Quick, Non-Researched Historical Thoughts on "Anne Boleyn" Episode 2

Quick Thoughts on Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3

Alright, onto historical elements in episode 2 of Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn. As previously noted, these are quick, non-researched notes based almost entirely on my own prior knowledge as a giant Tudor history fanatic. If you see anything inaccurate, let me know! I'm human, after all. I may go back and add sources to this later if there’s enough interest.

Quick Opinion Note: I haven’t actually gotten to watch Episode 3 yet, but …/sigh/ I wanted this show to be so much better than it actually is. Jodie Turner-Smith remains a powerful force of nature, but there are other elements of the show that I really…just don’t like. A lot of the dialogue is clumsy and realistic. I don’t actually hate some of the more “WTF” moments that others have pointed out as being there just for shock value (e.g., Anne and Henry being into autoerotic asphyxiation - it actually presents an interesting power dynamic! or Anne kissing Jane Seymour - people were much more comfortable with kissing others on the mouth back then so this isn’t as weird as it comes off at first), but the costumes and scenes look pretty low budget. And if you’re going to advertise your show as a psychological thriller…I expect a bit more of that to come across than just Anne sitting surrounded by creepy whispers every once in a while. It just seems like there were a lot of missed opportunities here.

Credit: Anne Boleyn, Channel 5

1. In an early scene, some of the whispers Anne hears talk about witchcraft. I don’t believe anyone would have actually said that around Anne at that point, as she was still the queen and still very powerful. And despite what people seem to think, she wasn’t actually charged with witchcraft at all. If I recall, no big rumors of witchcraft spread about Anne until decades later. (Sidenote: Anne’s story has been changed and distorted by so many historians with their own agendas over time! Highly suggest you read “The Creation of Anne Boleyn” by Susan Bordo for a really great overview of this.).
   Think of it this way – Cromwell really wanted to take Anne down and was willing to send several men to their deaths to do it. If the witchcraft rumors were actually around, or there was any evidence for it at all, wouldn’t he have used it?
   The whispering voice about her baby being deformed also is a rumor – there’s no evidence that she gave birth to a deformed baby at the time.

2. Anne talks to her Uncle, the Duke of Norfolk Thomas Howard, and refers to his daughter’s married life with the king’s son. She’s talking about Mary Howard and Henry Fitzroy, Henry’s illegitimate son with Bessie Blount. They would have been married a few years at this point, but as they were still pretty young teenagers, they hadn’t consummated their marriage (we know because Henry VIII would later use this non-consummation as an excuse to deny Mary her dower lands). Henry Fitzroy wouldn’t outlast Anne by very much and died later that year.

3. Symbol Watch: Good Lord, there are so many dead animals throughout this episode. Look for any scene transitions – dead animals everywhere.

4. Anne goes to wash the feet of the poor, as Jesus did for the disciples at the Last Supper before his crucifixion. This was a traditional ceremony in renaissance England performed by the Queen. Catherine of Aragon did it, and Anne did as well (other Queens of Henry VIII probably did too, but these are the ones I know of off the top of my head). The Queen would also give out money to the poor at the same time.

5. In the show, this scene is disturbed by a woman coming in and yelling, calling Anne a whore and claiming “she killed our true queen.” While people were very angry at Anne and really did dislike her quite a lot (there was one famous incident before Henry and Anne married in which a mob of women apparently went to attack her), I don’t think individual people would have run up and shouted at her at this point. Remember - she was the Queen. She had a lot of power over the King and people knew it.
The scene ends with Anne telling a guard, about the woman, “Make sure her body is strapped up on the Tower for all to see.” /sigh/ No. Although there were a few people (even women) executed for criticism and spreading rumors about Anne, there are a couple things wrong with this statement. Although it was common to put the heads of those executed for treason up on spikes by London Bridge, it wasn’t the WHOLE body put up there. And the only woman who ever had her head up on a spike there was Elizabeth Barton, the maid of Kent (who spoke out against Anne but also prophesied the king’s death, so it wasn’t JUST for that). Also, there’s no indication that Anne was ever this vindictive against those who criticized her. She spoke rashly a few times about wishing for the death of Catherine of Aragon and Princess Mary (while under extreme pressure after years and years of waiting for the king to marry her), but I haven’t heard of any evidence that she would actually order a guard to kill someone who criticized her. I don’t think she even had the power to do that.

6. Anne goes immediately to Hatfield to check on her daughter Elizabeth and make sure she’s safe. Anne was known to be a very doting mother, and I’m glad they showed this! It was common practice among all the higher classes at this point, and particularly royalty, for the children to be raised far away from court, so of course Elizabeth wasn’t at Anne’s side all the time. However, there are records indicating that Anne really purchased just a ton of gifts for Elizabeth. I believe there’s a story that she even wanted to breastfeed her, but pretty sure that one was invented by a later historian and not supported by contemporary evidence.

7. While talking with Lady Anne Shelton about her daughter, Madge (who, remember, is the queen’s mistress, with Anne Boleyn’s knowledge and tacit acceptance), Queen Anne loses her temper at one point and says “I wasn’t aware that fucking a king was such a chore.” I’m not sure Anne would have actually said “fuck,” but the word did exist at that point (historical evidence dates forms of the word back to at least 1503) and we do know that Anne spoke rashly and lost her temper at times, particularly towards the end of her life. She’d been under extreme pressure for several years (which is what happens when like, most of Europe despises you and all your power derives from your inconstant husband) so honestly…it makes sense.

8. We got a short scene with Anne talking to Mary in which Anne actually managed to be decently polite to her stepdaughter. Mary really was rude to Anne pretty much every time she interacted with her, from the reports I’ve read, although I don’t know if she would have straight up antagonized Anne about her fertility troubles like she does here.

9. We see ferrets and such in various scenes. I love seeing this actually, as people took their pets with them everywhere then! Like, there’s even a story that Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s dog bit the Pope during a meeting. I’m not sure how substantiated that story is, but even if it was just a legend, it was considered normal enough for someone to take their pet dog to meet the POPE that people certainly believed it.

10. Later, Anne invites one of her ladies (Elizabeth Browne), who’s falling asleep in her chair while keeping Anne company, to share her bed. This is presented as an unusual thing, but realistically, Anne would have either had a bedmate or someone sleeping in the same room with her pretty much all the time. Everyone did. That was just how things worked then.
There’s a whole subplot of this lady being pregnant with George Boleyn’s child and how the child can’t be recognized as George’s because of scandal. This…has zero basis in history. George is commonly portrayed as a bit of a ladies’ man and/or a closeted homosexual, but I don’t believe there’s actually any proof of any of this.

11. Anne confronts Henry for ignoring her later and they end up reuniting a bit. Here, we actually get a glimpse of their relationship at its healthiest. She helps him, he listens to her advice, and they genuinely seem like they care and love each other. Historically, it sounds like they really were a very well matched couple – both intelligent, well-read, and religious, with strong personalities and opinions.

12.   I haven’t gotten too much into the Spain treaty discussions back and forth because I don’t remember too much about it historically and the whole idea of this blog post is to put it out quickly without research. However, I do know that once Catherine of Aragon died, Spain was much more willing to make peace and treaties with Henry than they had beforehand. Spain was probably never quite as willing to make war on Henry and England over Catherine’s cause as Chapuys seemed to imply to her and her daughter; politically, it just doesn’t make sense to start a war over this sort of thing.

13. Mere weeks before she was arrested, Henry did in fact trick Ambassador Eustace Chapuys into finally acknowledging Anne as Queen and bowing to her. He had successfully just…avoided interacting with her that entire time, but Cromwell, and George Boleyn (lord Rochford) maneuvered him into being exactly the right place where he had no choice but to recognize her.
This was actually kind of a trend with Henry, where he’d bestow some honor on someone close to him very soon before having them arrested and executed them. This happened with Anne Boleyn and would later happen with Thomas Cromwell, who was given a noble title very soon before his downfall.
WEIRD THING I JUST NOTICED: I’m not really researching but I did a quick google just to confirm my facts here, and uh, Chapuys was tricked into acknowledging Anne Boleyn on April 18, 1536, and Thomas Cromwell was made the Earl of Essex on April 18, 1540. Both Anne and Thomas would be dead mere months after their brief triumphs.

14. Later at a party, Anne seems to be super happy due to making up with her husband, but later sees Jane Seymour politely denying a gift (clearly from the King) by kissing it and returning it, saying all she wanted was a respectable and advantageous marriage. Jane did pretty much exactly this in real life, although I sincerely doubt Anne was anywhere near by when it happened.

15. Anne’s upset about what she saw and, after drinking, makes a foolish comment to noble Henry Norris saying that “you look for dead man’s shoes.” In real life, Norris had been courting Madge Shelton for a while but hadn’t proposed yet; this was Anne’s way of saying “you’re not really here for Madge, you’re in love with me and you’re waiting for the king to die so you can try to marry me instead.” This was incredibly foolish of her, as at this point, it was illegal to even speak of the king’s death. In real life, I believe she sent Henry to go assure one of the court officers (I don’t remember who right now) that Anne was a good, respectable woman who would never cheat on the King, but this was overkill and actually made the court officer report the comment to others, which…cascaded and probably helped fuel the king’s paranoia and suspicions.

16. Anne and Henry have a drag out violent fight in which she fiercely insults him and he actually almost chokes her. They definitely did have very loud arguments at times, but I don’t know if there’s any evidence that Henry laid hands on her violently.

17. Since this is apparently a low budget series that can’t afford to put on a proper joust, we don’t actually get to see the joust where Henry leaves Anne for the last time. Lady Rochford, Jane Parker, instead tells Anne that the King abruptly left and the joust was cancelled.

18. The episode closes out with Lady Anne Shelton tricking Anne into going with her to see her Uncle, who promptly presents her with an order for her arrest.
In real life, she was summoned to appear to the privy council. One of the members there was indeed her Uncle. When she showed up, she was informed of her arrest.
In the scene, Anne tried to bring some of her closest ladies with her to go see her uncle, but was only allowed to have Lady Shelton. We know she had a few ladies in the tower with her, but we don’t know exactly who they are. They likely were not her favorite ladies and were there more to keep an eye on her than keep her company, but as the Queen, it wouldn’t have been proper for her to go even to prison without being properly attended.

