What intrigued me, even as a Malaysian, is that Robert's portrayal of James Brooke and the Brooke family is far more negative than any portrayal I've ever read. The Malaysian education system is a joke, but even they parroted the British colonial line of the Brookes helping to ban the practice of headhunting, and entirely whitewashed James's atrocities and pedarasty. However I am aware somewhat of the family's attempts to whitewash his legacy, and that movie Robert talked about, Edge of The World, is actually the latest in a long-standing attempt to bring the story of James Brooke (or a romantic version of it) to the big screen. And it is an effort driven in part by the Brooke family's own descendants to make their ancestor look good.
Robert didn't spend too much time with the latter Brookes but he did hint on how Charles Vyner's daughters were rather scandalous women. I saw an article once comparing them to the Kardashians of their day, they dabbled in the arts and were well known hedonists. They were the tabloid magnets of their time, to quote one daughter's obituary when she died in 2002:
> Back in London, the sisters were presented at Court and introduced by their mother to "everyone in the interesting and artistic world". The English tabloid press dubbed them Princesses Gold (Leonora), Pearl (Elizabeth) and Baba (Valerie), and recorded with some relish their spirited behaviour and romantic adventures.
So combine this with James's earliest attempts at self-aggrandizing meant the White Rajahs of Sarawak always had a place in British pop culture or whatever passed for it at the time, including influencing some of Joseph Conrad's novels. Errol Flynn wrote and sold a screenplay called The White Rajah in 1936 that he intended as a blockbuster and his own star vehicle. (Side note, Charles Vyner's youngest daughter, Valerie, played a minor role in The Charge of the Light Brigade starring Errol Flynn) However, it never entered into production, becoming one of those Hollywood projects that cycled through crews for decades until it dies. This pattern would repeat itself with Edge of the World.
The current head of the Brooke Family, Jason is only 35 and 2 generations removed from Charles Vyner, to further nail how recent this history is. He runs [The Brooke Trust](https://www.brooketru
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