Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! How DELICIOUS – It's every character you find in an 18th-century period film!

(Yes, I just saw The Favourite. I had a very good time! Emma Stone has a wonderfully rubber-y Betty Boop face and watching her silently book it out of a castle after accidentally learning what lesbianism was made me laugh.)

Red-Faced Female Cook With Historically Significant Bosoms

• always saying “But Milady, there is no time” while clutching a turnip and being interrupted

• Cockney accent even if the movie predates Cockney accents or is set hundreds of miles away from London

• terrifying for the first 20 minutes of the movie, then flour-caked and impotent afterwards as the protagonist scales up

• almost has the largest and most dominant breasts in the film

• either brushing back frizzy curls from behind a white cap while kneading shortcrust or brandishing an eel in anger at someone hot and stupid and poor

Be-Lipsticked Fop Man Whose Feminine Presentation Belies Vicious Misogyny

• always simpering and twirling a handkerchief and laughing through a closed mouth

• is currently kicking you viciously down a flight of stairs

• claims to be the only chance of survival you have in this viper’s nest

• most likely to be guilty of villainous eating

• always calling upsetting stuff “delicious,” definitely the first one to say anything after a painful or terrifying silence

• at some point shown without his wig and then becomes irrelevant to the plot once his borrowed finery has been exposed

• if anyone’s gonna fall in a fountain it’s definitely this guy

Lipstick Guy’s Friend Who Dresses Super Masc But Is Equally Misogynist

• has on like a tricorn hat or something

• makes you wonder, wait, why are these two guys who are clearly from the same social background, both live at court, both part of the government so WILDLY different in terms of dress and no one comments on it? It feels like if you and your best friend went to the same elite college and one of you dressed like a field hockey player (slightly preppy/upscale/sporty) and the other one dressed like a furry 24/7, people would notice

• also an asshole but lacks style, can’t read the room

Baronness von Letterpocket

• spiritually wearing an eyepatch

• probably stealing stuff out of your room while you’re at church

• walks faster when she’s holding a candelabra

• mean to servants, I’m Hard Because I Have To Be

• delicately slicing an apple while threatening you

The Belligerently Childish Monarch

• Always clapping hands in excited glee over turnovers and mass French deaths

• Champagne For My Sham Friends

• Favorite person is whoever was in the room last, real Ralph Wiggum vibe

• I want their four-poster bed as badly as I wanted Felicity’s four-poster American Girl Doll bed when my sister got it for her tenth birthday and I never will

A Scene Where Someone Rich Pisses Or Something

• to remind you the past is gross and full of swears

Like Ninety Old Guys In Curly Chestnut Wigs

• I assume they’re Parliament or Scotland

Aged Choirmaster

• serves to illustrate the difference between effete and effeminate against the fop dude

• always bowing and apologizing to someone sotto voce

• way too easily disgraced

• eyebrows trembling in bushy sorrow

• no one who loves Refinement and Accomplishment can know real happiness in this court of vampires

• Tragic Squidward

That One Lady

• starts showing up a lot halfway through

• usually pushing her food around during a Dissipated Banquet Sequence or smiling when she’s not supposed to be during a concert

• seems to be some fan of period films who won a walk-on, no idea what she’s doing, just has a real 20th-century face for some reason

Eyebrows The Horsewoman

• probably Keira Knightley, definitely wearing a hat and chafing against some sort of stricture

• everyone in the 18th century was a horse girl by virtue of everyone having horses but somehow manages to be a horse girl even then

Minister Spooky Ring

• has a spooky ring or carries a necklace with a big gold chain at the end

• maybe both

“I Seen’d It” Chambermaid

• oh, she seen’d it

• what you did

• she saw it all, mum

• definitely has red hair