Season 3 Tiaras of The Crown

All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche” 10: “War”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

Other Posts about Crowns and Tiaras:
Diadems, Tiaras, and Crowns, Oh My! - an overview of types, definitions, and purposes
Disney Crowns and Tiaras: Historical and Modern Inspirations (Part I) - Snow White, Alice in Wonderland (cartoon and live), Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent, Robin Hood, and the Great Mouse Detective
Disney Crowns and Tiaras: Historical and Modern Inspirations (Part II): Cinderella, Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog, and The Sword in the Stone!

Elizabeth in The Crown (Olivia Colman) in the opening scene of S3, looking at stamps based off of S1-S2 actress Claire Foy and S3-S4 actress Olivia Colman. Both stamp portraits are wearing replicas of the George IV diadem.

S3E1 Olding: Season 3 opens with the meta acknowledgement of the actress change from Claire Foy to Olivia Colman as portrayed in the new stamp portraits. Both portraits feature the George IV diadem. (Of interest: The Court Jeweller pointed out that the stamps actually changed out in 1967, when this scene is set in 1964).

In real life, the stamp design was changed for practical reasons having nothing to do with the Queen’s age. The first stamp design featuring Queen Elizabeth II in 1952 was based on a photo by Dorothy Wilding which featured the Queen in three-quarter shoulder length profile. Stamp designers apparently found it difficult to incorporate the Queen’s profile into new stamps, resulting in some murmurs of removing the Queen from the stamps altogether. Instead, they switched to a more direct profile that worked better for design purposes. This version, which debuted in June 1967, uses of a plaster bust design made by Arnold Machin based off of photos by John Hedgecoe. This is still the profile of the queen used on stamps today. (Source: Postal Museum)

L to R: the original Dorothy Wilding photograph stamp, the new Andrew Machin design stamp, and a modern stamp with the queen’s profile on it.

Later in the episode, the Queen wears an odd made-up tiara at the art exhibition. It’s like, very Disney princess and doesn’t actually resemble any of the queen’s real tiaras.

L to R: Elizabeth in The Crown, wearing an invented tiara; Margaret in The Crown wearing a replica of the Poltimore tiara; the real Princess Margaret wearing the Poltimore tiara in a bathtub taken by her then husband Lord Snowden in 1962 and at an event (Credit: Reginald Davis / Shutterstock).

S3E2 Margaretology: During Margaret’s fabulous 1965 American tour montage, she wears a replica of the Poltimore tiara for a photo shoot with her in the bathtub. This refers to a very famous photo of Margaret that was actually taken by her photographer husband Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1962. In the full shot, you can actually see Antony in the mirror behind Margaret right in the corner of the photograph. The actual photo didn’t come out until 2006, four years after Margaret’s death. (Source: Town and Country)

Margaret also wore the Poltimore tiara at her wedding and at several other events.

L to R: Elizabeth in The Crown; Queen Elizabeth II; The Queen Mother; Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen)(Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty); Princess Anne (Credit: PA Images / Getty); Princess Beatrice (Credit: Getty)

S3E3 Bubbikins: On a state visit, the queen wears a replica of Queen Mary’s fringe tiara. This is a real tiara, but as the Court Jeweller points out, the Queen didn’t own this tiara in the 1960s. The Queen Mother owned it at the time, but eventually bequeathed it to her daughter Elizabeth in 2002. Fun fact: Then-Princess Elizabeth wore it for her wedding in 1947, her daughter Princess Anne borrowed it for her wedding in 1973, and Elizabeth’s granddaughter Princess Beatrice (Prince Andrew’s daughter with Sarah Ferguson) wore it for hers in 2020.

L to R: Prince Charles at his investment as Prince of Wales in The Crown; the real life Charles in his investment portrait (Credit: Bettmann / Getty); the investment coronet (Credit: Royal Collection Trust).

Episode 6 Tywysog Cymru: Charles is invested as Prince of Wales at Cardiff Castle in this episode and sports a jaunty new coronet as part of that. Although a Prince of Wales coronet had been made for Prince Edward in 1911, along with various other ceremonial accoutrements (rod, ring, sword, and a robe with doublet and sash), a new coronet had to be made for Charles, as Edward (also known as David) had taken his coronet with him when he went into exile post-abdication in 1936. Apparently, the royal family was much more willing to make a new coronet than talk to Edward to get the old one back. (Source: Town and Country)

The new coronet design was deliberately modern and simple. A more extravagant design was previously rejected as out of touch with a lot of the economic struggles happening in the country at the time.

Charles also wore a crown while playing Richard II in the episode. Although this was obviously just a theater prop, it actually does have some real similarities to the original crown worn by Richard II. Both are gold, open crowns topped with fleurons. (Source: Richard II’s Treasure)

L to R: Prince Charles playing Richard II in The Crown; Charles’s play crown in The Crown; Richard II’s portrait

Episode 9 Imbroglio:

The Queen, Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret all wear invented tiaras at Elizabeth and Philips’s 25th anniversary celebration. In real life, this was celebrated with a luncheon in November 1972, not a fancy formal dinner like that shown in The Crown.

The Court Jeweller referred to the Queen Mother’s made up tiara as an “invented diamond scroll tiara.” It really doesn’t look like any other crowns I’ve seen.

Princess Margaret is wearing a made up ruby tiara. The Court Jeweller points out that Margaret had plenty of tiaras, but no ruby tiaras (however, her engagement ring was famously a ruby).

L to R: Elizabeth wearing an invented tiara in The Crown; the Queen Mother wearing an invented tiara in The Crown; Margaret wearing the same invented tiara on a promotional poster for The Crown that she wore in the anniversary dinner scene.

Episode 10 Cri de Coeur: Although none of the characters wear tiaras or crowns in this episode, we do get a quick look at a commemorative Silver Jubilee tea towel which shows the Queen wearing the George IV diadem. It’s a slightly odd design, as the Queen appears to be wearing a more casual outfit with her diadem, which is really not a thing that would happen in real life.

I couldn’t find a real tea towel from the Silver Jubilee that actually looks like the one in the show, but it may be a combination of a few different designs and ideas.

The Queen wore several different crowns and tiaras to various events during her Silver Jubilee, including the Vladimir tiara with emerald drops and the Imperial State Crown.

L to R: Antony Armstrong-Jones in The Crown holding up a tea towel with the Queen on it; two real tea towels from the Silver Jubilee; the Queen at a Silver Jubilee event wearing the Vladimir Tiara with emerald drops; the Queen at a Silver Jubilee event wearing the Imperial State Crown (Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty).

Initial Quick, Non-Researched Thoughts on "Anne Boleyn" Episode 1

Quick Thoughts on Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3

I just watched episode 1 of Anne Boleyn, the new psychological thriller series from Channel 5 in the UK.* Thoughts so far: It's really well done (apart from the costumes, which lack historically accurate detailing, but they're not so bad that they're distracting). Jodie Turner-Smith is mesmerizing as Anne. She plays every facet of love, intelligence, humor, fear, anxiety, defensiveness, faith, joy, and devastation with subtle art. She also has that Anne charisma and power, taking your breath away just with her presence.

*The UK’s Channel 5 mini series “Anne Boleyn” has been causing a bit of uproar around Tudor communities for a while now because of the casting of a black woman in the lead role. I am incredibly over people being such asses about this (these comments range from repetitively close-minded and boring to HOLY SHIT THAT IS REALLY RACIST DUDE and they all piss me off), so I’m really just not going to get into it now. I would really rather just talk about content of the show itself.

(As an American, I watched this show via TV Mucho - apparently this only works if you set it to record in advance or watch it simultaneously with the UK broadcast. Also - you only get one free hour a day, which because of the 10 minute early start with the show, isn't actually enough, so I just broke down and bought one month's subscription. I have no idea how to access the show if you are out of the UK and didn’t already record it using TV Mucho, sorry.)

I COULD write thousands of words about this one episode, and I may later, but I'll just hit a few points briefly. I'm not doing in depth research on this but am only talking about a few items using my prior knowledge as a giant Tudor history fanatic. If you see anything inaccurate, let me know! I'm human, after all. I may go back and add sources to this later if there’s enough interest.

Credit: Anne Boleyn, Channel 5

1. The episode opens with a flash forward to Anne’s trial. This scene closes out with an axe being turned around and Anne taking a sharp intake of breath. The turning of the axe actually was totally a thing at Tudor trials! When the accused walked into court, the accompanying axeman’s blade was faced away from them. Once they were declared guilty and sentenced though, the blade was turned to face toward them. 

2. After the credits, a very pregnant Anne is shown wearing yellow at a formal event, which is held after the death of Catherine of Aragon. Henry is not wearing yellow. If I recall, one contemporary account from the time specified only that Henry wore yellow after COA’s death, and another only specified that Anne wore yellow. In addition, it’s up for debate whether this was meant for mourning (as some claim it was the Spanish color of mourning) or celebration.

 3. While playing cards (using cards that are larger than modern ones and really do look like those used in Tudor times!), Anne casually asks Madge Shelton (who in real life was her cousin) whether the king had called for her lately. This refers to the fact that during his queens’ pregnancies, Henry would regularly sleep with other women, as sex with a pregnant woman was considered dangerous to the baby.
Anne also disses Jane Parker, Lady Rochford and her brother George’s wife, and implies that she’s just…a very nasty woman. This is a very common characterization of Jane for some reason, but we don’t really have any evidence to support it beyond the simple fact that Jane survived the Boleyns’ fall.

4. Symbol Count 1: The French king sends some tiny French children (?) to present a clock to Anne for her future child. This will become more important later.

5. Symbol count 2: Jane Seymour wins at cards. Anne: “You had the winning hand all along.” Jane: “I didn’t understand the game.” Anne: “You really mustn’t play.” This indicates that Anne is already aware of her husband’s attraction to Jane and is warning her away from him. 

