The King's Man takes place during World War I but makes several changes to real-life history. Here's every major departure from the true story.
Although set during World War I, The King's Man makes some notable changes to real-life history. For a franchise that stars an invisible intelligence agency and has made a name for itself as over-the-top, the fact that it is not historically accurate comes as no surprise. However, it is interesting to note that many of the events and people featured in The King's Man are actually based on true stories.
As depicted in The King's Man, World War I occurred in 1914-1918, and involved several major European countries. Events like the assassination of real-life King's Man character Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the belated U.S. involvement, Lenin's revolution in Russia, and the dual abdication/execution of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II at the end of WWI are also true — and are represented with a decent degree of accuracy in The King's Man. Some small discrepancies do occur, such as the fact that Gavrilo Princip, who fatally shot the Archduke, was not the same man who made an earlier attempt on his life using a bomb, as the film portrays. On the whole, however, The King's Man checks a lot of the boxes when it comes to introducing the true players and conflicts of WWI.
The King's Man is part of a fictional franchise, so it takes some key liberties with history. In addition to including many Easter eggs and references to Kingsman's main timeline, the film also establishes the origins of its fictional eponymous secret service agency by inserting them (and their enemies) into many of WWI's events. Here's every major change The King's Man makes to actual history.
Shepherd And His Evil Organization Are Fictional
The primary antagonists in The King's Man, Shepherd and his evil organization, are completely fictional. It's not uncommon for spy thrillers to feature a mysterious, henchmen-commanding antagonist to drive the conflict, but no such real-life counterpart exists for World War I. The Great War was the result of several different longstanding and interconnected conflicts and alliances, and can't be ascribed to the actions of a single person or group like in The King's Man. Thus, vengeful Scotsman Morton/Shepherd and his flock of political saboteurs are made up, just like the villains of Kingsman: The Golden Circle and Kingsman: The Secret Service. That said, every named member of the evil organization is based on a real person, even though they never colluded, and probably never met, in real life.
Rasputin Was Assassinated By Russians, Not The British
One of The King's Man's best aspects is its outrageous portrayal of Grigory Rasputin, whose actual story is almost equally bizarre. In real life, Rasputin was a self-proclaimed holy man and healer who gained the favor of the Russian royal family and was most likely manipulating them. His ghoulish appearance, borderline nymphomania, creepy healing practices, and high poison tolerance are all features that The King's Man plays up, but which do align with rumors and facts from Rasputin's own time. Because of his strangeness, the film probably should have kept Rasputin as The King's Man's main villain.
Rasputin's actual assassination happened nearly exactly as The King's Man shows it, except for one crucial detail. According to the account of his actual killer, Russian nobleman Felix Yusupov, Rasputin was given poisoned cakes, to which he showed no reaction, shot in the chest, after which he sprung back to life and attacked his assassins, and finally shot in the head and dumped in the Malaya Nevka river. The King's Man hits all of these details but has the murder carried out by the fledgling Kingsman agency rather than Yusupov and his co-conspirators Dmitri Pavlovich and Vladimir Purishkevich. Although a theory about British involvement in Rasputin's death exists, it has largely been discredited by historians.
The Zimmerman Telegram Wasn't Decoded By A Civilian
The Kingsman franchise is known for being male-dominated, and the prequel is no exception, with The King's Man's cast of characters offering only one female supporting character, Polly, a.k.a. Galahad. Despite being consistently sidelined, Polly does make a crucial contribution to defeating Shepherd, as she decodes the telegram sent from Germany to Mexico encouraging the latter to invade the United States. This telegram, known as the Zimmerman Telegram, was a key factor of the real WWI, as was its decoding, which helped secure U.S. involvement in the war. Likewise, concern over the telegram's authenticity once decoded was a real issue back in 1917, which The King's Man addresses.
What's fictionalized, however, is the involvement of private individuals in decoding the telegram, and the means by which it was ultimately proved genuine. In reality, Nigel de Grey, a member of the British intelligence agency Room 40, was the one to crack the Zimmerman Telegram, rather than the fictitious predecessor to Taron Egerton's Kingsman character. To prove the contents of the Zimmerman Telegram were real, the British government obtained different copies directly from Mexico, rather than from a German spy on the Western front, as the story goes in The King's Man.
Erik Jan Hanussen Advised A Different German Ruler
Aside from Rasputin, the real historical figure Erik Jan Hanussen also features in The King's Man, but in a much less accurate fashion. In the film, he's played by Daniel Brühl, who audiences likely recognize as Baron Zemo from the MCU. Hanussen is portrayed as a close advisor of Kaiser Wilhelm II, but this actually places him too early in Germany's history. The real-life Hanussen was an Austrian Jewish mentalist who advised not the Kaiser, but Adolf Hitler. Specifically, Hanussen appears to have instructed a young Hitler in psychology, performance, and crowd control through dramatic effect. The King's Man's end credits scene with Hitler sets up this relationship, but as for the film itself, Hanussen's proximity to Kaiser Wilhelm is a major historical change.
President Wilson Was Never Seduced & Blackmailed
Like Hanussen, Valerie Pachner's Mata Hari is named for a real figure but significantly altered for the purposes of The King's Man's story. The real Mata Hari was a Dutch performer/courtesan who acted as a spy for France but was later executed there after a botched attempt to seduce Kaiser Wilhelm's son for information. In the film, Hari is successful in carrying out this mission on President Woodrow Wilson instead, using footage of their sexual encounter to blackmail him into staying out of the war. While Wilson and the United States did indeed stay out of WWI for a long time, it was due to Wilson's pacifism and staunch U.S. neutrality. The Mata Hari scandal is thus one of the biggest changes to real-life history that happens towards the ending of The King's Man, since it strays so far from the true story.
More: Everything We Know About The King's Man 2
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