Top 10 Films and Shows About British Princes

As Spare hits bookshelves, Cinema Paradiso takes a look at how princes from these islands have been portrayed on screen. Rest assured, this article contains nothing about dog bowls, pub fields, or frostbite.

It's clear from the leaks prior to the publication of Spare that Prince Harry has a lot on his mind. Maybe the Duke of Sussex needs a suitable outlet for his talents and should look out for a call from the troubleshooting cabal in Anna Mastro's Secret Society of Second-Born Royals (2020). Set at an academy for potential superbeings in the Kingdom of Illyria, this Disney Channel offering numbers princes Tuma (Niles Fitch) and Matteo (Faly Rakotohavana) as members alongside princesses Samantha (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), January (Isabella Blake-Thomas), and Roxana (Olivia Deeble). It's not currently on disc in the UK, but maybe it should be - perhaps free with every copy of a certain tome?

Princes Behaving Badly - John Lackland to Richard Crookback

Eight years on from the octocentenary of Magna Carta, it's safe to say that few princes have a worse reputation in British history than Prince John. Just see what Jim Howick and Ben Miller make of him in Horrible Histories (2009-21). Starring Leonard Rossiter, Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John (1984) concentrates on the misfortunes of his reign. But it's his princely pursuits that have primarily fascinated film-makers.

He's on scheming form, for example, in Anthony Harvey's The Lion in Winter (1968), an adaptation of James Goldman's play about the thorny dealings over Christmas 1183 between Henry II (Peter O'Toole) and his exiled wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (an Oscar-winning Katharine Hepburn). As his father's favourite, John (Nigel Terry) jockeys for position against Richard (Anthony Hopkins) and Geoffrey (John Castle), as his parents try to decide which of their three sons should inherit the English throne.

The problem passed to Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close in Andrei Konchalovsky's 2003 small-screen version, which cast Andrew Howard, John Light, and Rafe Spall as Richard, Geoffrey, and John. Ultimately, Richard the Lionheart took the crown. But his crusading activities left power in John Lackland's clutches and, as legend would have it, he fell foul of a certain outlaw clad in Lincoln green.

Cinema Paradiso users have access to several adventures set in and around Sherwood Forest. A hissable Prince John crops up in many of them, with the role going to Sam De Grasse in Allan Dwan's 1922 silent Robin Hood, with Douglas Fairbanks; Claude Rains opposite Errol Flynn in William Keighley and Michael Curtiz's The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); and George Macready alongside John Derek in Gordon Douglas's Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950). Most amusingly, Peter Ustinov played John as a thumb-sucking brat in Wolfgang Reitherman's Disney classic, Robin Hood (1973), with Terry-Thomas as his despicably serpentine sidekick, Sir Hiss.

Ian Holm contributed some simmering villainy to Richard Lester's Robin and Marian (1976), which teamed Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as the older lovers. By contrast, Richard Lewis took the comic route in Mel Brooks's Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), while Jonathan Hyde was positively pantomimish in Peter Hewitt's Princess of Thieves (2001), which stars Keira Knightley as Robin Hood's daughter, Gwyn, trying to prevent John from usurping the throne from Richard's illegitimate son, Prince Philip. Subsequently, the role has gone to Oscar Isaac in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010), Paul Giamatti in Jonathan English's Ironclad (2011), and John Michael Higgins in Spike Brandt's animated romp, Tom and Jerry: Robin Hood and His Merry Mouse (2012).

On the small screen, David Dixon was cast as John opposite Martin Potter in Eric Davidson's BBC series, The Legend of Robin Hood (1975), Forbes Collins locked horns with Kate Lonergan in Maid Marian and Her Merry Men (1989-94), and Toby Stephens strove to outwit Jonas Armstrong in the BBC's Robin Hood (2006-09). Sadly, we can't currently bring you Donald Pleasence's relishable jousts with Richard Greene in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-59) or Phil Davis tussles with Michael Praed in Robin of Sherwood (1984-86). But who knows what the future may bring?