6. Later in bed, Anne and Henry talk about Cromwell’s plans for the monasteries. Anne says she has her own thoughts about what to do with the money from the monasteries, while Cromwell has other ideas. This disagreement really did happen. Anne wanted the money to go to charity and education. Cromwell wanted the money to go into the king’s treasury. It’s likely that this significant disagreement between Anne and Cromwell (who were formerly allied due to their common beliefs in reforming the church) may have contributed to Anne’s downfall.

 7. Symbol count 3: The court is looking at some new horses outside while Anne and Cromwell talk, clearly still disagreeing. Anne is in a peacock blue and there are several peacocks wandering around and making loud noises. Anne complains about the peacocks and tells Henry she wants them removed or she’ll hunt them down herself. These peacocks will come back several more times. 

8. Anne next talks to an older woman who appears to be Elizabeth’s governess (if this is the case, likely Lady Margaret Bryan) and specifically sends her sympathies to Mary (who at this point, is actually serving her younger sister, as a bit of a punishment for her obstinacy in refusing to accept the annulment of her parents’ marriage) on the death of her mother. Anne really did reach out to Mary after Catherine’s death, I believe she even encouraged Mary to reunite with her father.
Anne was not always kind to Mary honestly, but I believe at this point she wasn’t actually being a jerk. 

9. George brings Anne the first full English bible, fresh from Antwerp. Antwerp was a hotbed of Protestant thinking. Anne is delighted and puts the bible on a pedestal in her room. This really did happen – Anne put it there for any of her ladies to read regularly. At this point though, she takes the opportunity to encourage Jane Seymour to read Psalm 55 (ESV) – which includes a subtle reference to Jane betraying her with Henry: “for it is not an enemy who taunts me—then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me—then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.” 

11. Henry has a jousting accident that leaves him unconscious and makes everyone freak out.
EVERYONE CITES THIS DAMN JOUSTING ACCIDENT but y’all, all the contemporary English sources indicate that he wasn’t even hurt and there are NO English reports about the king being unconscious. If it had actually happened that way, it would be in every person’s letters and diaries. The guy who started the thing about Henry being unconscious wasn’t in the country at the time and wrote about it several months later. UGH.
Anne panics as she overhears people talking about how she could never be regent because people hate her. She also overhears Ambassador Eustace Chapuys talking about sending for Mary, noting that she’d have Spanish backing. Chapuys was a big letter writer and is a source of information for a lot of what we know about Anne’s downfall. he was highly biased against her though so, so we have to take what he says with a grain of salt.
Anne asks her Uncle, who’s the Duke of Norfolk Thomas Howard (one of the most powerful men in the kingdom) to get rid of Chapuys.

Despite their spat over the monasteries, Cromwell is hanging with Anne and her family still and is part of their conversation. Anne says that all mail to Hatfield (where mary lives with princess Elizabeth) should be stopped and they shouldn’t let Mary see the king. She clearly is afraid that Mary will be captured and made the center of an uprising. This was wise, as this sort of thing actually did happen every time a Tudor monarch died.

 12. Symbol Count 4: Anne sees the feisty horse that threw the king in the accident taken away and decapitated. When she asks the king about it later, he says “I have no use for an animal that won’t obey me.”
The king also says, “my leg will never be the same.” This is actually true, as he did get a leg injury in a jousting accident that would become ulcerous and infected and would basically weep pus, smell terrible, and cause him tremendous pain for the rest of his life. 

 13. A couple scenes go by without much for me to talk about historically until Anne confronts her uncle about his conversations with the king and yells at him. We do know that Anne and her uncle had a falling out in the months before her death. He later would be on the jury that sentenced her to death.
After getting past her uncle, Anne finds Jane Seymour sitting on Henry’s knee. There are accounts of this really happening. Anne tears a necklace from her throat and slaps her. Historically, Anne did pull the necklace away (the necklace was a portrait of Henry), but it was at a different time, when the king wasn’t there).

 14. The incident leads to Anne miscarrying her child. This did happen pretty soon after CoA’s death and also was caused by the Jane Seymour knee-sitting incident.
Also HOLY TOKOPHOBIA BATMAN, if you are freaked out by pregnancy and childbirth, I would suggest skipping over this scene. It doesn’t show a lot but there are A LOT OF SOUNDS AND IT IS VERY DISTURBING. (yes, I probably have mild tokophobia).

 15. Symbol returns: The clock has wound down and is stopped, probably referring to Anne running out of time. Anne looks out the window and sees Henry petting the peacocks she asked him to kill with Jane Seymour, indicating her loss of power and status with her husband.

 16. I love that the show has Anne running to try to catch her husband to advocate for her plan with the monasteries, even though she’s just lost a baby, is very injured from childbirth, and she’s upset about the Jane situation. Anne really was very passionate about religious reform and charity and although this almost certainly didn’t happen, it’s a good way to show it.

 17. Anne appears alone in several scenes in this episode. Realistically, she would not have been alone, pretty much ever, as the Queen would always be accompanied by several ladies. Honestly, she probably didn’t even use the bathroom alone. But it works for showing Anne’s isolation and growing paranoia about her role at court.

I hope you enjoyed that quick rundown! It ended up over 1,500 words, which was approximately 1,000 more words than I planned, but - whatever. I’ll probably do the same thing for the next two episodes as well!

Over-Analyzing The Crown: S4E10 War

All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche” 10: ”War”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

I’d like to start off this post with a brief word on the death of Prince Philip, who I’ve written many thousands of words about in the last few years with my blogging about The Crown. It’s a little odd how sad I’ve been over the death of a 99-year-old man I’ve never met, but I’ve always been very fond of Philip. Tobias Menzies’ portrayal of him in The Crown is my favorite character in the whole show; the quietly brilliant Moondust of Season 3 has become my favorite episode over time (I made a bit fun of it at the time as a mid life crisis episode, but I’ve come to appreciate it more with time). And everything I’ve ever read about the real life Philip has always reminded me very much of my own husband, as he too, is a tall, smart, funny, cantankerous man who sometimes says the wrong thing but is at heart, an incredibly kind and generous person who deeply loves and supports his wife and family. And just as Prince Philip was to Queen Elizabeth, Husband John is my rock. Philip was not a saint, and he said numerous problematic things over his time in the public eye. But everything I’ve read about him indicates that he genuinely wanted to do good in the world and supported his family and his country as best as he could. The world feels a bit different now that he is gone.

Now, time to finish up Season 4 of The Crown finally. My apologies that this has taken so long! The pandemic has shredded my ability to focus and writing has become very difficult for me. I also started a new job, which I love, but is requiring a lot of my time right now. Thank you for your patience. I do plan to go back and write overviews of Season 1 and Season 2 at some point (since we won’t be getting any new episodes of The Crown until probably November 2022, at the earliest), but that likely won’t be any time soon.

Left: Geoffrey Howe delivering his speech to Parliament in The Crown. Right: The real life Geoffrey Howe giving his resignation speech (Credit: PA Images).

• We get a brief respite from the Charles and Diana drama when we start the day with Sir Geoffrey Howe, going about his regular morning routine before going to Parliament and resigning VERY DRAMATICALLY from his position as deputy prime minister. This was an incredibly important moment that really is seen as the primary catalyst in the end of Thatcher’s time as party leader and prime minister.

  • Howe had been part of Margaret Thatcher’s government from the beginning, and was her longest serving cabinet minister. We’ve seen him several times before in this season, in pretty much every episode that has focused on Margaret Thatcher, just popping up occasionally to say things.

    • When Thatcher was elected Conservative party leader, she appointed Howe as the shadow chancellor of the Exchequer (which sounds like a comic book government agency, honestly). In 1979, when MT became prime minister, Howe in turn became the main Chancellor of the Exchequer, and thus was directly involved with many of Thatcher’s economic changes. Early tensions in their relationship began to show when Thatcher told him, “On your own head be it, Geoffrey, if anything goes wrong,” regarding some of his economic recommendations. She later refused to appoint him to her Falklands war cabinet, which caused further issues.
      After the 1983 general election, MT appointed Howe as foreign secretary. He served in that role for six years. Howe’s preference for negotiating and patience in foreign affairs clashed with Thatcher’s more strident approach, so there were significant tensions at times.
      In 1989, Howe was appointed as leader of the house of commons, lord president of council and deputy prime minister. Despite all the grand sounding titles, this move was seen as a demotion for Howe, who really enjoyed his job in the foreign office and didn’t want to leave.

    • The real Geoffrey Howe’s resignation took place on Nov. 1, 1990. He had initially offered a cautiously worded letter of resignation, which stated “I am deeply anxious that the mood you have struck – most notably in Rome last weekend and in the House of Commons this Tuesday – will make it more difficult for Britain to hold and retain a position of influence in this vital debate.” Later though, angered at the PM’s office’s attempt to characterize their differences as only those of style rather than substance, Howe changed tack and attacked Thatcher ferociously in his resignation speech.

    • Howe had a reputation as a reserved man, and at one point, Labour Chancellor Denis Healey had described a verbal lashing from Howe as being “savaged by a dead sheep.” Therefore, his ferocious speech against Thatcher took everyone by surprise.

    • The full speech was quite long, so the version in The Crown is by necessity shortened. However, most of the lines are direct quotes from Howe’s actual speech. You can read the whole thing over here.

      • One of the only lines that was actually modified slightly in The Crown is actually the most memorable one, the one quoted throughout the papers at the time and quoted in recaps of The Crown episode as well.
        In real life, his cricketing metaphor specifically criticized Thatcher’s uncompromising approach to discussions of the development of a European Currency Unit, and how her statements on the topic had hampered the UK representatives negotiating the issue. The Crown changed the statement slightly to be more general about what policies were being criticized.
        Both the real life and Crown version start with: “I believe that both the Chancellor and the Governor are cricketing enthusiasts, so I hope that there is no monopoly of cricketing metaphors.”

        • Real Life: “It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.”

        • The Crown: “Increasingly, those of us close to the Prime Minister feel like opening batsmen being send to the crease only to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that our bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.”

Left: Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe on The Crown, S4E2 The Balmoral Test. Right: Thatcher and Howe in real life (Credit: Steve Back / Shutterstock).

