By Royal Appointment

Good morning, now is the time for some frivolity.  What is so frivolous about a blog about what documentaries to incorporate into a classroom setting?  Well, today’s blog fill features documentaries about royalty and royal families.  If you want something frivolous for class to give the students a brain break, then choose one of these documentaries.  If a student has a paper to do about a royal then you can point them to these documentaries for research purposes.  Documentaries count towards research!  Let’s get frivolous!

A Royal Family: Episode 1  Episode 2  Episode 3  Episode 4  Episode 5  Episode 6
This is a Danish produced documentary about the royal families of Europe.  This documentary occurs over six episodes and tells the stories of the Danish, British, Scandinavian, and Belgium royal families.  Queen Margarethe II, Crown Prince Frederik, and Prince Joachim participate in the documentary as well as Queen Anne-Marie, King Constantine, Princess Beneditke, and Prince Michael of Greece.  Additionally, other descendants of the “Grandfather of Europe” participate in this documentary.  Please note there are sound issues with all the episodes.

Tales of the Royal Wardrobe: Amazon
Lucy Worsley explores Royals and what they wore and how royal fashion and an impact on how the people looked at them.  She starts with Elizabeth I and ends with Elizabeth II.  She explores how King Charles II changed the court fashions for men in light of the Restoration.  Then goes into the wide skirts of the English court and how odd it must have looked for ordinary people.  Eventually, she discusses how Prince Albert had an impact on Queen Victoria’s wardrobe.  Finally, she discusses how the Queen’s job is to also promote English designers and talks about how other members of the family can get away with wearing foreign designers.

Tales of the Royal Bedchamber: Amazon
Lucy Worsley explores what happens in the royal bedchamber.  It was once a public place where the people could talk politics with the king or queen but over the centuries turned into a private sanctuary for royals.  Once Queen Victoria took the throne, the door on the royal bedchamber closed and has remained closed ever since.

Royal Palace Secrets: Amazon
Explore the palaces like never before with Lucy Worsley.  Due to COVID, these historic royal palaces were closed to the public.  So this was a lifetime opportunity to create this documentary while they were closed to the public!  Lucy has free run of the palaces.  She tells the stories of what happened behind those walls.

Victoria and Albert: The Wedding: Amazon
Lucy Worsley and several historians restage the wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, each taking a piece of the ceremony such as the music, fashion, the placement of the guest, and the wedding breakfast.  The guests are dressed in period outfits.  The episode ends with the wedding and wedding breakfast of Queen Victoria.  Lucy watches the wedding as a guest.

Bhutan’s Royal Family: YouTube
This documentary is part of a series called Asia’s Monarchies.  This episode covers the Bhutan Royal Family.  These Kings gave up absolute power and gave their country democracy, becoming a constitutional monarchy.  The Bhutanese monarchy is the last in the Himalayas.  The Wangchocks Kings each faced a crisis in their reign and guided their kingdom through the modern age.  This would be a good episode to show for a geography class.

Burma’s Lost Royals – YouTube
When the British took over Burma they took over the country and exiled its king.  What happened to the Burmese royal family?  They vanished for decades.  A British journalist managed to get into contact with the lost royal family.  Now they are telling their story of what happened after the Burmese king was deposed.  This journalist also meets the man who would be king of Burma.