Word: kingly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Having won the support of handful of colleagues, Bob King, a former 1960s-style activist who was once considered too radical to hold union office, is now the designated candidate to succeed Ron Gettelfinger as president of the United Auto Workers...
...teenage Victoria was heir to the throne held by her uncle, King William (Jim Broadbent), but living in royal lockdown at Kensington Palace. "Even a palace can be a prison," she tells us. We're well acquainted with the downside of royalty, thanks to the current Windsors' chatty ex-in-laws, but Victoria isn't just whinging. She sleeps in a room with her German-born mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), has only her spaniel Dash for a playmate and isn't allowed to walk down stairs alone. Her governess, the Baroness Lehzen (Jeanette Hain), is the closest...
...Duchess and her "adviser" (in both boudoir and boardroom), the glowering Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), try to strong-arm Victoria into signing over her power to her mother, just in case King William dies before she turns 18. We want her to be Queen so she can finally say, "Off with his head." Conroy is the film's only outright villain, but he's not really much source of tension: once she's Queen, she's the boss. Nor are Lord M. or Lehzen, even though they try to manipulate the young Queen, because this is primarily a love...
...wild love story for both parties? It can be a challenge to trust historical dramas. We're so used to being duped that even while we're enjoying a scene, we may think it's all made up. The Young Victoria features the jolly King William at his birthday banquet, quite in his cups, trashing Victoria's mother. It's a funny bit, ending with Richardson huffing off and some dry old man saying, ruefully, "Families." This scene has the mark of something written expressly for Broadbent by Fellowes, but in Lytton Strachey's biography Queen Victoria, and again...
...ride his horse, William the Conqueror devised an alcohol-only diet in 1087. The monarch didn't grow thinner; instead, he died later that year after falling from his beleaguered steed, leaving his subjects to struggle with finding a coffin big enough to fit the corpulent king. (See the 2009 Year in Health...