• Philip calls for his wife Lillibet and bursts in on her private meeting with Charles (who’s complaining about Diana seeing James Hewitt again, as his spies informed him at the end of S4E9), and turns on the TV to show the coverage of Howe’s speech and the fallout from it.

  • While writing this post up, it occurred to me that now that Prince Philip has died, no one calls the Queen Lillibet anymore. There really isn’t anyone around who would even call her by her first name at this point (Charles calls her mummy, at least some of her grand children call her Granny, and she said at one point that George calls her Gan Gan). That’s quite sad.

  • The Queen looks very done with Charles’ complaining, which foreshadows her outburst at him toward the end of the episode.

  • Philip describes the situation with Howe and Thatcher as “The Ides of March. It’s Julius Caesar, or should I say Julia Caesar.” This, of course, refers to the assassination of Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, on March 15, 44 BC during a meeting of the Senate at the Theatre of Pompey in Rome. In Shakespeare’s version of the tale, one of the main drivers behind the assassination was Marcus Brutus, characterized as a very close friend of Caesar who betrayed him for the good of the country. Similarly, Howe had been an ally of Thatcher for over a decade, but resigned and spoke out when he believed Thatcher to be working against the best interest of the UK. His speech has some very Brutus aspects to it, particularly at the end when he states: “The conflict of loyalty, of loyalty to my Right Honourable Friend the Prime Minister … and of loyalty to what I perceive to be the true interests of the nation, has become all too great….In doing so, I have done what I believe to be right for my party and my country.”

  • The Crown shows Margaret Thatcher going home to 10 Downing Street, going into a room by herself, and crying. In reality, Thatcher gave a statement to the BBC on live TV immediately after Howe’s speech in her usual brusque, defiant manner. This change seems to be part of the season’s occasional efforts to make Thatcher more relatable and personally identifiable. Personally, I’m not sure this worked. Every fan of The Crown I know really hated Thatcher’s character and found her utterly despicable.

L to R: Diana running a race against other mothers (Credit: Shutterstock); Diana with Harry and William at a theme park (Credit: Julian Parker / Getty) ; Diana with William and Harry at school (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty).

Right: Diana in The Crown, sporting a printed sweater.
Far Right: Diana in real life wearing a similarly printed jacket.

• Next we get back to the Diana and Charles Saga, as they drive up in separate cars and meet up silently to go cheer on William at a school sport game (rugby? cricket? I don’t know sports). Diana is super enthusiastic at the game, cheering and jumping up and down while Charles is much more reserved.

  • Diana was indeed a super enthusiastic sports mum at her kids’ school events. She raced in at least two mother’s races, winning both, I believe. She was a very active mother who took her kids to amusement parks, McDonald’s, and all sorts of other places that royal children hadn’t really gone to in the past. We have photos of a lot of that!

L to R: William, Charles, and Harry; William, Harry, and Charles; William and his children George, Charlotte, and Louis; Harry and his son Archie

• Diana’s closeness and casualness with her children has been echoed in the photos released of Prince William interacting with his own children, which often have them piled on top of him or hanging off swings and him like any kid would do. (Very few photos have been released of Harry’s son Archie so far, so alas, we don’t have anything like this for him yet).

• That being said, although Charles does seem more reserved than Diana was in most photos I can find of him with his sons, there are plenty that show how close they really are. He’s a very different parent from Diana but he was clearly still very involved with his kids.

• Honestly, a lot of internal party stuff happens with Thatcher that I’m not going to get into in depth because I don’t actually know that much about the intricacies of British party politics and it would take me many hours to research it all. In sum, Thatcher’s party is no longer backing her, and it becomes clear that they want her to step down as prime minister after over a decade.

• Thematically, the sequence in which Thatcher calls in party leaders one by one to speak to them, only to fail to gain their support at the end, is in sharp contrast to a similar sequence in S4E2 “The Balmoral Test,” when she fires a lot of people in her cabinet and replaces them. Years have passed, she’s lost one of her long-standing allies, and she no longer has the power to force her will on her party like she did then.

L to R: Diana in a pink wrap shirt/dress in The Crown; Diana in a pink and red dress in real life (Credit: Georges De Keerle / Getty) ; Diana in The Crown; Diana in a similar plaid coat in real life (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty)

• We get a tense scene of schedule comparison and discussion in which Charles, with a table full of men in suits, faces Diana at another table, with only two men at her side. I really have no idea whether this sort of thing actually happened or not, but according to Diana’s interviews for Diana: Her True Story (by Andrew Morton, which is discussed in more depth later on in the post), by this point, Charles was heavily gaslighting her and trying to convince her she was mentally ill, so it’s quite possible.

  • Do we know if Charles really had a problem with Diana going to New York alone? We do know he was rather gaslighting her about her mental health at this point. she mentioned this extensively in in her own words.

  • Diana talking with her advisor? Secretary – in flashback in that graphic sweater – saying that Charles tells everyone that she’s mad, and she’s starting to feel mad, and worried that she’s going to fall flat on her face.

• The show portrays Margaret Thatcher asking the Queen to dissolve parliament in order to keep her seat. The Queen refuses, noting that although the PM technically has this power, “Power is nothing without authority,” and notes that her cabinet and party is against her. She also points out that polling indicates that Thatcher’s party would not win a general election if it were called today, indicating that the country was against her.

  • Then they have a wonderful, heart-rending exchange that really underlines Thatcher’s all or nothing way of thinking:

    Queen: There is power in doing nothing.
    Thatcher: I will have nothing.
    Queen: You will have your dignity.
    Thatcher: There is no dignity in the wilderness.

  • As moving as this scene is, it’s completely invented. A historian said to History Extra that the entire scene was “a colossal invention.”
    “This is total nonsense. There was no meeting with the Queen after Thatcher’s ministers told her to go. Actually, this distorts the true drama of events, which is that in the night her ministers told her to go; then the next morning they came to cabinet and she told them she was resigning, reading the statement in tears; then, when that was over, she went to the Commons and destroyed Neil Kinnock in probably her most famous parliamentary performance. There was no time for her to go to the palace amid all that. Above all, it’s utterly unthinkable that Thatcher would have asked the Queen to dissolve parliament. It’s such a massive distortion of what happened, and of her character and her relationship with the Queen, that I’m amazed it’s in the series.” (Source: History Extra).

L: Diana wearing the famous ivory dress and jacket in The Crown; R: Diana in real life (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).

L: Diana wearing pastel colors at Harlem Hospital in The Crown;

R: Diana wearing a similarly colored jacket in real life (Credit: Mirrorpix / Getty).

• Diana’s New York Trip really came about because of her patronage to the Welsh Opera, which was performing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in its first season of opera. The planners for the event knew that Diana’s presence at their inaugural performance of Falstaff would be a huge boon to their fundraising. And so it was! The $2,000 tickets to the gala sold out very quickly once Diana’s attendance became known. The post-opera dinner for 850 was the event featured in the show when Diana appeared in that famous ivory gown and jacket. (Source: Town and Country)

  • The preparations required for Diana’s visit to the gala weren’t covered in The Crown, but they were very in depth! Plans to have balloons at the champagne reception were squashed by the State Department, as apparently a popping balloon sounds too much like gunfire; since there were protestors at the event (from the Committee for Legal justice in Northern Ireland and the Irish Northern Aid Committee), they apparently didn’t want any risk of confusion.

  • Throughout the New York trip scenes, Diana wears a lot of clothes that are heavily inspired by her real life outfits, but not exact replicas, until she gets to the opera dinner night and comes out in that famous sparkly ivory dress and jacket.

L to R: Diana hugging a child with AIDS in The Crown; Diana holding a child with AIDS on her real life visit to Harlem Hospital.

Right: Diana’s 1987 photograph with a patient with AIDS, kept anonymous at the time but later identified as Ivan Cohen. The stigma against AIDS was so strong that Ivan was the only person willing to take the picture with her.
(Credit: Anwar Hussein / Getty)
[more information below]

• Diana is shown visiting the pediatric AIDS unit at Harlem Hospital, where she is told that the children desperately need foster parents, but people are too scared to take them on. She ends up hugging a little boy to the gasps of onlookers. At the time, this was an incredibly important and momentous occasion. This did happen on Diana’s trip to New York in 1989, but Diana had actually already been involved in fighting the stigma against AIDS for several years already.

• She was first photographed shaking hands with a patient with AIDS in 1987; she specifically refused to wear gloves. This was a specifically planned and carefully coordinated photo. A letter writer who identified himself as the best friend and executor of Ivan Cohen, the man in the picture, said: “Ivan was the only person in the special wing of the Middlesex Hospital willing to be photographed with the princess and only on condition that he was photographed from behind. The stigma associated with Aids is difficult for an outsider to gauge in retrospect and Ivan certainly saw it as such. She was indeed instrumental in highlighting the incongruous attitude.” (Ivan was kept anonymous when the photo was first published). (Source: Philip Chklar’s letter in The Guardian).

  • An article from Insider explains:. “AIDS was first identified back in the early 1980s. By 1983, scientists at the CDC had already concluded that the disease could not be transmitted through casual contact, but the public had become terrified. Reports from that era tell heartbreaking stories of AIDS patients — even children — who were shunned and stigmatized because of the disease. In 1985, the Los Angeles Times conducted a poll and found that 50% of respondents favored quarantining people with AIDS. When she shook the hand of an unidentified AIDS patient, Diana used her public platform to challenge that irrational fear.“ (Source: Insider).

• Her actions at the hospital years later were incredibly important as well. The New York Times reported that while at the pediatric AIDS unit, she stroked five babies and scooped up a seven year old boy and cuddled with him. The pediatric director at the hospital, Dr. Margaret Heagarty, said, “Your presence here and in Great Britain has shown that folks with this disease can be hugged, can be cared for.” (Source: New York Times, 1989).