Sir Walter Scott found Prince John to be no more likeable and listed him among the antagonists in his 1819 novel, Ivanhoe. This has been adapted several times for the big and small screen, with Guy Rolfe antagonising Robert Taylor in Richard Thorpe's Ivanhoe (1952), Roland Pickup goading Anthony Andrews in Douglas Camfield's 1982 ITV adaptation, and Ralph Brown plotting against Steven Waddington in Stuart Orme's 1997 BBC serial. More recently, Cameron Rhodes inconvenienced Ben Pullen in Terry Marcel's Dark Knight (2000), which was spun-off from Scott's Waverley classic.

Film-makers have had little time for the early Plantagenet princes, although Peter Hanly and Richard Brimblecombe respectively featured as Prince Edward, while father Edward I hammered the Scots in the guise of Patrick McGoohan in Mel Gibson's Oscar winner, Braveheart (1995), and Brian Blessed in Bob Carruthers and David McWhinnie's The Bruce (1996). But the Lancastrians and Yorkists have proved more to their liking.

If John demonstrated what could happen if a prince acquired a surfeit of power, Henry IV's heir showed what could happen if a prince had no designated purpose. As played by Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989, Shakespeare's Henry V was an inspirational leader in the Hundred Years' War against France. However, his dissolute youth also caught the Bard's attention, as a roistering David Gwillim reveals in the BBC Television Shakespeare versions of Henry IV and Henry IV, Part Two (1979), which cast Jon Finch as the eponymous monarch. Anthony Quayle led Hal astray as Sir John Falstaff and that role fell to Simon Russell Beale alongside Tom Hiddleston in The Hollow Crown (2012), which is one of several small-screen attempts to compress the Bard's Wars of the Roses plays into a single narrative.

Starring Timothée Chalamet as Hal, David Michôd's The King (2019) is the most recent composite. But none can top Orson Welles's Chimes At Midnight (1965), which saw Welles's brilliantly bombastic Falstaff infuriating John Gielgud's Henry IV by corrupting the princely virtues of Keith Baxter's Hal. As all good students know, he reforms in time to lead the English forces to victory at Agincourt, the watershed battle against the French whose sexcentenary fell in 2015. Indeed, even Hollywood got wind of Hal's reformation, as Dan O'Herlihy rallies to the cause of Tony Curtis in Rudolph Maté's The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), after a nobleman's son is placed under an act of attainder by Henry IV (Ian Keith).

Despite holding the title Duke of Gloucester while brother Edward IV was king, Richard III was never a prince of the realm. But he also ensured that his princely nephews were deprived of their birthright. Focussing on the women in the family, Emma Frost's adaptation of Philippa Gregory's The White Queen (2013) charted the rise to power of Edward IV (Max Irons) and his younger brother, Richard (Aneurin Barnard). Thanks to Shakespeare, these Yorkist siblings have forever been linked on screen, with Laurence Olivier cacklingly scheming against the sons of Cedric Hardwicke in Richard III (1955) and Ian McKellen delighting in devising a way to succeed John Wood in Richard Loncraine's Richard III (1995).

Al Pacino explored the appeal of playing one of Shakespeare's most calculating knaves in Looking For Richard (1996). But spare a thought for the so-called 'Princes in the Tower', Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, who seem to have been murdered in the autumn of 1483. Ronald Sinclair and John Herbert-Bond are menaced by uncle Basil Rathbone in Rowland V. Lee's Tower of London (1939), while Eugene Mazzola and Donald Losby perished at the hands of Vincent Price in Roger Corman's colour remake, Tower of London (1962). Caspar Morley and Isaac Andrews were dispatched by Benedict Cumberbatch in The Hollow Crown, although Richard emerged as a more sympathetic figure as efforts were made to discover his final resting place in Stephen Frears's The Lost King (2022). Maybe it's time that somebody adapted Josephine Tey's gripping 1951 whodunit, The Daughter of Time, whose prime suspect for the murder of the boy princes is none other than the father of Britain's most-filmed king, Henry VIII.

