Casting Call! Cast historical figures

So over the weekend I was babbling about the War of the Roses (as you do… well, as I do) and I was trying to express the kind of impact that Edward IV of England made in London in Spring 1461 that made the Londoners immediately hail him as king when they’d gone majorly “meh” to his father a few months before.

As I was at a media convention at the time, I hit on comparing Edward IV to Bradley James (Arthur from the BBC’s programme “Merlin” from a few years back):

Sir Thomas More’s description of him was “He was a goodly personage, and very princely to behold“ but the contemporary or near-contemporary portrait we have of him does not seem to show the handsome, dynamic person that history seems to remember:

I’m generally not a big fan of “casting” but there is something to be said for using visual media to convey to an audience an equivalence of what people at the time saw or felt.  I mean, look at this, and think about how Henry VIII in his 20s was considered jaw-droppingly handsome:

There is flattery, sure, but either Henry and his grandfather Edward were incredibly charismatic in person in a way that portraiture cannot convey (which is entirely likely) or we see differently now.

So, reader, what modern or near-modern images could convey to modern viewers what historical people “looked like” — not in a strict portraiture way, but in a manner that communicates the impact across the cultural change of centuries. As a starter-set, here’s a portrait collection of medieval and early modern kings of England: English kings and queens, oil on panel, 1590-1610, NPG 4980(1-16)

Mind you, this collection complicates (or expands) the discussion because most portraits prior to Edward IV in the above collection are imaginary themselves. Richard II and Henry V have reasonably authenticated likenesses and a few others were copied from effigies or developed from descriptions, but most of the others are pure imagination — what late Elizabethan people thought “historical” people would look like.

Bonus points for matches with people who have not been exhaustively covered in modern media — no one can top Charles Laughton as Henry VIII in later years in my heart, don’t even try. You don’t have to stick to the above list of portraits, or even to England — would Michelle Pfeiffer of the late 80s (yes, Ladyhawke era, I do love that move) be a good match for Isabella of Angoulême, or a better match for Isabella of France, the daughter of Philip le Bel?