Treat Yourself Royally!
Part Two: Royal Romances on Screen
This is the second in a three-part series featuring our Royalty portraits, on occasion of the upcoming Royal wedding in Britain on May 19th. This week, we revisit some truly epic stories in the annals of royalty.
The occasion of a Royal wedding brings to mind a cultural treasure-trove of royal romance tales. It's a topic that brings together power, pageantry and the most intimate kind of human drama all in one package; a subject that forms the core of a thousand fairy tales and not a few real-life dramas, too. In advance of the upcoming royal wedding, we take a tour through some of the best love stories royals have given rise to on screens both big and small. You'll often find these stories' protagonists in our portrait gallery, too, and excellent subjects for our unique custom paintings.
Napoleon Bonaparte is one of history's most riveting and complicated figures, and the subject of not a few entries in our Royalty potrait gallery. His stormy romance with his first wife, Josephine – also the first Empress of France – has been the subject of no small number of novels and biographies. One of the best on-screen takes is the passionated and memorable 1987 mini-series Napoleon & Josephine: A Love Story. It's hard to find these days, more's the pity, but treat yourself if you get the opportunity.
Elizabeth I's romance with Robert Dudley was a source of endless speculation in the days of the immortal "Virgin Queen." So much speculation, as a matter of fact, that the Queen was darkly suspected of murdering Dudley's wife when she passed. The most famous big-screen version of this romance may not have been historically accurate, but with Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes in the roles of the lovers, Elizabeth is as compelling now as they day it debuted in theatres. (Elizabeth herself isn't in our portrait gallery just yet, but many another queen and princess is!)
Queen Victoria, who gave her name to a whole formative period of modern British history, appears at multiple stages of life in our photo-to-painting gallery. She gets surprisingly little big-screen treatment for a monarch so important, but her famous romance with Prince Albert was a byword for domestic bliss in its day. The real romance that shaped a whole generation of royalty both inside Britain and out of it may have been a bit more complicated. Most recently it gets a treatment in The Young Victoria, compelling viewing even if the royal family didn't exactly vouch for its accuracy.
Get a bowl of popcorn and savour some royal romance this spring if you can – and if you'd like to cast yourself in the role of one of those amorous royals, come over to Nobilified to order one of our custom paintings from photos. Just pick a portrait, upload a selfie and let one of our professional canvas painters do the rest. You and your friends and family will be sure to treasure your very own piece of royal artwork.
