let's take a closer look at what we do know about Queen Anne.

The reason for her legacy effacing from mainstream history could be down to two things: Anne reigned during a very heated political era, plus her regime was bookmarked by much more 'exciting' monarchs and time periods, says Elaine Chalus, professor of British history and head of department at the University of Liverpool.

"It was a particularly complicated period of time, politically," she explains. "In some ways, she has been underplayed as someone who was relatively weak and at the mercy of her ministers due to the political divisions, along with the fact she’s female and was ill throughout most of her reign."

What instead dominates the early 18th century in British history is the 'Age of Party'. This refers to the emergence of the two party political system in the UK - the Whigs and the Tories - and their battle for governance.

According to Chalus, both the time period and the monarch herself have not been regarded as interesting to study, with historians instead focusing their resources on other supposedly more interesting historical events which took place either side of Anne's reign.

"It's not seen as exciting as the Glorious Revolution (of 1688), the French Revolution (1789) or the life of Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire and the 1784 election. As the last of the Stuarts, Anne also comes right before the Hanoverians and the Georgians," Chalus explains. "There have been parts of her life which have been studied, but she has not attracted that same level of attention, even from historians."

Biographer Ophelia Field suggests that Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough, bears some responsibility for the way that Queen Anne is remembered. The two, as documented in the film, fell out - the details of which were consequently publishing her memoirs.

"It was Sarah, after the relationship had soured, who turned Anne into the caricature of ‘insipid heaviness’ that makes her appear a minor figure beside, say, Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria," she writes in her book about Sarah, The Favourite.

Sadly, part of this disinterest could be due to the personal legacy Anne left behind. She's not the intriguing 'Virgin Queen' nor does she possess Mary Queen of Scots' brave and disruptive reputation. Anne is very often quite harshly depicted as "frumpy" and overweight, with a focus on her gout and illness. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Colman told historian Janina Ramirez she put on two and a half stone for the role, with portraits of Anne (often painted with a double chin) serving as inspiration for her characterisation.

Anne's story is not regarded as "triumphant" either. Her personal life was famously blighted by the tragic loss of 17 children through miscarriages, stillbirths and infant deaths (her longest living child, William, died aged 11) .

The effects of these deaths on Anne is represented in The Favourite by her obsession with 17 rabbits which replace the lost children - a symbolism, Chalus tells us, that did not actually happen. In the film, Anne's trauma is epitomised in several scenes, notably through Colman's initial joy transforming into an emotional breakdown after seeing children playing musical instruments. At other times, Anne is interpreted as so thoroughly depressed, she is suicidal. Given what she endured - as well as the pressures of running a country - Chalus says possibly Anne did have depression but, given the illness' fairly recent understanding and acceptance by the medical community, "trying to psychologically diagnose from a modern perspective" is difficult. 

"Certainly, she's desperately unhappy at times and often very sad," Chalus explains. "There's physical exhaustion from the continuous repeat of miscarriage, stillbirth, miscarriage, stillbirth... that process must not have only been physically draining, but mentally too."

Historians studying the Queen more recently have considered whether the ill health which plagued her life could have been the autoimmune condition lupus, which lists depression as a symptom. In the film, we see the Queen's health decline from regular gout flare ups - requiring the constant massages of her ladies-in-waiting - to extreme exhaustion and partial facial paralysis by the end.

In the film, as Sarah and Abigail both compete for power and influence they manipulate the monarch through their sexuality, with both characters engaging in sex scenes with Anne (Colman recently said snogging Weisz is like "winning the lottery"). What evidence is there for the Queen being bisexual? We know she was married to Prince George of Denmark for 25 years up until his death in 1708 and historians roundly perceive them to have had a happy and content relationship.

However, there were passionate letters written from the monarch to Sarah - referenced in the film - ridden with affectionate nicknames and amorous outpourings. As Field writes in her book, Anne often spoke of Sarah "seeing into her heart" and regularly complained of loneliness when Sarah was not around. "I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of the world without you", she wrote in 1692. "I long to be with you again and tis impossible for you ever to believe how much I love you except you saw my heart," and "I have the same sincere tender passion for you as ever," were other phrases uttered in the correspondence.

These letters came to be used by Sarah as a threat when the two women fell out and Abigail replaced Sarah as the favourite. According to Historic Royal Palaces, it was Sarah's political allies (the Marlborough's were big supporters of the Whig party) who spread rumours that Anne and Abigail's friendship actually involved "dark deeds at night". There were also rumours from those close to Anne describing her friendships with her female confidants as "unnatural".