Princes Behaving Badly - The Pauper Prince to Prinny

Bluff King Hal appears in several films about his offspring, most notably in the various versions of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. The dual role of Prince Edward and beggar Tom Canty was first taken by Marguerite Clark in Hugh Ford and Edwin S. Porter's 1915 adaptation. Billy and Bobby Mauch were cast opposite Errol Flynn's Miles Hendon in William Keighley's popular 1937 variation, which sees the young boys discover the realities of life on either side of the palace wall after switching places.

On the small screen, Nicholas Lyndhurst doubled up in Barry Letts's 1976 BBC serial, The Prince and the Pauper, before Mark Lester assumed the Edward/Tom roles opposite Oliver Reed in Richard Fleischer's The Prince and the Pauper (aka Crossed Swords, 1977). When Giles Foster tackled Twain's classic in 2000, he opted to use twins Jonathan and Robert Timmins as Edward and Tom. At least he stuck to the Tudor setting, as the makers of the 2003 animation, The Prince and the Pauper, cast Edward and Tom adrift in 1650 London, when it was actually under the control of Oliver Cromwell (see the Cinema Paradiso article, That's All Fawkes! Top 10 Films Set in the Stuart Era ).

Back in something approaching historical reality, Hugh Mitchell appeared as Prince Edward alongside Ray Winstone in Pete Travis's Henry VIII (2003), while Eoin Murtagh and Jake Hathaway were dotingly viewed at various stages of Edward's youth by Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the raunchy Showtime series, The Tudors (2007-10). Edward's brief reign is mentioned in passing in pictures about Lady Jane Grey and Elizabeth I. But there was a distinct shortage of princes until 1603, when the Stuart age began.

We refer you again to the aforementioned survey of cinema set in the 17th century. But it would be remiss of us not to mention Robin Stewart playing the young Prince Charles and Timothy Dalton cutting a dash as Prince Rupert of the Palatinate in Ken Hughes's Cromwell (1970). The most considered performance as Charles II came from James Villiers in the BBC serial, The First Churchills (1969), which also devotes time to his brother, James, Duke of York (John Westbrook); William, Prince of Orange (Alan Rowe), who would rule as William III with Queen Mary II; and Prince George of Denmark (Roger Mutton), who was the consort of Queen Anne, who was widowed by the time she is played by Oscar winner Olivia Colman in Yorgos Lantinos's The Favourite (2018).

The Prince of Orange was respectively played by Bernard Lee, Henry Daniell and Laurence Olivier in Alex Bryce's The Black Tulip (1937), Rowland V. Lee's Captain Kidd (1945) and Marvin J. Chomsky's mini-series, Peter the Great (1986). More recently, Jochum ten Haaf stepped into the breach in Joe Wright's Charles II: The Power & the Passion (2003), while George Webster frequently got in the hair of Louis XIV in Versailles (2015-18).

One branch of the Stuarts objected to the Hanoverian Succession in 1714 and film-makers have taken markedly different approaches to depicting their efforts to reclaim the throne. David Niven went from dashing warrior to tragic exile as Charles Edward Stuart in Anthony Kimmins's Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948). But Olivier Espitalie was depicted as a figure in the headlines in Peter Watkins's ground-breaking docudramatic account of the 1745 Jacobite uprising, Culloden (1964), before Brian Blessed portrayed Bonnie Prince Charlie as a rousing man of action in Graham Holloway's Culloden 1746: The Last Highland Charge (aka Chasing the Deer, 1994).

As illness beset him, the later fate of George III was inexorably bound in with that of his son, George, Prince of Wales, who became Prince Regent in 1811. Yet, even though he gave his name to the Regency period, Prinny has often had to settle for bit parts in biopics of his celebrated contemporaries. He is also unluckier than many British princes, as so many of the films in which he appears have yet to be released on disc. Consequently, we can't enjoy the performances of Nigel Bruce in Harold Young's The Scarlet Pimpernel, Lumsden Hare in Alfred L. Werker's The House of Rothschild (both 1934), Olaf Hytten in Rouben Mamoulian's Becky Sharp (1935), Hugh Huntley in Henry King's Lloyd's of London (1936), Peter Graves in Paul L. Stein's The Laughing Lady (1946) and Montgomery Tully's Mrs Fitzherbert (1947), Cecil Parker in Alberto Cavalcanti's The First Gentleman (1948), Jack Hawkins in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Elusive Pimpernel (1950), Peter Ustinov in Curtis Bernhardt's Beau Brummell (1954), Ralph Richardson in Robert Bolt's Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), and John Sessions in Michael Austin's Princess Caraboo (1994). There are a lot of fine films here. Come on, label people!

