Cultural depictions of Charles I of England

Charles I of England has been depicted in popular culture a number of times.

Literature

• Twenty Years After, by Alexandre Dumas, gives a fictionalized account of Charles I's downfall, trial and death. The book's fictional villain, Mordaunt, is depicted as the king's executioner.
• The Civil War period is seen through the eyes of the fictional Morland family in The Oak Apple, Volume 4 of The Morland Dynasty, a series of historical novels by author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

Film and television

On screen, Charles has been portrayed by:

• Russell Thorndike in the British silent film Henrietta Maria; or, The Queen of Sorrow (1923)
• Henry Victor in the British silent film The Royal Oak (1923), in which he also played Charles II
• Hugh Miller in The Vicar of Bray (1937)
• Robert Rietty in The Scarlet Blade (1963)
• Stephen MacDonald in the BBC TV drama series Witch Wood (1964)
• Kenneth Colley in a drama in the BBC TV series Thirty-Minute Theatre entitled Revolutions: Cromwell (1970)
• Alec Guinness in Cromwell (1970)
• Jeremy Clyde in the BBC TV drama series The Children of the New Forest (1977) and By the Sword Divided (1983)
• Stephen Fry in the BBC TV comedy short Blackadder: The Cavalier Years (1988), with very similar mannerisms to the current Prince of Wales
• Bill Paterson in The Return of the Musketeers (1989), loosely based on the novel Twenty Years After
• Aleksei Petrenko in the Russian film Mushketyory 20 let spustya (1992), also based on Twenty Years After
• Chris Kirk in the British TV drama documentary Civil War: England's Fight for Freedom (1997)
• Rupert Everett in To Kill a King (2003)
• Martin Turner briefly at the beginning of the BBC TV miniseries Charles II: The Power & the Passion (2003)
• Peter Capaldi in Channel 4's four-part TV drama series The Devil's Whore (2008)