  • Later, in 1991, Diana spoke at the Children and AIDS Conference, specifically saying “HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug. Heaven knows they need it. We all need to be alert to the special needs of those for whom AIDS is the last straw in an already heavy burden of discrimination and misfortune." She continued to speak out and work in AIDS activism throughout the 1990s, using her fame to bring attention to the issue and raise money for charities. (Source: Elle)

  • In the show, Diana is shown wearing a brightly colored suit at the hospital, while in real life, she wore red. This change of costume seems to evoke Diana’s maternal connection with children, as rainbows and lots of bright colors together are often associated with childhood.

• Camilla’s conversation with Charles after seeing the news coverage of Diana’s visit to New York is imagined (as pretty much every private conversation in this show is), but seems to fit with all the descriptions I’ve heard of Camilla personality. She’s calm and logical and states her concerns simply and practically, namely, that Camilla would lose in a popularity contest against Diana. The show then calls back to S4E3 Fairytale with the line, “To be a protagonist of a fairy tale, you have to be wronged, a victim – in the narrative of laws of fairy tales vs. reality, the fairy tale always prevails.”

  • Note that they’re both in blue for this conversation. Charles has been shown wearing a fair amount of blue throughout the season. Diana was seen in a lot of blue in her early appearances, and a few times in Australia, but has pretty much stopped wearing the color completely in the last few episodes as she gives up on her relationship with Charles altogether.

  • Charles tells Camilla that she’s his one true love, but she says wryly that she’s just the mistress, and notes that her great grandmother was his great great grandfather’s mistress. In real life, Camilla commented on this fact when she first met Charles at a polo match in 1970, saying “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather. I feel we have something in common.” (Source: Town and Country). You can learn more about their relatives in this article on Alice Keppel and Edward VII in Town and Country.

    • Sidenote: Putting that all down in writing really brought home the fact that in the timeline of The Crown, Charles and Camilla really have been in a relationship on and off for twenty years - and even when they weren’t romantically involved, they were very close friends. Diana had only even really known Charles for about 10 years, which was about as long as they’d been married.

Credit: Royal Collection Trust

L: The Queen awarding the Order of Merit to Margaret Thatcher in The Crown. R: The Queen and Margaret Thatcher at a meeting of the Order of Merit in 2009 (Credit: John Stillwell).

• After Thatcher is essentially forced out of office by her party, the Queen asks her to come visit. They’re both in somber colored clothing for this scene, which reflects the sadness of their conversation, but Thatcher is still in her favorite color - blue.

  • The Queen frankly says, “I was shocked by the way you were forced to leave.” She then acknowledged that although many people focused on their differences (which she described as lazy), but often overlooked the many things in common: their generation, Christianity, sense of duty, worth ethic, and a sense of devotion to their country.
    I think the show did its best to show how complicated and sometimes fraught the relationship between the Queen and Thatcher was, but that under it all, it really was based on a mutual respect. As the Queen points out in the show, Thatcher definitively changed the country during her tenure (Elizabeth judiciously avoids characterizing those changes as good or bad).

  • The scene ends, and the show says goodbye to Margaret Thatcher, with a scene in which the Queen gives Thatcher the Order of Merit. The Queen gave Thatcher the order of merit about one month after the end of her time as prime minister. Five years later, the Queen made Thatcher a Lady Order of the Garter, the UK’s highest order of Chivalry, making her the first non-royal woman in the order.

    The show doesn’t mention this at all, but even when Thatcher stepped down as PM, she still served in the House of Commons in the backbenches until the 1992 general election, when she retired. At that point, The Queen, upon recommendation of prime minister John Major, awarded Thatcher a life peerage (which meant her title could not be passed down to her children). This made Thatcher a Baroness and put her in the House of Lords.

    • Another item the show doesn’t bother to include: at the same time Thatcher was given the Order of the Merit, her husband Denis was made a hereditary baronet at the same time. This remains the only baronetcy granted since 1964.

  • As the dialogue notes, only the sovereign can give the Order of Merit, without input from anyone else (although a few prime ministers have tried to suggest people over the years). Only 24 recipients are allowed to have it at any one time. When a recipient dies, the sovereign personally meets with their next-of-kin, who gives the badge back. So - it’s not even that there are just 24 recipients, there are just 24 /physical badges/ to even award!

    Any citizen of any commonwealth country is actually eligible, and the award has been given to several non-Englishmen. It is provided for “exceptionally meritorious service in Our Crown Services or towards the advancement of Arts, Learning, Literature, and Science.” Recipients also receive a commissioned portrait, which becomes part of the Royal Collection Trust.

    • Current members of the order of merit include playwrights, philanthropists, inventors, musical conductors, museum directors, members of the Royal Family, and former politicians. Other Order of Merit recipients previously seen in The Crown include Winston Churchill (prime minister, seen in S1, with brief appearances in S2 and S3), and Graham Sutherland (the painter of Churchill’s portrait in S1), Earl Mountbatten (S1-S4), Prince Charles (S1-S4), Prince Philip (S1-S4),

L to R: Diana on The Crown wearing a purple and red coat; Diana in real life wearing purple and red (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty); Diana on The Crown wearing a red suit ; Diana in real life wearing a red coat with a similar silhouette (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty).

• During her fight with Charles after her New York trip, Diana wears a purple and red coat, even though she is in her own home (Charles drives up to meet her there; she was already there waiting). The underlying meaning of the coat here seems to be that she’s ready to go. She wants out of this marriage.

  • I’m not going to cover this fight in depth because there’s no way to know what Charles and Diana personally said to each other while alone. However, I will say that the character of Charles in this scene is just the worst asshole. He’s mad at Diana for….being kind to children with AIDS? She hurt Camilla by…being a good person? He calls her acts of charity “antics” and said her motivations were selfish which…what? Even if they were, it’s clearly doing a lot of good in the world and isn’t just about her.

  • Diana referring to herself as “the mother of your children” to Charles really seemed to set him off; Diana said in her interviews for “Diana: In Her Own Words” that this sort of reference to herself did indeed seem to piss him off quite a bit. “That always makes him slightly twitch, when i say ‘mother of your children’. He hates being made aware of it.”

  • Charles ends the fight, in which he openly declares that Camilla is his priority and who he thinks about at all times, by saying he was forced into the marriage and if Diana has problems with it, she should go complain to his parents, not him.

  • After the fight, Diana goes to the bathroom to the retch but ends up stopping herself with great effort. This seems to refer to Diana’s eventual recovery from her bulimia, which in real life, took a lot more therapy and medical help than the show seems to imply. In her interviews for Diana: In Her Own Words, Diana attributed her recovery really starting with a friend calling her up with some brutal tough love, basically saying, if you don’t tell your doctor about your bulimia in the next hour, I’m going to tell the whole world. That really did seem to work though, as Diana started seeing a “shrink” and she really got the help she needed to conquer her eating disorder.

• The montage scenes at Christmas feature a lot of dead animals and hunting. Back in S4E2 The Balmoral Test, there were all sorts of animal and hunting allusions relating to Diana and Charles. This montage literally includes a scene in which dead pheasants are getting stabbed on hooks. The allusion here is clear - both Charles and Diana feel trapped in their marriage with no way out.

  • In a call back to Philip and Diana’s “outsider” connection in S4E2 The Balmoral Test, Philip notices that no one is really talking to Diana and smiles at her in sympathy.

    • The song “Baby it’s cold outside” plays in the background. This is a 1944 song that, in the context of its time, is about the beginning of a relationship and the first sparks of sexual attraction, but which is commonly read today as about rape; Rolling Stone has a pretty good overview of the various articles and viewpoints on this song that’s worth an in-depth read. Whatever your opinion of the song, its use here in the show simultaneously establishes the holiday setting and emphasizes the uneasy disconnect between the happy family setting and Charles and Diana’s unhappiness.

• Note: The Queen puts her hands in her coat immediately when Diana walks up, as if to avoid a hug. This seems to call back to the end of the Australia episode (S4E6 Terra Nullius), when Diana hugged Elizabeth and Elizabeth was Visibly Uncomfortable and got out of it as soon as she could.

L to R: Diana in a white sweater , jeans, and brown belt in The Crown; Diana on a 1997 visit to Bosnia (Credit: Tim Rooke / Shutterstock); Diana in a velvet halter dress in the last shot of Season 4 of The Crown; Diana in a 1997 Mario Testino photograph taken to support her charity dress auction.

• I gotta say, although I dislike how the Queen’s character in the show continues to dismiss the serious, deep issues in Charles and Diana’s relationship that are harming them and bringing out the worst sides of both of the Waleses, it was very satisfying to watch her explode at her son telling him that she KNEW he was betraying his wife, and that both of them were spoiled immature people who were constantly complaining.

  • The argument ends with the Queen saying sharply, “If one day you expect to be king, might I suggest you start behaving like one.” This seems to be a slight allusion to the many surveys of UK citizens over the past couple decades that often indicate a significant portion of the population wants the crown to skip Charles and go straight to William. Charles’ poor treatment Diana remains something people still is commonly listed as a major reason. This continues even now. Realistically, Charles is going to be king no matter what people think. He’s already taken over a significant amount of the monarch’s duties from his mother anyway. (Source: Daily Beast for the most recent survey, but also there are SO many other articles over the years I could reference)

• The dead animal symbolism continues with lots of dead stags, and is emphasized when Philip, who made the hunting connection with Diana in episode 2, goes to speak to her as an outsider to an outsider.

  • Diana upstairs in a white sweater and jeans lying on bed. This very simple outfit really evokes an outfit Diana wore in January 1997 on a visit to Huambo, Angola, when she walked across a minefield in one of the most public and impactful humanitarian acts of her life. Although the shirt style is slightly different, the jeans, belt, and shirt color are almost identical, and I have to believe that that’s intentional reference. In 1997, less than a year before Diana died, she was newly divorced, free from Charles, and really coming into her own in terms of pursuing her own humanitarian interests and living her own life. This costuming choice feels like a deliberate reference to Diana’s changing frame of mind, in which she’s embracing her humanitarian work and working to really step away from her unhappy marriage. You can read all about the impact of that minefield walk, and her son Harry’s work to carry forward that legacy, in this deep dive article from Time.