Compensations do exist, however. Raymond Lovell played the Regent in Leslie Arliss's legendary Gainsborough bodice ripper, The Man in Grey (1943), while Roy Kinnear popped up in Vincente Minnelli's Barbra Streisand musical, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970). In more recent times, George has been portrayed by James Saxon in Richard Laxton's Poldark (1996), Richard McCabe in Mira Nair's Vanity Fair (2004), and Tim McInnerny in Mike Leigh's Peterloo (2018).

Future Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes played Prinny on the small screen in both The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982) and Sharpe's Regiment (1996). Other televisual interpretations have included those by Peter Schofield and Roger Ashton-Griffiths in the Vanity Fair, Richard E. Grant in A Royal Scandal (1996), Jonathan Coy in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1999), Hugh Bonneville in Beau Brummell: This Charming Man (2006), Jim Howick in Horrible Histories, and Mark Gatiss in Taboo (2017-20), opposite Tom Hardy.

Three performances tower above the others, however. Peter Egan conveyed both George's recklessness and his eagerness to serve in the magnificent BBC serial, Prince Regent (1979), while ambition and a desire for a modicum of revenge drive Rupert Everett in Nicholas Hytner's The Madness of King George (1994), an adaptation of Alan Bennett's stage play that earned Oscar nominations for Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren as George III and Queen Charlotte. Finally, Hugh Laurie brought a dollop of stupidity to the role of Prince George in Richard Curtis and Ben Elton's Blackadder the Third (1987), which also brought out the best in Rowan Atkinson, as his exploitative valet.

Like Father, Unlike Son - Albert and Bertie

Queen Victoria was the first reigning monarch to appear in a moving image and none has been portrayed on screen more often, although Elizabeth II is fast catching up. During a reign spanning 63 years, Victoria was only married for a third of them. But Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha is by her side as Prince Consort in numerous features, with few bringing more dignity and devotion to the role than Anton Walbrook, alongside Anna Neagle in Herbert Wilcox's Victoria the Great (1937) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938), which were made to mark the centenary of the queen's accession.

With Neagle playing Florence Nightingale in Wilcox's The Lamp Still Burns (1951), Helena Pickard had to take over as Victoria, with Peter Graves at her side. Sadly, we can't bring you Adrian Hover winning Romy Schneider's heart in Ernst Marischka's Victoria in Dover (1954), but we do have access to Victoria Hamilton and Jonathan Firth's courtship in John Erman's teleplay, Victoria & Albert (2001). Even more delightful is the byplay between Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend in Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria (2009), although Tom Wlaschiha and Sinead Matthews are seen to sneer at Timothy Spall's paintings in Mike Leigh's Mr Turner (2014).

The dear old queen was impeccably played on television by Annette Crosbie in the ITV mini-series, Edward the Seventh (1975), which cast Robert Hardy as Albert and Timothy West as their headstrong son, Albert Edward (aka Bertie). The quaintest Victoria and Albert on television, however, have to be Miriam Margolyes and Jim Broadbent in Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988), as they exchange pet names while Albert keeps letting slip the surprises he has bought for his wife.

Bertie spent six decades as Prince of Wales and had to find ways to keep himself occupied because his mother refused to share the burden of ruling, even after the death of his father in December 1861. He was 59 when his long apprenticeship ended in 1901, but that left film-makers with plenty of scope when it came to depicting him as 'Edward the Caresser'.

