In The King's Man, actor Tom Hollander plays three different characters as a joke about the European royal families of the early 20th century. Directed by Matthew Vaughn from a script he co-wrote with Karl Gajdusek, The King's Man is a prequel to Vaughn's two earlier Kingsman movies, Kingman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. The premise of the films didn't originate with Vaughn, however, and are instead loose adaptations of the comic series The Secret Service, created by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. Vaughn still very much puts his mark on the material, withThe King's Man marking his biggest departure from the comics yet.
The King's Man explores the origins of the secret intelligence organization, Kingsman. It's set during a real historical period, World War I, and stars Ralph Fiennes as the Duke of Oxford and Harris Dickinson as the young man he mentors, Conrad, in what's clearly the prototype for the relationship shared by Colin Firth's Harry Hart and Taron Egerton's Eggsy in the first two Kingsman movies. Given its historical setting, the prequel uses actual world events as the backdrop for its origin story, and as such, includes characters based on real people. Rhys Ifans and Daniel Brühl play Grigori Rasputin and Felix Yusupov, respectively, while Tom Hollander plays all three roles of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and King George V of England.
Related: King's Man Almost Got Rasputin's Death Right (But Needlessly Changed It)
The three characters Hollander plays in The King's Man were at the very heart of the conflict leading to WWI, which saw England and Russia join with France against the alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. However, along with their
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