But, how do these rumours reconcile with what else we know about the Queen? Chalus tells us there's "no historical evidence that Queen Anne was involved in any active lesbian affairs".

"She was a woman of her time, very religious, she prayed a number of times a day. Her marriage was monogamous, as far as anyone can tell, with continuous pregnancies as we've said. She was prudish, too," Chalus says, referring to a tale that Anne was once most offended when her shoulder was exposed in a portrait on a coin. "While it is impossible to rule [the affairs] out categorically, it seems highly unlikely. Both Anne’s personal character and the nature of her living arrangements - royal residences were forever bustling with servants and courtiers, and teeming with gossip - mitigate against it."

However, Anne being a "woman of her time" could also serve to explain why the letters between Sarah and Anne were so emotive and in some ways eroticised even if there were no sexual relationships taking place. "What is going on at this point in the 18th century, and is often debated by historians who look at this era, is this business of romantic language being used among women who are close friends. It's highly emotive and passionate."

While the first thought that might spring to mind when its said the Queen had "unnatural" relationships with close female friends such as Abigail might be sexual implications, Chalus suggests this could instead refer to something else. In those days, the monarch was elevated to such a hierarchy - practically believed to be just one step away from the divine - that forming close allegiances with people outside of the inner circle may have been what was deemed "unnatural". Abigail, after all, started off as a palace maid before being promoted to Lady of the Bedchamber and then favourite - an unelected and unaccountable powerful position which was feared by much of the British public, Chalus tells us.

"[The 'unnatural’ reference] could mean there's something sexual going on but it's much more likely, given the time period, that it was about class barriers and letting someone become too close to the body - by that, I mean in a political sense - of the Queen."

Considering Anne's supposedly eventful personal life and the exciting period in history during which she reigned, why is she largely considered a forgotten Queen? Is it because she didn't really reign? In the film, Anne's lack of interest in politics is highlighted when she appears to be far more focused on racing her lobsters.

 Chalus believes it is "wrong" to say Anne wasn't involved with the political happenings of the time. "She is a Queen, at a difficult time, a Stuart and in control. The key thing to realise with Anne is that even if she's ill, to a large degree, she's the one in control, she's not being played. She's Queen of a country which is at war so she is involved. She has a strong sense of what's going on, she sits in the House of Lords and is actively involved. She's not a political non-entity."

Perhaps this is most evident in the way that both of Anne's famous favourites were largely irrelevant once the Queen was done with them. Sarah was banished and, far from being a part of high-class society like she wanted, Abigail faded into obscurity after Anne's death.

Thanks to Colman and Lanthimos, we can now re-visit Anne's legacy and decipher for ourselves just how alluring the Queen was. All the while bearing in mind the tendency for Hollywood to, quite literally, sex up history.

So who really was Queen Anne? The truth about The Favourite's forgotten monarch. By

Olivia Blair. Harpers Bazar,   February  8, 2019

Like many period pieces, particularly those that take liberties with historical accuracy, The Favourite is a visual treat. But it’s no confection in the way that, say, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is. Instead, The Favourite is altogether more sour, something weird and compelling.

Tied with Roma for the most 2019 Oscars nominations, The Favourite is set in early-1700s England during the reign of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman, up for Best Actress), a monarch plagued by physical ailments and the trauma of losing 17 children. Wickedly funny and at times devastating, it focuses on Anne’s childhood friend and lover Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz, nominated for Best Supporting Actress) and Sarah’s cousin Abigail Hill (Emma Stone, ditto), newly arrived to the palace, as they vie for the queen’s affections in the pursuit of power and security.

With his creative team, director Yorgos Lanthimos created a visual style that’s highly specific, a sophisticated mix of restraint and absurdity. Scenes at Hatfield House, the film’s primary location, are lit almost entirely by pale daylight or candles; on film, those vast spaces and hallways bulge wildly thanks to the use of a fisheye lens. Stone, Weisz, and Colman largely wear no makeup; the foppish Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult) is never without a full face of lead-based paint and a gigantic wig. Members of Parliament entertain themselves by racing ducks and chucking oranges at a naked man for fun. Why? Why not?

To explain the movie’s most striking — and most telling — visual details, I talked to costume designer Sandy Powell, production designer Fiona Crombie, hair and makeup lead Nadia Stacey, and director of photography Robbie Ryan.

Creating the visual world of The Favourite required selective breaks with historical accuracy. Powell, Stacey, and Crombie studied up on early-18th-century English styles to use as the basis of their work, then tweaked them, creating a slightly off-kilter version of reality.

“The danger is that if you don’t stick within the world at all, it looks like you got the period wrong,” says Stacey. “The guideline was to stick within the silhouette of the period but then create our own twist on that.”