Aubrey Dexter was the first to play Bertie in Sixty Glorious Years and he remained the troublesome heir in the form of Laurence Naismith in Ken Hughes's The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), James Robertson Justice in Terence Young's Mayerling (1968), Reginald Marsh in Richard Attenborough's Young Winston (1972), David Brierly in Stanley A. Long's softcore porno On the Game (1974), Victor Langley in Bob Clark's Murder By Decree (1979), Ian McNeice in Ken McMullen's 1871 (1990), and David Woodhead in John Madden's Mrs Brown (1997).

Having disapproved of John Brown (Billy Connolly), Bertie (Eddie Izzard) took a dim view of the relationship between his mother (Judi Dench) and Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal) in Stephen Frears's Victoria & Abdul (2017). If Timothy West owned the role in Edward the Seventh, he was given a good run for his money by Denis Lill in Lillie (1978). But it's a shame that nobody seized upon novelist Peter Lovesey's idea of making Bertie a detective.

The Windsors - Trouble, Trouble, and More Trouble

Edward VII's son, George V, left much less of a screen imprint, although he doesn't emerge from Stephen Poliakoff's The Lost Prince (2003) with much credit. Tom Hollander and Miranda Richardson play George and Queen Mary, as they struggle to deal with the health issues of their youngest child, Prince John (Daniel Williams & Matthew Thomas), as he forms a bond with his brother, Prince George (Brock Everitt-Elwick & Rollo Weeks).

John's oldest sibling was known in the family as David. As Edward, Prince of Wales, he was hugely popular in the country and David Yelland captures something of his renowned charm in Hugh Hudson's Chariots of Fire (1981). He also crops up as William Boyde in Alvin Rakoff and Christopher Monahan's adaptation of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time (1997), as Julian Firth in Tim Fywell's Cambridge Spies (2003), as Tom Hollander in Any Human Heart (2010), and as Oliver Dimsdale in the 2013 Christmas edition of Downton Abbey (2010-16).

But Edward's name will forever be linked with the 1936 Abdication Crisis, which prompted him to renounce the throne in order to marry American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. The affair started before he became Edward VIII, as is outlined in such TV recreations as Waris Hussein's Edward & Mrs Simpson (1978), Giles Foster's Bertie and Elizabeth (2002), and David Moore's Wallis & Edward (2005), which respectively starred Edward Fox, Charles Edwards, and Stephen Campbell Moore. The onerous burden fell on Guy Pearce in Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010) and James Darcy in Madonna's W.E. (2011). David's brother, George, Duke of York (who was known as Bertie) watched aghast from the sidelines, as he was slow-walked towards the throne. Technically, still a prince at this juncture, he was played by Andrew Ray, James Wilby, and Bill Champion in the aforementioned mini-series and by the Oscar-winning Colin Firth and Laurence Fox in the two movie versions.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (as Edward and Wallis became known) had no children. So, had her uncle continued to reign, Princess Elisabeth would only have become queen in 1972. Who can tell what course history might have taken, but Prince Philip would most likely have remained by her side and she would still probably have given birth to princes Charles, Andrew, and Edward. But she would have had two decades as the heir apparent to dedicate to raising her family and subsequent events might well have taken markedly different turns.

Cinema Paradiso members might recall that we covered the films relating to Elizabeth II in Commemorating the Queen on Screen. In order to focus on the men in the family, we need to flip on to princes Philip (Stewart Granger), Charles (Christopher Baines), Andrew (John Hadden), and Edward (Michael E. Knight) in Peter Levin's The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982); Christopher Lee, David Robb, Daniel Chatto, and Patrick Bailey in James Goldstone's Charles & Diana: A Royal Love Story (1982); David Quilter, Roger Rees, and Benedict Taylor in John Power's Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After (1992), which ditched Edward while including William (Thomas Szekeres) and Harry (Oliver Stone); Donald Douglas, David Threlfall, and Jeffrey Harmer in Kevin Connor's Diana: Her True Story (1993), which also omitted Edward, but name-checked William (Nicholas Bastian) and Harry (Barclay Wright); and Peter Egan, Laurence Fox, and Dominic Colenso as Philip, Charles, and Andrew in David Blair's Whatever Love Means (2005).

