WARNING: This articles contains major spoilers for The King’s Man, currently streaming on HBO Max and Hulu.
The King’s Man may take place in World War I, but it’s no history lesson. Audience members knew going in that the action/spy thriller was going to prioritize dynamic set-pieces over historical accuracy. But Matthew Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek’s screenplay leapfrogs over the actual historical events to make the most outlandish Kingsman movie yet.
One might need a scoreboard to keep track of how bizarre their historical choices were. Some of the inaccuracies are much bigger than merely using the wrong weapon for the time or inventing a fictional spy organization out of butlers and servants. Indeed, the following examples will make a historian shake their head and doubt their career choice.
The King’s Man Erases France From History
The biggest historical blunder The King’s Man commits isn’t about what it includes, but what it doesn’t. One of the most important nations in WWI was France. It was the epicenter of the war on the Western Front, with the war’s most famous battles fought there and the final peace treaty signed there.
However, King’s Man viewers wouldn’t know this as France isn’t mentioned in the film once. Britain’s only mentioned ally in the film is Russia while France’s name is never said. It doesn’t even appear on maps of Europe shown in the film. There is a scene set in the Western Front’s famous trenches, but it never says where exactly those trenches are located. One might even be tempted to say France doesn’t exist in the Kingsman universe if the first one hadn’t featured Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Firth eating French Fries. As impressive as it is to portray World War I without mentioning one of its main combatants, it’s nothing compared to how some historical figures are depicted in the film.
Gavrilo Princip Worked For A Completely Different Terrorist Organization
One aspect of The King’s Man that is relatively accurate is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand causing the war. The heir to the Austrian-Hungarian empire and his wife were indeed murdered by Gavrilo Princip, more or less in the way depicted in the film. However, Princip did not kill them on the orders of a Scottish terrorist group known as “The Flock.” Instead, he did it to support Serbian and Pan-Slavic resistance to Austria-Hungary. It was allegedly on behalf of the terrorist group known as “The Black Hand” (no relation to the Green Lantern villain). However, that was a Serbian group that definitely wouldn’t have included Rasputin and Mata Hari.
Rasputin Didn’t Actually Die Like The King’s Man Depicted
The mad monk Grigori Rasputin was at the center of the film’s marketing campaign, and one might think his ridiculous death in the film isn’t too far off from what really happened. After all, didn’t Rasputin die only after being poisoned, shot, beaten and drowned? No. The truth is far more mundane. It seems that his death was embellished by Prince Felix Yusupov, the likely mastermind of his assassination. The Russian noble claimed that he had poisoned Rasputin with pastries before shooting him, beating him and throwing him in a river where he finally drowned.
However, Rasputin’s autopsy suggests that it was the multiple gunshots, including one to the head, that did him in. His daughter claimed he would have never eaten such small pastries while his autopsy suggests he was dead before his corpse was dropped in the river. The movie’s idea that an English duke tried to set Rasputin up with his son right before this is, of course, completely fictional.
Woodrow Wilson And Mata Hari Didn’t Make A Sex Tape
Perhaps the most disturbing scene in The King’s Man is when the Flock’s agent Mata Hari has sex with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson on film to blackmail America to stay out of the war. For those who don’t want to think about Woodrow Wilson’s sex life, rest assured this didn’t happen. The United States entered the war due to the Zimmerman Telegram three months before Mata Hari was arrested for espionage. She is now believed to be a far cry from the duplicitous double agent of legend, ineffectually working for both the German and French before the latter executed her. She never even traveled to Washington D.C., much less met President Wilson, who had just remarried in 1915. However, their meeting isn’t the unlikeliest in the film.
Adolf Hitler And Vladimir Lenin Were Not Besties
In the film’s most outrageous scene, the post-credits show Vladimir Lenin being introduced to his new protégé… Adolf Hitler. As even The King’s Man points out, Lenin and Hitler were on two completely opposite ends of the political spectrum and would not have cared for each other if they met. Hitler was a German soldier stationed in France (a country that is again not confirmed to exist in The King’s Man) during World War I, while Lenin was variously in Switzerland, Germany and Russia. Hitler definitely did not kill the Romanovs in Russia on Lenin’s orders nor did he force Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to abdicate at gunpoint as depicted in the film. He did not become a major political force until Lenin had died and Stalin came to power.
For more creative history, stream The King’s Man on HBO Max and Hulu.
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