Sinful Sunday: The Delicious Queer Villainy of King Philip in "The Lion in Winter"

Timothy Dalton gives a mesmerizing and cat-like performance as the subtle and crafty French monarch in this soapy costume drama.

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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

The Lion in Winter, the 1968 film based on the play of the same name by James Goldman (who also wrote the screenplay), is the kind of movie that is essentially tailor-made for me. As many of you no doubt know, I am an Anglophile at heart, with a particular fascination with the British monarchy, and I am a sucker for any sort of costume drama. I remember loving the play when I saw a production of it in undergrad, and when I finally got around to seeing the film several years later I was even more fascinated. I mean, how can you not love a movie that stars the likes of Peter O’Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Timothy Dalton, and Anthony Hopkins?

Furthermore, as you may or may not know, both film and play have a very prominent queer subplot focused on the fraught (to put it mildly) relationship between Prince Richard (the future Richard the Lionheart) and King Philip of France. The exact nature of their relationship remains ambiguous, thanks in no small part to the fact that the French monarch is something of a chameleon, shifting and changing depending on the political needs of the moment. Nevertheless it is there, and it ends up playing a key role in Philip’s attempts to subvert Henry’s succession plans and his dominion over his French territories.

When the film begins, Henry II of England (Peter O’Toole) has summoned his estranged wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), as well as his surviving three sons Richard (Anthony Hopkins), Geoffrey (John Castle), and John (Nigel Terry), where they are joined by the French king, Philip (Timothy Dalton) and his half-sister, Alais (Jane Merrow). As the film unfolds, the various fractures and fissures within the English royal family are exposed in all of their ugliness and savagery. Henry’s three sons constantly plot against and with one another, against their father, and against their mother (who also uses them, particularly Richard, against her husband). It’s a delicious soap opera of royal proportions.

Even as Henry is consumed with his sons, his wife, and their various conflicts, the French king, Philip, slinks through the background, always looking for an opportunity to manipulate matters to his advantage. Beautifully, and at times hauntingly, portrayed by Timothy Dalton in his big-screen debut, from the moment we see him making his way across the courtyard of Chinon–calm and dignified, as opposed to Henry’s bluster and boisterousness–it’s clear that there’s a great deal going on behind those cold eyes. This is a man who knows the importance of appearances, and while Henry may be content to stride across the stage of history trying to blow everyone over with his tempestuous personality, Philip is a far subtler manipulator, which makes him all the more dangerous.

It’s hard to overstate just how beautiful Dalton is in this role, and there’s something almost-but-not-quite feminine about his good looks. His face almost appears as if it has been chiseled out of ice, and his eyes give almost nothing away. At the same time, they also flicker with a deep-seated anger, one might even say a passion, and this will only become more evident as the film goes on and the depth and complexity of his many schemes are finally brought fully to light.

We as viewers, like Henry, never quite know where we stand with him, thanks to the extent to which he excels at keeping so much of himself behind a veil of absolute control. We do learn, however, that he carries a chip on his shoulder when it comes to Henry, who he resents for his shaming of his father Louis (among other things, Henry’s wife Eleanor left the old French king for the young Angevin duke). He therefore has a burning passion to destroy everything that Henry has worked so hard to build over the course of his eventful life and career, up to and including his family. He will do whatever he has to do to accomplish this role even if, as the film subtly suggests, that means lacerating his own heart.

Philip has a keen understanding of human emotion and, as a result, is quite adept at pulling strings and getting the various members of the English royal family to do exactly what he wants. It’s for this reason that he seizes the opportunity to bend first Geoffrey and John to his will and then, not content with that, winds Richard up in his own unique form of emotional blackmail. We’ve known since almost the beginning that there's a deep and troubled history between the prince and the king, evident by every exchange of looks that they share. This reaches its climax in the moment when Philip invites Richard to his room and comes perilously close to physically consummating their relationship again, only to reveal that this, too, has been part of a larger plan, as he has essentially led Richard into admitting he’s a sodomite in front of his two brothers (who are hiding, Hamlet-like, behind a curtain) and his own father. It’s a brilliantly-executed plan, and one that leaves the already-fragile and overwrought Richard quite devastated.

Looming over this whole exchange is Philip’s accusation that Richard essentially assaulted him when he was barely more than an adolescent. If we take the French king at his word, then this means that Richard the Lionhearted is, as one author recently put it, sexually disordered in every way, his desires so twisted and so perverse that he will go to any lengths to see them fulfilled. Even more disturbing is the possibility that he might not entirely be in control of himself.

If, on the other hand, this entire story is a fabrication–and there are good reasons to believe that this is the case–then it reveals the extent to which Philip is ready and willing to use any weapon at his disposal in order to bring the entire English royal family to its knees. Throughout the film he’s shown that he knows quite well that Henry’s sons are his weak point; no matter how strong he is, no matter how much political power he has managed to accumulate, the truth is that he can never rely on his progeny’s loyalty.

And as for Philip? It remains deliciously ambiguous as to whether he’s actually queer or just relentlessly ambitious and desirous of power. Nevertheless, given the feyness of Dalton’s delivery–a faint twist of the wrist there, a hooded and knowing look there–it’s clear to my eye at least that we in the audience are supposed to read him through the lens of queer villainy. And, as we all know, there’s nothing quite so delectable as a queer villain in a costume drama.

What’s particularly striking about Philip is the extent to which he becomes such a prominent part of the film even though, on the whole, he’s a rather shadowy and brief presence, particularly when compared to the various members of the English royal family. Ultimately, he is one of those ephemeral queer characters who leaves an impression that stays long after the final frame has flickered past. In the end, he’s caused more than a little chaos and destruction within Henry’s family, having wounded Henry’s pride and his belief in the loyalty of any of his sons. While one of Henry’s sons may yet take the throne and rule over his French territories, they all know that they are going to have to contend with an ever avaricious Philip, who will never miss an opportunity to destroy his enemies.

Just as any queer villain should.