19 thoughts on “The Girl King (2015)

  1. Thanks for the recommendation. Christina of Sweden was an interesting person and your review makes that clear. The movie sounds worthwhile. I’ve seen the Garbo one but it was years ago. This sounds more true to history. But does it show her conversion to Catholicism?

    1. This movie does feel closer to the history than the Garbo movie (tho’ I love Garbo’s movie for, well, Garbo!). And it does cover Kristina’s conversion — she even wrestles with Lutheranism as a child; not sure how accurate that is, but it works as foreshadowing in the story.

  2. Certainly a worthy subject for a new film. Looking forward.The rapiers looked right in the fencing scene. Gustav Adolph carried several swords, mostly of the type with Pappenheimer hilts, all of which are in museums.

    1. I get the impression that the costumer & production designers studied everything extant in the Swedish Royal Armory, where many items of Queen Christina’s time are still available :)

      1. I’ve seen two Pappenheimer hilt rapiers carried by Gus, but Kristina wouldn’t have had the use of either for fencing practice. There were any number of rapier types at the, time, but by the latter half of the 17th century, they were getting shorter and lighter. One would assume that blunted blades were used for practice, nobody wanting to kill the royals. Hilts were also getting simpler in design.

        1. The problem here is that – if I’m not mistaken – the sword in the movie is actually _meant_ to be Gustavus Adolphus’ sword (not sure though, I’ll only go and see the movie tonight). Nevertheless, the blade in this Hanwei “reproduction” is clearly of a later period (much bendier than period blades) and the sword in whole is about 500 grams lighter than the original.

          1. I think Gustavus’s weapon is mounted with a sword blade, rather than a rapier blade, which was often done at the time. I’m going to see if I can find a good article on swords for this column, or write something myself. At that time, people might practice with live blades, but they would be somehow blunted, or ‘foiled’

            1. Rapier was not such a strict category back in those days as it is today. Narrower blades were used by civilians, but in war the cavalry naturally preferred the wider blades of pappenheimers and such swords – that might be called sword rapiers these days. But that’s beside the point. Here’s a nice article about the original sword and its failed reproduction:
              https://myarmoury.com/review_casi_gustav.html

        1. Yes, I just saw the film yesterday evening and I was pretty impressed with what they had done. I could forgive them for the sword, in fact. ;)

          It would have been great if they had had a bit more money for set decoration, though.

  3. Susi– Bill Grandy pretty much knows whereof he speaks. As you note, the definitions of weapons types were far looser than than now. Somewhere I know I have seen a picture of Gus’s other Pappenheimer

  4. Are you kidding? Like a lot of young Swedish nerd girls me and a few friends had high hopes about this film. The trailer seemed EPIC, but it was just… wow… the cheesiest thing I’ve seen for years. Kristina is some kind of a queer icon in Sweden, especially among women, and this movie made her totally ridiculous and without any agency of her own.
    Plus the costumes really, really bother me.

    I’m sad about this, because I looked so much forward to this film.

  5. How nice to see her in film! One of my ancestors was actually knighted by Queen Christina and granted some land in Finland. There’s a bit of a family tradition of Maria as a middle name, taken from the name she used after moving to Italy and converting to the catholic faith: Maria Alexander.

  6. The whole film is sometimes boring and sometimes stupid. The catholics murdered René Descartes – the old philosopher – just to get Kristina catholic and abandon her throne? The costumes were looking often very bad especiallly of Karl Gustav. I asked myself: “Did he lost the laps of his doublet in Germany?” Some hats were very ugly too in a period of very cool looking hats… It was obvious to me, that the figures who have no idea about Martin Luther at all are talking about him as he was a calvinist! They got the whole religious aspect wrong and that’s even more important as they are always talking about it.

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