For Stacey, that meant following the general shape of men’s wigs from the early 1700s, but for certain scenes, she made them pink, orange, or blue. Similarly, Powell used period-appropriate styles for the costumes, but she largely restricted the color palette to black and white, with some silver and gold in the mix. This created a striking, cohesive look. She also added in modern details, like denim from old jeans that she used to make the kitchen staff’s dresses.

“Anything to make it a little odd, a little off the wall,” Powell writes in an email.

Among the anachronisms in the film’s set pieces are Queen Anne’s wheelchair, which wouldn’t have been invented yet, and a blue cake that she eats in a temper, knowing that it will upset her stomach, and promptly vomits back up.

“Birthday cakes did not exist, and they were definitely not blue,” says Crombie.

That’s what the script called for. The cake is a pastel blue, and while it doesn’t stand out against the set and costumes as a glaring error, it’s meant to be, in Crombie’s words, “just a little bit surreal.” This is the key to the historical inaccuracies in The Favourite’s visuals: Everything makes sense within the logic of the film.

To ratchet up the film’s bizarro quality, Ryan made frequent use of a fisheye lens that warped the scenes to wild effect, underscoring the strangeness of the fictionalized Queen Anne’s court. This was Lanthimos’s idea, Ryan says, and though it was a risky, tricky move — a lens that wide captures so much that a camera operator’s head might poke into the top of the shot if they’re not careful — it paid off.

Anne’s public appearances are almost always cut short. She panics and collapses while addressing Parliament, when attending a ball she can only stand to be there for a few minutes before demanding to be taken back to her room, and she doesn’t even make it to meet with the Russian ambassador; Sarah informs her that her dramatic eye makeup makes her “look like a badger,” and Anne retreats to her room. In all of these scenes, the queen’s makeup and clothing is extra special: She wears a big white-and-black fur robe for her speaking engagement, and to the party she wears a dress covered in bows and gleaming studs. These costumes are important “in just how massive and uncomfortable they are,” Powell writes.

“Poor Anne spends most of the film in utter misery, so those few scenes where she has no choice but to change out of her nightgown really had to show that contrast. And of course it never lasts long,” she writes.

Underneath those heavy outfits, Colman was wearing prosthetics to give her the appearance of severely swollen legs and feet due to Anne’s gout. She wore a full prosthetic for scenes where her leg is visible, but even when her skirts fully covered her legs, the team used a second version that was easier to apply, to give Colman a constant sense of Anne’s difficulty walking.

When it came to Anne’s makeup for the party scene — a dark, pointed lip and cheek rouge — Stacey wanted it to look “slightly weird and wrong.” The “badger” makeup has an intentionally childish quality. It’s blotchy, as though someone used their fingers to do it, and not very well.

“She’s trying to be as fashionable as the women in the court, but she got someone to do it and she didn’t get it right,” Stacey says.

It took Stacey some time to figure out how to interpret the line “You look like a badger,” since the script doesn’t spell it out. After considering the strong black and white lines in the set and costuming, she landed on a band of black eyeshadow that sweeps outward to the temple, inspired in part by Daryl Hannah’s makeup in Blade Runner.

In many scenes, Colman wore no makeup, as did Stone and Weisz. No foundation, no blush, no mascara — “if anything, a little cover-up for pimples,” Stacey says. This mandate came courtesy of Lanthimos, and it’s a very different approach from the many period pieces in which actors’ cheeks are mysteriously rosy, their skin shockingly clear, and their eyes suspiciously bright (“no makeup” makeup at its most deceptive).

Throughout the film, the women in Queen Anne’s court dress in black and white, often embellished with what looks like lace but is actually laser-cut black vinyl or white cotton laid on top of the opposite color. “They come across almost like chess pieces,” Powell says, which is particularly true when the actors are standing on a black-and-white-checked floor during a party scene.

Abigail’s ascent from kitchen maid to the queen’s “favourite” is visible in her clothing, with the balance of black and white signaling her upward trajectory. At the start of the movie, Abigail has fallen on hard times, so Powell dressed Stone in “something that would have been nice once, though now is worn out.” Since white fabric would have been a signal of wealth, Powell added more white to her dresses over the course of the movie.

“As a lady-in-waiting, Abigail starts in plain black, and as she graduates higher in status to Queen’s maid and then to lady again after she marries, we incorporated more white into her outfit,” Powell writes in an email. “She comes into money and her clothes get finer and she adds more makeup and jewelry, almost to the point of vulgarity.”

