Versailles gets a mermaid in The King's Daughter, a 2022 adventure fantasy that pairs court intrigue with a creature straight out of legend.
What is The King's Daughter about?
At the center of the story sits an aging monarch obsessed with cheating death, and the discovery that a captured sea creature might hold the answer. Pierce Brosnan plays the king pursuing that dangerous bargain, while his illegitimate daughter, unaware of her own parentage until she arrives at court, becomes the one person capable of upending his plan once she learns what has been caged beneath the palace. Kaya Scodelario carries that role opposite Benjamin Walker as a ship captain drawn into the conflict between duty and conscience. The setting is opulent seventeenth-century France, all gilded halls and formal gardens, but the plot pushes toward open water and a coastline where the creature's fate will be decided. Family, fantasy, romance and adventure genres all sit inside the same 90-minute runtime, aimed squarely at viewers who want a fairy-tale shape without a heavy tone.
About the cast
Brosnan anchors the film as a ruler convinced his ambitions justify the cost, and Julie Andrews lends her voice to a framing narration that gives the fantasy a storybook register. William Hurt and Rachel Griffiths round out the court in supporting roles, while Fan Bingbing appears among the ensemble navigating the mermaid's captivity. The cast leans older and more theatrical than a typical YA adventure, which shapes the film's tone toward classic fable rather than modern spectacle.
Context & significance
The King's Daughter draws on Vonda N. McIntyre's novel The Moon and the Sun, relocating a real historical court into a world where myth is treated as fact. Its production spanned years before release, and the finished film leans into practical palace settings alongside effects work for its underwater sequences. For viewers who gravitate toward palace-set fantasy or mermaid folklore on screen, it slots alongside other family-adventure titles in K-Time's catalogue without needing prior familiarity with the source novel.
Watching The King's Daughter on Ktime
The King's Daughter streams on K-Time with a free account login, no separate purchase required beyond a paid subscription. Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles are both available, so Farsi-speaking households can choose either the dubbed track or the original English with subtitles depending on preference. The interface itself runs in Farsi throughout, built for the Iranian diaspora rather than adapted after the fact.