A Royal Affair

A Royal Affair (En kongelig affære, 2012) is a Danish period drama you can watch online on iFILM. In 1760s Copenhagen, a young English princess named Caroline Mathilde (Alicia Vikander) is married off to King Christian VII, a volatile, mentally unstable monarch with no interest in his bride.

Everything shifts when a German doctor, Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), joins the court. Well-read, reckless and steeped in Enlightenment thinking, he becomes the king's only confidant and the queen's something far more dangerous. Working through the unstable monarch, the doctor pushes through reforms the country hadn't seen in generations: a free press, an end to torture, a strike at noble privilege. The court watches and waits, and the lovers' secret tightens into a noose.

Drawn from a real chapter of Danish royal history, the film skips the stuffy museum tone. Director Nikolaj Arcel shoots the costumes and candlelight like a political thriller, because what's at stake is who rules. Mikkelsen plays a reformer whose pride costs more than his heart, and Vikander, in one of her first major roles, holds the frame beside him. For viewers who care about the stakes under the gowns, not the gowns. Stream A Royal Affair (2012) online on iFILM.