    • The simple starkness of the outfit also underlines her state of mind. As she says to Philip, she feels like she’s in “a cold frozen tundra, " and “an icy dark loveless cave with no light – no hope anywhere – not even the faintest crack.” A white sweater feels like a pretty good “frozen tundra” reference.

  • I’m not going to get too into the conversation between Philip and Diana, but I did want to address one item. Philip says, in response to Diana’s words about wanting to leave the family, “I don’t see it ending well.” Lots of viewers have read this as a threat and an allusion to the many many conspiracy theories that the royal family had Diana killed. And this show is into sensationalism at some points so - yeah. That’s probably intentional. But I think the words can also be read as the character of Philip being protective of his family and the monarchy.

    • Also, just from a practical standpoint, this statement may refer to the fact that leaving the royal family would be pretty terrible press for Diana. Diana actually knew this herself. As the foreword to In Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words (based off of secret interviews with Diana) says, “If she had just packed up her bags and left, the public and media, who firmly believed in the fairytale, would have considered her behaviour irrational, hysterical, and profoundly unbecoming….Not only did she consider herself to be a prisoner trapped inside a bitterly unfulfilled marriage, she also felt shackled to a wholly unrealistic public image of her royal life and to an unsympathetic royal system…It gradually dawned on her and her intimate circle that unless the full story of her life was told, the public would never appreciate or understand the reasons behind any actions she decided upon.”

      • The book that resulted from Andrew Morton’s secret interviews with Diana became an overnight bestseller in 1992 and really broke the stories about Charles’ relationship with another woman and Diana’s own bulimia and suicide attempts. The book and its author were highly criticized at the time, as he certainly couldn’t reveal his source, and plenty of people thought the stories were invented. The Sunday Times was the only paper that agreed to serialize the book, and only then after one of Diana’s friends privately told the editor that the book was true. Stores and people even boycotted it …until it became apparent that the stories were true.
        Diana’s strategy worked. The first excerpt from the book was published on June 7, 1992. Only a few months later, in December, the prime minister announced that Charles and Diana were to separate. They wouldn’t officially divorce until 1996.
        The saga of the creation, publication, and reception of the book (which I’ve used extensively as a resource throughout all these posts), as well as Morton’s decision to publish transcripts of the interviews after Diana’s death, is incredibly dramatic and interesting and The Crown Season 5 better cover it. It’s way too damn fascinating to leave out. Anyway, you can read a lot more about the book in this article from The Crown Chronicles.

        • Note: Obviously the book is, obviously, from Diana’s viewpoint and bias, and I believe the original version left out any mention of her own affairs (which was remedied in later editions). Charles would later tell his own story in a 1994 authorized biography by Jonathan Dimbleby, which “says his overbearing father forced him into a loveless marriage with Princess Diana.” (Source: AP News). I haven’t read this book yet, as I frankly generally read books in ebook or audiobook format these days, and it’s just not available in either of those formats (In contrast, Morton’s book about Diana is available in all the formats and has been re-issued several times over the last few decades with new material). There are over 100 used copies of it available for only $2 on Amazon though, so I’ll probably get it here soon. You have to feel that out there somewhere, Diana is laughing about that.

L to R: The last scene of The Crown Season 2; the last scene of The Crown Season 4.

Top: The last scene of Season 1 of The Crown; Bottom: The last scene of Season 3 of The Crown. —>

• Diana’s final outfit in the season is clearly based off of a famous green velvet halter dress. Diana was photographed in this dress by Mario Testino in 1997 to support a huge auction of her dresses for charity. This picture was published in the July 1997 issue of Vanity Fair, and from what I can tell, were almost instantly declared iconic. (Source: Vanity Fair).
  So essentially, the last two Diana Season 4 costumes are near-replicas to famous outfits worn by the real life Diana in the year she died. That’s some serious foreshadowing. Season 5 is probably going to be really dark, y’all.

  • That charity auction by Christie’s sold off 79 of her dresses and raised $3.25 million for cancer and AIDS charities. Even at the time, this auction was seen as signifying a change in her life. The New York Times said, “The clothes trace her metamorphosis from frilly princess through the ‘Dynasty Di’ years to the woman on her own in the sleek column dresses of the 1990's.” This quote really summarizes a lot of Diana’s own fashion evolution and what we’ve seen in terms of changes in character Diana’s fashion and emotional changes as well. She started out in very frilly, bright, almost childlike outfits (so much yellow and green! lots of hopeful Spring-y colors), which grew more adult and and darker over the season, and now in the last two scenes of the season, she’s in her simplest, starkest looks.

    • (Also of interest - the NYT article notes that Joan Rivers said, the auction would be fun, but “it's going to be even more fun next year to go to all the bar mitzvahs and see'' who was wearing Diana's castoffs.)

• I really love that the seasons’ ending scenes so far have really mirrored each other. Season 1 and Season 2 went out with pictures of the Queen alone, in her Queen role. Season 2 and 4 went out with pictures of the Queen with her family, in her mother and grandmother role. The big family picture is also just such a great way to bid farewell to the actors who played those characters for that two year cycle.

• Season 1 ends with Elizabeth in her crown posing for a portrait around November 1955.

• Season 2 closes with Elizabeth posing with her extended family at the christening of her youngest son Edward, around April 1964.

• Season 3 ends with Elizabeth in her carriage for her Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee in June 1977.

• Season 4 closes out with Elizabeth at Christmas with her entire family, December 1990.

And on that note: I’m finally done with over-analyzing Season 4 of The Crown. Thanks everyone!

Over-Analyzing The Crown: S4E9 Avalanche

All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

My apologies for the delay on the blog posts about the last two episodes of Season 4 of The Crown. I’ve been taking some time off to re-evaluate things.

I have determined that if I’m going to keep blogging, I need to cut back on the level of detail and research I put into each post or I’ll just implode from stress. I mean, my last blog post on 48:1 clocked in at over 8,000 words. That’s just not sustainable. So I’m going to put CONSIDERABLE effort into really cutting down these blog posts to 3,000 words or less in the future. This is still long enough for me to get into the nitty gritty details y’all love, but will make my life, and probably your life as readers, considerably easier.

On to Avalanche!

Top: Emma Corrin as Princess Diana in The Crown and Jay Webb as Wayne Sleep.
Bottom Left: Princess Diana (Credit: Reg Wilson / Shutterstock).
Bottom Middle: Princess Diana and Wayne Sleep.
Bottom Right: Princess Diana and Wayne Sleep (Credit: Helen Wilson / Shutterstock).

• The episode starts off with an incident in which Diana surprises Charles with a choreographed dance to Uptown Girl with Royal Ballet dancer Wayne Sleep. This really did happen on Dec. 23, 1985 at a private “Friends of Covent Garden” charity event. This charity event regularly featured surprise celebrity appearances, and Charles and Diana had appeared in a skit together the previous year as Romeo and Juliet. (Source: Tina Brown, The Diana Chronicles)

  • We unfortunately only have photos of it, and no video. Probably the closest we have to an actual video of it is this 2017 CNN film in which Sleep talks and walks through both his and Diana’s parts. I’m not a dancer at all, but from what I can tell, it seems like The Crown really tried to recreate Sleep’s description of the dance very closely.

    • As I’ve discussed before, Diana really did love to dance, and she had actually asked Sleep if he would give her lessons in the 1980s. He didn’t have time to teach her, but later, did agree to help her with her surprise dance. They apparently struck up quite a lovely friendship and afterward, Diana would occasionally pop in to come hang out with him in his dressing room after his performances to just chat. (Source: A 2017 interview with Wayne Sleep published in The Guardian).

      • This entire incident took place a month after another high profile dance of Princess Diana’s, namely, when she danced with John Travolta at the White House. At that dinner, she actually specifically asked to be seated next to Russian ballet master Mikhail Baryshnikov, and wanted to dance with him, but alas, Baryshnikov had an injured ankle at the time. (Source: Tina Brown, The Diana Chronicles)

Princess Diana with Wayne Sleep.
(Credit: Mirrorpix / Getty)

• Charles’ Reaction: We can’t know whether the couple argued about it in a car afterward, but there are reports that Charles was rather cool and distant towards Diana at a reception after the event. (Source: Tina Brown, The Diana Chronicles)

  • Diana’s dress in the episode looks to be an almost perfect copy of the real dress Diana wore, and Emma Corrin’s hair is styled out voluminously like Diana’s was in real life. I feel like they don’t quite capture the height of Diana’s hair though.

  • I’m really happy they included the detail of the height difference between Diana and her partner in the crown. In real life, Diana was at least 8 inches taller than Wayne Sleep without heels; at 5’2”, Sleep is the shortest male dancer ever admitted into the Royal Ballet School. On The Crown, Emma Corrin is only 4 inches taller than Jay Webb, the actor who played Sleep (again without heels), but I think the contrast and effect still comes across very well.

    • Fun fact: Wayne Sleep originated the role of Mr. Mistoffelees in the initial West End run of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats! (Source: Marie Claire)

    • Additional fun fact: Jay Webb, who played Wayne Sleep in this episode, has acted in a fictional retelling of Princess Diana’s life before! As a child, he apparently played Prince Harry in the 1996 TV movie Princess in Love, a fictional retelling of Diana’s relationship with James Hewitt. (Source: Jay Webb’s CV ). I could barely find any photos from this film online, and it has, uhm, poor ratings. I may have to go watch this and see how terrible it is. For research purposes, of course. :D

• The scene in which the Queen and Philip discuss the dance after reading about it in the newspaper didn’t actually happen back in 1985. Even though there were 2,500 people in the crowd, the dance didn’t actually make the news at the time (source: Town and Country). It was 1985 and people didn’t just have cameras in their pockets like we do now. The only photos of the dance were taken by a Royal Opera House photographer, and those weren’t actually published until 1995. Sleep said in his interview with The Guardian that their publication made Diana suspicious of him and they drifted apart after that. Note: This was really hard for me to believe, but I actually searched through a couple newspaper databases for any mention to Princess Diana and Uptown Girl in 1985/1986 and couldn’t find anything.

  • The back and forth between the Queen and Philip of "Why did you never dance for me?” “Because if memory serves you had your own ballerinas for that.” is a callback to the Season 2 premiere episode Misadventure, when the Queen found a photo of a ballet dancer in Philip’s bag when he was about to leave on tour.

