12. Ellie White as Princess Beatrice

While many of the characters in Channel 4’s ongoing spoof The Windsors have been reduced to lazy caricature, Princess Beatrice remains a highlight. Ellie White has mastered the aristocratic vocal fry, strangling every syllable as her Beatrice conspires with sister Eugenie to escape their father’s scandal over his “nonce chum” Jeffrey Epstein and get themselves back on the Sovereign Grant. Even when the sitcom opts for the easy gags, Beatrice still brings enormous fun and genuine warmth to the show, leaving viewers hoping she can fit in a spinoff between those 16 holidays a year.

11. Nicholas Hoult as Emperor Peter III

This mischievous 2020 retelling of Catherine the Great’s ascent prides itself on its lack of historical accuracy — its title card declares it an “occasionally true story” — yet The Great serves up savage satire alongside the irreverent confectionery. Nicholas Hoult steals the show with his outrageous performance as Emperor Peter, an idiotic man-child with an exceptionally vulgar turn of phrase, insatiable sexual appetite, and the ability to portray a full range of emotions through a single word: “Huzzah!”

10. Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn

Of Henry VIII’s six wives, his second, Anne Boleyn, has held most public attention, captured in numerous films and TV series. The standout is Natalie Dormer’s portrayal in 2007’s lusty soap opera The Tudors, another drama that plays fast and loose with the facts. Over two of its seasons, largely filmed at Ardmore Studios, The Tudors transforms the tentative, pious young woman into a cunning seductress, with a mesmerising breakthrough from Dormer, which laid the foundation for her later work on Game of Thrones.

9. Keith Michell as King Henry VIII

Recent retellings have cast heart-throbs Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Damian Lewis as Britain’s most famous king, yet it is Keith Michell’s Henry VIII that remains the definitive portrayal. He played the part on stage and screen, most notably in the 1970 BBC miniseries The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Aside from Michell’s physical resemblance, the Australian actor’s complex portrait avoids cartoonishness, as we watch him age from athletic young prince to paranoid 55-year-old tyrant.

8. Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette

Maligned at the time of its release in 2006 — and even booed at Cannes — Sofia Coppola’s achingly cool biopic has undergone a critical reappraisal in the last few years. It owes much to a pitch-perfect performance from Kirsten Dunst as the teenage bride, expressing her vibrancy and loneliness with terrific nuance and empathy. Eschewing details of the politics surrounding the monarchy in favour of a limited focus on Marie Antoinette’s insular world, the film does a wonderful (and yes, very stylish) job at humanising the notoriously extravagant queen.

7. Tim Pigott-Smith as Prince Charles

The 2017 television adaptation of Mike Bartlett’s play, King Charles III, imagines the ascension of Charles in the form of a Shakespearean tragedy, with Tim Pigott-Smith in the title role. His Charles is a troubled, deeply unhappy man haunted by the ghost of his late ex-wife and stubbornly pursuing what he believes is right. Forgoing prosthetic ears or an overdone pantomime accent, Pigott-Smith’s Charles feels much more lived-in and fleshed-out than the usual impersonations, managing to render his pompous but pathetic prince a genuinely tragic hero.

6. Judi Dench as Queen Victoria

Another royal who has lately been played by a number of lovely ingenues, the best interpretation of Queen Victoria is Judi Dench’s grief-stricken widow in the 1997 drama Mrs Brown — the then 62-year-old’s first cinematic leading role. Her joyless, impenetrable queen is consumed by mourning until loyal Highland servant John Brown (Billy Connolly) coaxes her back to life, and Dench captures the gradual crumbling of Victoria’s stony facade with brilliant restraint.

5. Nigel Hawthorne as King George III

One of the great Oscars howlers was the awarding of Best Actor for Tom Hanks’s Forrest Gump over Nigel Hawthorne’s astonishing turn in 1994’s The Madness of King George. Based on Alan Bennett’s play, Hawthorne’s portrait of the ailing king is ferocious yet fond; in the king’s moments of disarray — haranguing an orchestra, crashing into a children’s cricket match, accosting ladies-in-waiting — his suffering is clear, though Hawthorne’s light touch ensures the film never gets bogged down in stodgy dramatics.

4. Emma Corrin as Princess Diana

After a slew of underwhelming, often silly attempts to render the late princess on screen, Emma Corrin finally delivered a tour de force in the fourth season of ongoing Netflix heavyweight The Crown. The resemblance is striking, the voice work eerily similar and the peering-through-eyelashes mannerisms just right, but Corrin also manages to make the more sensitive elements of the Diana story — including the breakdown of her marriage and her struggles with bulimia — feel nuanced and authentic, even when the script veers toward soap opera.

3. Olivia Colman as Queen Anne

She beat Glenn Close at the 2019 Oscars in a stunning upset, but no one could argue she didn’t deserve it. As the sickly, self-pitying queen in The Favourite, Colman commands a difficult, absurdist tone, stationed at the centre of a political and psychosexual power struggle. She is totally committed to Anne’s more farcical moments, yet her grief for her lost children is palpable and heart-wrenching, particularly when we learn her colony of pet rabbits is not a quirk but a tragic tribute.

2. Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I

Another oft-visited role, but no one has done it better than Cate Blanchett. Her Elizabeth is unlike any we’ve seen before: young, playful, sexy and vulnerable, but still smart and determined. In 1998’s Elizabeth, Blanchett is utterly captivating as the naive, inexperienced 21-year-old brought reluctantly to the throne, who rises to the challenge and grows into the skilled political strategist and imposing monarch we’re all familiar with. The climax, in which she appears as the instantly recognisable queen, complete with ruffled collar, ghostly pallor and tight red curls, is unforgettable. The less said about the sequel, which followed in 2007, the better.

1. Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II

Has anyone done as much for the British monarchy as Claire Foy? Her depiction of the young Queen Elizabeth changed the world’s view of the royals when the first series of The Crown aired in 2016, revitalising interest in what had begun to look like a staid institution, and peeling back the layers on a figure who often seems more symbol than human. Her movements, posture and accent are uncanny, but where she really excels is in her portrayal of two Elizabeths: the woman and the Crown — a beautifully judged and absolutely persuasive performance that is even better than Helen Mirren’s Oscar winner in 2006’s biographical drama The Queen.

Sunday Independent