In The Duchess Keira Knightley plays the 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. An ancestor of Princess Diana, she lived an extravagant, profligate and promiscuous life of political and romantic intrigue, becoming an important powerbroker amid Britain's ruling elite but also running up catastrophic gambling debts. She was alternately feted and reviled, and widely caricatured by the popular press.