• The avalanche that occurred in the show was a real life event, although it happened several years after the Uptown Girl dance. In March 1988, Diana and Charles were at Klosters with friends when an avalanche killed their long time friend Major Hugh Lindsay and seriously injured Patti Palmer-Tomkinson. Diana was back at the chalet with Fergie at the time, and said later that they waited for news for several hours in utter fear.

  • When the COVID-19 pandemic locked down things in the UK, The Crown only had six days of shooting left. The show had actually planned on shooting the avalanche scene during this time, and had to change course very quickly to adjust to the situation. The director of the episode said that when all their plans had to be changed, she looked at what she really needed from that scene in the story to affect the journey of Charles and Diana, and ultimately decided to show the avalanche from Charles’s perspective. The result was a completely created avalanche visual that ends up enveloping the camera’s view entirely. (Source: “The Crown Cast Tell the Story of Filming Season 4” on Youtube, around 9 minutes).

  • Remember the character named Sarah who we saw in the press office in the 48:1 episode immediately previous to Avalanche? That’s Major Hugh Lindsay’s wife. I thought it was an interesting choice to have us see her work so much in the margins of one episode and then see her grief take center stage in the next.

    • The Ethics of Dramatizing Real Life Tragedies: Sarah Horsley, Hugh Lindsay’s widow, said that she was horrified by The Crown’s inclusion of the disaster in the show and that she specifically wrote and asked them not to include it. It makes me incredibly uneasy that they didn’t listen to her on this. Yes, yes, creative freedom and all that, but …this is a real person’s life. I guess at least he wasn’t portrayed by an actor in the show (at least as far as I can tell) and the actual incident wasn’t shown beyond some very brief avalanche footage with no people present. However, this appears to be more the result of COVID-19 shutting down production and changing their plans than any attempt to portray the incident sensitively.
      As the show moves closer and closer to present day, the criticism of its representation of events that are still affecting the lives of people today grows. I’m sure this will only become more of an issue in future seasons. I myself have a few questions about the ethical issues surrounding shows that come this close to present day (and my mother has some OPINIONS on this, y’all). Peter Morgan has said that he plans to maintain a “20 year rule” with the series to avoid becoming too journalistic and in order to have a bit of perspective on the events portrayed. So sorry, we’re not going to get to see Prince William or Prince Harry’s weddings in Seasons 5 or 6, nor are we going to meet Duchess Meghan. (Source: The Standard).
      We /might/ get up to seeing Prince Charles’s wedding to Camilla, which occurred in 2005, but I really don’t anticipate seeing anything beyond that. Production on the fifth season starts up in June 2021, season 5 won’t premiere until probably November 2022, and season 6 won’t come out until probably November 2023 (if we’re basing predictions off the past release schedules). Including Charles and Camilla’s wedding would have to bend/break Peter Morgan’s 20-year rule slightly, but I think it would be a rather brilliant way to end the series, personally.

Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip in The Crown.

• The show depicts the Queen and Philip waiting for news about the avalanche anxiously, knowing that someone has died but not knowing if it is their son or not. I’m not sure if we have any stories about their reaction to this, but this does seem to echo Diana’s accounts of the event. She and Fergie were back at the chalet and apparently heard that /someone/ had died over an hour before they actually knew who it was.

  • Tobias Menzies has had very little to do this season frankly, but I thought his acting in this scene was incredible. His worry for his son was just written all over his face.

  • The royal household does in fact have contingency plans to deal with the deaths of all royal family members. This came up in Season 1’s Act of God, when Queen Mary (Queen Elizabeth’s grandmother) mentioned that there were rehearsals for her funeral going on outside her bedroom window. These plans are given bridge-based code names, just as the Queen mentions in the episode.

  • Those are:

    Queen Elizabeth II - Operation London Bridge
    Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother - Operation Tay Bridge (these plans were rehearsed for 22 years before her deaht, apparently)
    Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - Operation Forth Bridge
    Charles, Prince of Wales - Operation Menai Bridge

• In the show, both Charles and Diana view the avalanche as a turning point in their marriage. Charles sees it as a potential life ending event and realizes that he needs to be with Camilla. Diana sees the incident as a wake up call that she should change her ways and recommit to her marriage. I haven’t seen any evidence that either party reacted to this tragedy in these ways.

  • Diana said later that the tragedy taught her that she could cope with a horrible situation and take control of a situation even when Charles opposed her decision. Once they found out that Hugh had died, Diana quickly went up to pack Hugh’s suitcase and gave Fergie Hugh’s passport to give to Charles’s bodyguard. (Diana: Her True Story in her Own Words)

  • People have been criticizing the show a lot for making Charles look bad, but honestly, they kind of did him a favor in this story line. I’ve read in several places that Charles wanted to stay and keep skiing after Hugh Lindsay’s death but that Diana insisted that they had to fly back to the UK with Lindsay’s remains at once. (Source: The Diana Chronicles, Diana: Her True Story in her Own Words). This reaction was likely just shock though, as later, staff at Highgrove reported that Charles was completely overcome with horror and guilt and wasn’t able to eat. (The Diana Chronicles)

• The Queen calls out Diana for breaking her vows, which seems pretty hypocritical since everyone knew Charles had been in love with another woman for the entirety of his marriage.

  1. Charles is silenced yet again in the conversation with his parents and Diana and doesn’t get to speak his piece. This continues a theme with Charles’s interactions with his parents going back to Season 3 Tywysog Cymru, and continuing in Season 4’s The Balmoral Test. The Queen and Philip just want Charles to shut up and do his duty.

• When the Queen talks to Anne about Charles and Diana, Anne mentions that Diana has had affairs with her bodyguard and her riding instructor. This refers to bodyguard Barry Mannakee and riding instructor James Hewitt.

  • Her relationship with Mannakee isn’t covered in the Crown in any depth, but Diana said in private tapes recorded by her voice coach (which were released after her death), Diana described her relationship with an unnamed bodyguard as the “greatest love” she’d ever had. Although Manakee is not mentioned by name in the tapes, the details she gives about when she met him and how he died align with his life. (Source: Oprah Daily). Manakee was also married at the time, and eventually lost his position as her bodyguard after they were caught in a “compromising position” in 1986. (Source: The Diana Chronicles). We don’t know nearly as much about Diana’s relationship with Manakee as we do about her relationship with Hewitt.

  • James Hewitt was Diana’s horse-riding instructor. He spoke to newspapers in the early 90s and later wrote a 1999 book called “Love and War” about his affair with Diana; she confirmed their relationship in interviews. The affair started in 1986 and ended in 1989 when he was posted to Germany.
    Because Hewitt has red hair, there have been rumors for years that he’s actually Prince Harry’s dad. However, Harry was born a full two years before the affair began, so there’s really no actual grounds to believe this story. Diana always attributed Harry’s red hair to her side of the family, the Spencers. (Source: Harper’s Bazaar). The scenes in this episode about Diana sneaking Hewitt into Kensington Palace into the trunk (boot) of her car apparently are realistic. (Source: Harper’s Bazaar, Anna Pasternak’s Princess in Love)

  • Diana’s affair with Hewitt was pretty well known among their staff and the people around them, so it seems that Anne really may have known about all of these things. In addition, while they may not have addressed their affairs with their staff quite so openly as depicted in the show, it does appear that Charles’s relationship with Camilla and Diana’s relationships were common knowledge.

  • As I mentioned earlier, there isn’t any sign that the avalanche actually caused Diana to change anything about her relationships, so the scenes where she kicks Hewitt out and bans him from the Palace are made up. The BBC reported that Diana stopped taking Hewitt’s calls in 1992.\\

Diana with the cast of The Phantom of the Opera in The West End. I /think/ that’s baby Andrew Lloyd Webber there too.
(Credit: UPPA / Starstock)

Princess Diana with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

• The second Diana performance of the episode, in which Diana gave Charles a video of her performing a song from Phantom of the Opera, may not have happened quite the way it was depicted. The video has never been released and no one has officially ever talked about it, but back in 1988, The Washington Post reported that Diana did record something on the set of Phantom of the Opera and gave the video to Charles as a seven year anniversary gift. Wash Post also reports though that Andrew Lloyd Webber was there at the time, which he denied to The Telegraph. It’s unclear whether she actually sang in the video or not, but she definitely at least danced.

  • Diana really did love Phantom of the Opera and saw it numerous times. Andrew Lloyd Webber confirmed this via tweet, along with a picture of him with her.

• Prince Charles has confirmed previously that his affair with Camilla began in 1986, after, in his view, his marriage had irretrievably broken down. Reports indicate that both Diana and Camilla’s husband Andrew knew about it. (Source: Insider). Of course, Andrew had already been having affairs for years and Diana also had her own relationships outside her marriage.

  • It’s hard to know how much Diana actually confronted Charles about the affair, but Diana did confront Camilla herself at a party in 1989. According to tapes Diana made for Andrew Morton for his book Diana: Her True Story (which were made years later and are from her own viewpoint, so there’s likely bias in this recollection), the interaction went something like this.
    Diana: “I know what's going on between you and Charles and I just want you to know that.”
    Camilla: “You've got everything you ever wanted. You've got all the men in the world fall in love with you and you've got two beautiful children, what more do you want?”
    Diana: “I want my husband. I'm sorry I'm in the way...and it must be hell for both of you. But I do know what's going on. Don't treat me like an idiot."

Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles and Erin Doherty as Princess Anne in The Crown.

Prince Edward, Prince Charles, and Princess Anne (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).

• When Charles complains to Anne about the situation, she points out to him that Camilla and Andrew’s marriage is actually happy in its own way, stating “You’re not Romeo and Juliet.” It’s a little unclear how true this is, but reports do indicate that Andrew was aware of Camilla’s relationship with Charles, didn’t have any problems with it, and the couple remained friendly after their divorce, so it’s quite possible that this is a correct characterization.