Such was the potency of Helen Mirren's Oscar-winning turn in Stephen Frears's The Queen (2006) that James Cromwell's Philip, Alex Jennings's Charles, Jake Taylor Shanto's William, and Dash Barber's Harry felt marginalised. William (Laurence Belcher) and Harry (Harry Holland) were virtually afterthoughts in Oliver Hirschbiegel's Diana (2013), which starred Naomi Watts. But the boys are front and centre in Michael W. Watkins's Prince William (2002), which cast Jordan Frieda and Eddie Cooper as William and Harry, as well as Martin Turner and Julian Curry as their father and grandfather.

Dipping into the realm of TV-moviedom, Dan Amboyer and Alice St Clair took the title roles in Christopher Momenee's William & Catherine: A Royal Romance (2011), which also cast Victor Garber as Charles, Mark Penfold as Philip, and Stanley Eldridge as Harry. The latter was more to the fore, however, in Menhaj Huda's Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance (2018), in which the happy couple were essayed by Murray Fraser and Parisa Fitz-Henley, while Steve Coulter and Burgess Abernethy guested as Charles and William. As the trilogy moved on, Charlie Field and Tiffany Smith took on the troubled twosome in Harry & Meghan: Becoming Royal (2019), which found room for Charles Shaughnessy as Charles and Jordan Whalen as William, before Jordan Dean and Sydney Morton took over for Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace (2021), which mixed and matched Steve Coulter as Charles and Jordan Whalen as William.

In the flight of fancy that was Dennie Gordon's What a Girl Wants (2003), there were walk-ons for Prince Charles (Peter Hugo), Prince William (Matthew Turpin), and Prince Harry (Chris Castle). Nicholas Prevost, Clive Francis, and Kenneth Colley all got to play Prince Philip in various vignettes in Channel Four's docudrama, The Queen (2009), which also featured Paul Rhys and Martin Turner as Prince Charles. Tom Courtenay's Duke of Edinburgh also contributed to the animated mayhem in Ben Stassen and Vincent Kesteloot's The Queen's Corgi (2019).

The monarch and her consort were conspicuous by their absence from The Windsors (2017-20). But it was great fun watching the rest of the family repeatedly getting into hot water, including princes Charles (Harry Enfield), Andrew (Tim Wallers), Edward (Matthew Cottle), William (Hugh Skinner), and Harry (Richard Goulding & Tom Durant-Pritchard). The same was true of Dan Zeff's The Queen and I (2018), an adaptation of Sue Townsend's 1992 novel that dispatches the Royal Family to a council house on Hellebore Close after they are ousted by the People's Republican Party. Oliver Chris, Woody Melbourne, and Noah Bailey were respectively cast as Charles, William, and Harry

According to Matt Smith, the Queen watched The Crown (2016-), while the Duke of Edinburgh (whom he played) most certainly did not. Smith was succeeded by Tobias Menzies and Jonathan Pryce, while Charles has been played by Josh O'Connor and Dominic West. More recently, Roe Hartrampf took the role of Charles in Christopher Ashley's filmed record of the critically mauled stage musical, Diana (2021). The same year also saw the animated series, The Prince, get cancelled after a single season of recording the antics of Prince George (Gary Janetti). Also in the voice cast were Dan Stevens as Charles, Iwan Rheon as William, Orlando Bloom as Harry, and Paul Anderson as Prince Louis, who surely merits his own series after his caught-on-camera moments in 2022.

The royal movie train quickly rolls on and the aftermath of Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee and sad death will no doubt be immortalised on screen in the fulness of time. The Hollywood fringe particularly won't be able to resist the ongoing traumas of Harry and Meghan. For now, though, we shall leave you with Pablo Larraín's Spencer (2021), which surrounded Kristen Stewart with Jack Farthing's Charles, Jack Nielen's William, and Freddie Spry's Harry, as well as Richard Sammel as Philip, Niklas Kohrt as Andrew, and Matthias Wolkowski as Edward.