Will Lilibet – now Elizabeth – reconcile motherhood with ruling an empire? Will Philip ever stop being in a royal snit? And will Margaret find with Tony the true love she believes she so richly deserves? Will she ever stop trying to one-up her sister?
The answers – at least for the millions who are captivated by Netflix’s The Crown – are of course, probably not, certainly not and never. Elizabeth – called Lilibet by her intimates, which assuredly does not include any of us in the show’s global audience – is Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. Philip is her petulant prince consort, perpetually peeved because his wife outranks him.
Margaret, of course, is the queen’s younger sister, who clearly thinks that she would be so much more regal a queen than the stodgy Elizabeth and who wants to flaunt an unconventional lifestyle even as she keeps a vise-like grip on her life of royal privilege and wealth.
The Crown is a dramatized peek at the life behind the throne of the reigning British monarch, her nearest and often not-so-dearest.
At its heart, the show is a soap opera, one featuring characters the entire world seems to know, yet doesn’t really know at all. While it conforms to what is known about the public lives of the British royal family, its story of their off-camera lives – including detailed conversations and a little discreet hanky-panky – is wholly fabricated by a brilliant writer aided by a small squadron of researchers.
The result is a World Class sudser, filled with rivalries, betrayals, lots of international crises and (literally) palace intrigues, along with enough glitz and glamour to gladden the hearts of the most devoted royal watchers. And jewels – splendid royal bling! Including, yes, crowns – lots and lots of crowns.
And it is also carefully – indeed, brilliantly – written to avoid showing the queen herself as anything less than honest, dutiful and devoted to both her family and her kingdom and yet shrewd enough to see through the machinations of the ambitious courtiers vying for her favor as they jockey for power and position.
Which probably explains why the palace – while not involved in The Crown in any way – happily cooperated in The Coronation, a separate hour-long production featuring not only film of Queen Elizabeth’s spectacular coronation 65 years ago but a new on-camera interview (her first ever) with the queen herself, obligatory purse and all.
In addition to the rare appearance of the monarch, The Coronation featured an equally rare appearance of – ta da! – the Crown Jewels! Yes, the real, honest-to-goodness Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, as they are formally known, a collection of some 140 precious objects of gold and precious stones that are kept under armed guard in the Tower of London.
They include a slew of elaborately bejeweled crowns, first among them being the St. Edward’s Crown, a five-pound artifact of gold and precious jewels worn only at a monarch’s coronation before being locked up again, awaiting the arrival of a new king or queen.
The current queen really sparkled when St. Edward’s Crown made its appearance. She may have worn it only once, but she remembered it well, tracing its jewels with her finger as she turned it and recalled being warned not to move her head not too abruptly lest the weight break her neck.
That was a drawback, she opined, but overall she declared that crowns were pretty good things.
So, I’d say, are shows like The Crown – and all the other British royal family dramas that have been a been a television mainstay over the years, both in Britain and here in its one-time colony.
We may have fought a bloody revolution to rid ourselves of the yoke of British royalty, but it seems that ever since we have been smitten with devotion to the bluebloods of the British Isles. Look at the number of self-made American millionaires a century ago who couldn’t wait to marry their daughters – and their fortunes – off to the impoverished gentry of England.
And we wouldn’t have public television, I suspect, without our doting on the Brits.
Back in the 1970s, Henry VIII’s wives and the life of Elizabeth I were both fodder for what became public TV in this country. And in ensuing decades, the adventures of the royals and of nobility and upper crust British families have contributed mightily to the behemoth that PBS has become.
Today we have Netflix’s The Crown. Plus, PBS, not to be outdone, is running Victoria, a delightful peek at the life of Queen Elizabeth II’s great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.
If we in the U.S. have any image of Victoria – who reigned from 1837 until her death in 1901 – it is as a fat old lady draped in widow’s weeds in perpetual mourning for her beloved husband Prince Albert.
But in fact Victoria ascended to the throne at age 18, a pretty and sheltered princess unexpectedly faced with a burden she hardly comprehended. And it is that young Victoria – who came of age already a queen – that Victoria deals with.
It’s a lot of fun, too. The young queen had suitors, a lot of them. But Albert stole her heart, and they were wed. Somehow, she managed not only to rule for decades but to produce nine children who were carefully married off to virtually every other royal family in Europe, ensuring the continued reign – somewhere – of her offspring. Including the subject of The Crown, of course.
One of the very nicest things about the British royals and a lot of their cousins is that – while their lives are fodder for a lot of drama – they have, at least in recent years, little or no actual power other than moral suasion.
And this is a good time for the British royal family. By dint of amazingly good genes, Elizabeth, 91, has become an icon of pluck and dignity as well as longevity, while unpredictable Philip has retired from public duty. The heir, Charles, stays quietly in the background with Camilla, his true love.
Taking center stage is Charles’s heir, the stalwart William with his radiant (and fecund!) wife, Kate, as well as their hyper-photogenic offspring. And in supporting roles they’re complemented by roguish Prince Harry and his beautiful bride-to-be Meghan, an American who brings a hint of the exotic to the staid House of Windsor.
Future soaps are already writing themselves.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)
(Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated that Queen Victoria died in 1876. She died in 1901. Also, Henry VIII was misstated as Henry XIII.)