Some of the most eye-catching costumes in the film belong to Sarah, who wears menswear-inflected outfits to go shooting and riding. For the former activity, she wears a white-and-black coat and a tricorn hat, along with trousers and tall boots; for the latter, she goes for an all-black look in a fabric made to look like leather.

“I wanted her to be strong and in command, if not ‘masculine’ in the sense we usually see,” Powell explains. “So you have the trousers, with other modern touches like fake leather to supplement. The idea had been that as any emancipated woman might, she could incorporate menswear into her 

outfits and look great in it, almost like an 18th-century Katharine Hepburn. Rachel carries herself like that anyway, confident and in control, so it wasn’t a difficult look for her.”

Covered in tapestries, Anne’s room was the largest and most ornate in Hatfield House, the location where much of The Favourite takes place. Crombie simplified the space by taking out the carpets, and she installed a custom four-poster bed and elaborate cages for the queen’s many pet rabbits, each one representing a child she’d lost. The cages she decorated like dollhouses, with tiny silver bowls, miniature cakes, microgreens, and small brushes.

Anne’s room is a kind of retreat from the world, but it’s also a semi-public forum. Members of Parliament come to her bedside for meetings, and it’s where Abigail and Sarah vie for her affections. As such, Anne’s room is messy and lived-in, filled with flowers and food in various states of consumption, constantly shifting to fit the needs of its inhabitants.

It’s also where Anne suffers from attacks of gout in the middle of the night. Crombie’s team did detailed research into the era’s remedies for gout, and for those scenes, they dressed Anne’s room with medical equipment, pastes, and jars of real leeches. (“They’re not that easy to come by,” says Crombie.) You’d probably miss the leeches because those scenes are candlelit and relatively dark, Crombie says, but they’re sitting with the doctor’s equipment. It’s unappetizing details like these that prevent the film from becoming too precious.

The men of The Favourite frequently come off as ludicrous; their political concerns are incidental to the real drama unfolding between the three women. Nobody embodies this more than opposition leader Harley, whose forceful personality is matched only by his over-the-top ensembles, towering wigs, and heeled shoes. Actor Nicholas Hoult already clears 6 feet, and in costume, he’s a giant.

“I wanted him to be this larger-than-life character,” says Stacey. “The wigs just got bigger and bigger, and the bigger they got, the more Yorgos loved it.”

Stacey devised a variety of wigs for Harley, including a horned affair that signals his devilish inclinations and a long orange wig that he wears on more celebratory occasions. He wears white face paint and rouge throughout, with a shifting roster of black patches (for instance, in the shape of a rampant lion) adhered to his cheeks and chin depending on the situation.

As Harley says to his friend Samuel Masham (Joe Alwyn), “A man must look pretty.”

But he doesn’t totally. Stacey wanted the men’s hair and makeup to look somewhat crude. Their wigs were meant to look like they’d been worn for days, not freshened up every single morning in a trailer. The white makeup caked on their faces, which would have damaged the skin due to its lead content, was sweaty and imperfect.

“The fact is, in that era they would have been really dirty, smelly people,” Stacey says. “The wigs would have had lice in them.”

Some of the absurdist fun in The Favourite comes from the men of Parliament and court, who entertain themselves by racing ducks and throwing oranges at a naked man wearing a wig, a scene that comes without context. These events take place in the same room, and Crombie wanted them to have a spontaneous quality, as though someone suddenly suggested that they hold a duck race or have a party. The duck circuit was staged to look improvised, made from wooden stools and benches placed on their side. An animal handler dressed in costume threw fish to get them to run, because ducks are not much inclined to do so.

“Those spaces just constantly change. There’s something so lovely about the idea of whim,” Crombie says.

The strange, beautiful, gross aesthetic of The Favourite. By  Eliza Brooke. Vox ,  February  21, 2019

Also of interest :

The real women of ‘The Favourite’ included an 18th-century Warren Buffet. By  Amy Froide. The Conversation , February 22, 2019. 

Rewriting the past: do historical movies have to be accurate?

From Green Book to The Favourite, several of this year’s Oscar contenders have been accused of historical misrepresentation. But movies have always played fast and loose with the facts.

By Alex von Tunzelmann. The Guardian , February 1, 2019. 

The Favourite: at last we’re seeing lesbianism take centre stage in popular culture.

Three of the most visible popular cultural texts of the past few months, the multiple-Oscar-tipped period film The Favourite, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s BBC crime drama Killing Eve and Sally Rooney’s bestselling debut novel Conversations with Friends, are evidence of a shift whereby queer female identities are at last gaining a modicum of mainstream exposure and legitimacy.

By Mary Harrod. The Conversation ,  January 25, 2019