A royal affair (DVD)

Enlightenment and Danish noir

A ROYAL AFFAIR (DVD)

Director: Nikolaj Arcel

Certificate: 15

Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes

This is a Danish film with subtitles which came out last year. It tells the true story of Caroline Mathilda, an English princess who, at the age of 15, was sent to Denmark to marry King Christian VII in the early 1760s.

She arrives to find that her king is a somewhat deranged young man of erratic behaviour. As the plot unfolds, a German physician is engaged to befriend and basically manage the king. Dr. Struensee is an Enlightenment man, influenced by atheism and by Rousseau and Voltaire, while the Danish court is composed of arrogant nobility hiding behind the power of the corrupt established church to perpetuate their oppression of the masses.

Here you have a pre-1789 situation which foreshadows the Revolution in France. The doctor eventually persuades the ineffectual and malleable young monarch to hand over the running of the country to himself. From this position, he introduces Enlightenment ideas and laws, some of which are good — like mass inoculation. But, falling into an affair with the Queen, he himself becomes corrupted by his newfound power. An ideological political collision thus materialises.

Contemporary comment

This is not family viewing. There are some scenes of sex and nasty violence. However, it brings an historical commentary to the present culture wars between liberals and conservatives which are wrecking our Western world.

It shows that liberals are just as capable of misusing power as anyone. Also it highlights the hypocrisy which inevitably infects established churches in the pocket of the state. It is only when the church is independent, with Christ its only head, that it can have a truly prophetic voice in a country. If the whole push for same-sex marriage leads to the disestablishment of the CofE, remember that William Cowper wrote: ‘God moves in a mysterious way / his wonders to perform’.