• In the show, Diana repeatedly calls Charles, but he repeatedly ignores her. I pointed out in my earlier post that the colors blue and yellow seem pretty important to their relationship. Diana seems to be wearing blue more when she’s in love with Charles and they’re connecting, but seems to wear more yellow when they’re at odds. This isn’t super consistent, but that color juxtaposition shows up a LOT in the montage of Diana calling Charles and him ignoring her; at one point, he’s in blue and completely surrounded by yellow walls, which seems to indicate the huge emotional distance between them.

Left: Emma Corrin as Diana in The Crown.
Right: Princess Diana (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty).

Left: Emma Corrin as Diana in The Crown.
Right: Diana as a young teenager.

• The Crown depicts Charles as having spies that watch Diana, who inform him when her affair with Hewitt resumes. It appears that Charles did have courtiers around Diana who reported back to him, at least. On a very weird note, in 1998, the UNITED STATES National Security Agency admitted that they actually had “1,056 pages of classified information about the late Princess Diana.” (Source: Washington Post, 1998). This is…bizarre to say the least, and the NSA never explained exactly why this happened, but did say that references to Diana in the intercepted conversations were incidental and that she wasn’t a formal target of the NSA eavesdropping infrastructure.

Season 2 Tiaras and Crowns of "The Crown"

All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

Other Posts about Crowns and Tiaras:
Diadems, Tiaras, and Crowns, Oh My! - an overview of types, definitions, and purposes
Disney Crowns and Tiaras: Historical and Modern Inspirations (Part I) - Snow White, Alice in Wonderland (cartoon and live), Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent, Robin Hood, and the Great Mouse Detective
Disney Crowns and Tiaras: Historical and Modern Inspirations (Part II): Cinderella, Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog, and The Sword in the Stone!

In a previous post that focused mostly on the medals and sashes often worn by royal characters on formal occasions in The Crown, I included a small amount of information on tiaras in the show, but never went into much depth. I’ve been wanting to do an quick overview of every tiara and crown worn by an English royal woman on the show for a while, and am just now getting around to it. My brain needs a break from all the research and just needed a quick look at something pretty so - here you go!

The Court Jeweller’s past in-depth blog posts featuring ALL the jewels in The Crown S1-S3 and overviewing the jewels in S4 were absolutely invaluable in gathering information about each tiara and crown in the show. Ella Kay does a brilliant job over there and has blogged about tiaras and jewels for years and years, so if this quick overview piques your interest, please go read everything on her blog; it’s absolutely fascinating and incredibly in depth on all sorts of royal jewellery from many different countries. The Tiarapedia she’s put together is also an incredibly valuable resource for anyone looking for tiara information.

S2E1 Misadventure: The Queen wears Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot tiara for a diplomatic reception; Philip adorably flirts with her when he fixes her zipper right before they enter the room.

I’ve been wondering why they’ve used /this/ tiara so much on the show, and I think it might be because it’s such a familiar looking tiara to modern audiences. It was one of Princess Diana’s favorites and Duchess Catherine now wears it a fair amount too. I couldn’t rind any recent photos of the Queen herself wearing the tiara however.

(Information from the Court Jeweller’s blog post on this episode)

L to R: Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth wearing a replica of Queen Lover’s Knot Tiara for The Crown; Elizabeth II wearing the lover’s knot tiara; Diana, Princess of Wales wearing the Lover’s Knot tiara (Credit: Anwar Hussein / Getty); Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge wearing the lover’s knot tiara (Credit: John Stillwell / Getty).

Later in the episode, the Queen attends the ballet wearing the Vladimir tiara in its “widowed” style (without pendant drops). I could not find screenshots of this except through the Court Jeweller, but you can go see them over there. This tiara does seem to be one of Elizabeth’s favorite tiaras, as she’s worn it consistently (widowed, with pearl drops, and with emerald drops) throughout her reign.

Queen Elizabeth II in various tiaras.
Credit Left to Right: Mark Cuthbert / Getty; Tim Graham / Getty; Reginald Davis / Shutterstock

S2E3 Lisbon: After a contentious talk on the royal yacht, Elizabeth agrees to give Philip the title of “prince,” and a mini coronation is held for him. During the ceremony, Elizabeth wears a replica of Queen Alexandra’s Kokoshnik. The Queen Mother wears the replica Greville tiara and Margaret wears the made-up tiara she wore to the coronation in the first season.

As noted by The Court Jeweller in their blog post on the episode, I’m fairly sure that no such ceremony took place when Philip was made a British prince. After Philip’s return from his trip around the Commonwealth, press reports kept coming out that Elizabeth and Philip were having marriage troubles. This annoyed the Queen so much that she not only issued a denial, but granted Philip the title of Prince in February 1957. This was reported in the newspapers but there’s no sign that there was any sort of official ceremony for it.

Philip was made a British prince in 1957. He actually was born “Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark” but gave up his Greek and Danish titles to become a naturalized British citizen shortly before his engagement to Elizabeth was announced in 1947. He apparently had been offered the title in 1955 and turned it down then, but his uncle Lord Mountbatten and his aunt, Queen Louise of Sweden, sort of insisted that he take it the second time. Philip probably didn’t want any fuss to be made about it.

Philip of course gets his own “Prince” coronet, which should be different from a ducal coronet, although I’ve had trouble actually putting a finger on what a standard prince coronet looks like. From what I’ve read online, a ducal coronet is usually a gold circlet with 8 strawberry leaves, with a crimson silk velvet lining with a gold tassel at its center, trimmed with a base of ermine. However, it looks like real Philip’s coronet at the coronation (when he was a duke, not a prince) actually…did not look like a ducal coronet at all. You can see in the photo that he actually has alternating crosses pattée and fleurs-de-lis, in an echo of the design of St. Edward’s Crown and the Imperial State Crown. Perhaps this was a special consort crown made for him? I’ve had trouble finding information on it anywhere, unfortunately.

Real Philip’s Coronation coronet is what is recreated in the Crown for his fake promotion to Prince ceremony. However, during the actual coronation scene on The Crown, he wore a totally different crown, which DOES appear to be just a regular ducal crown, with strawberry leaves. Weirdly enough though, it’s the exact same crown style that Lord Mountbatten is wearing in the coronation scene, even though he’s an earl, not a duke. Perhaps The Crown thought that the earl coronet was too odd looking for any named character to be seen wearing it? The earl coronet also has strawberry leaves, but features silver balls at the top.

Basically there were just some very strange decisions made around coronets for this show lol.

Left: A scene from The Crown; Right: Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip (Credit: Paul Popper / Getty).

S2E4 Beryl: Princess Margaret wears the Cartier halo tiara for her birthday portrait by Cecil Beaton (So I guess they finally got the right to recreate it for the Crown!). In real life, she didn’t wear any tiara for this specific portrait. She also later wears the halo tiara at Elizabeth and Philip’s tenth anniversary dinner (and to dump Billy’s ass). At the tenth anniversary dinner, Elizabeth wears a replica kokoshnik (probably Queen Alexandra’s kokoshnik again, although it looks a little taller. Maybe it’s the angle). I don’t think we have any photos of the actual anniversary dinner so sadly, I can’t confirm, but there are photos of them dancing and Elizabeth wearing a kokoshnik. The queen mother wears the Greville tiara, but couldn’t find a photo of her in this scene; you can check it out on Court Jeweller.

Toward the end of the episode, Elizabeth and Philip miserably get undressed and go to bed after a diplomatic function of some sort; Elizabeth wears the lover’s knot tiara for this. Couldn’t find a photo of this moment, but it is on Court Jeweller.

Top L to R: Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth and Matt Smith as Prince Philip in The Crown; Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip dancing at a state ball in Malta, 1967 (Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty); Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret in The Crown; Portrait of Princess Margaret.

Bottom L to R: Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret in The Crown; Princess Margaret (Credit: Daily Mail / Shutterstock); Princess Margaret; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

S2E6 Vergangenheit: David and Wallis wear paper/plastic crowns to a costume party. I couldn’t find a screenshot of Wallis’s crown, but I found a view of David’s (also, how wonderful is that octopus hat?). They really did wear paper crowns to a costume party at one point, but the ones in the show looked nothing like that.

S2E7 Matrimonium: For her wedding to Antony Armstrong-Jones, both in The Crown and in real life, Princess Margaret wore the Poltimore Tiara. This tiara was apparently one of Margaret’s favorite pieces, and belonged to her personally.

Left: Princess Margaret and Husband Anthony Armstrong-Jones leave Westminister following their wedding (Credit: Bettmann / Getty)
Right: Matt Smith and Vanessa Kirby as Prince Phillip and Princess Margaret in The Crown.

S2E8 Dear Mrs. Kennedy: The Queen wears the Vladimir Tiara with the emerald drops for her dinner and dance with Nkrumah.

Left: Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy) dances with Kwame Nkrumah (Danny Sapani) in The Crown.
Right: Photo of the actual dance between Queen Elizabeth II and Ghana President Kwame Nkrumah, 1961 (Credit: AP).

And that’s it for Season 2! There weren’t any tiaras or crowns in the last two episodes of the season, alas, as those were focused more on Charles angst and Philip ‘n’ Elizabeth angst rather than on any cool ceremonial occasions.

Funko Pop! Figurines of the Royals and the Photos that Inspired them

Other Posts Relating to English Royal portrayals in The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

Funko Pop! releases the most amazingly specific and niche figurines of various fictional characters from basically every franchise and popular commercial you can even comprehend, historical figures, and select modern celebrities. They’ve produced a few figurines of the English royal family over the years, although it looks like only the pink Queen Elizabeth figurine is currently available on their website. Most of these came out in December 2017, while the wedding Harry and Meghan and green/purple Queen figurines came out in December 2018.

As Funko Pop! noted in their December 2017 press release announcing the collection, “These products are our fun characterisation of the icons they represent, but they have not been endorsed or approved by any member of the Royal Family. They do not have any connection with and are not of a type supplied to any member of the Royal Family.”

I own most of these figurines and took detailed pictures of all the ones I had access to. I don’t have Prince Harry’s bachelor figurine, the red dress version of Princess Diana’s figurine, or the green and purple figurine of Queen Elizabeth.

Credit: Chris Jackson

Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom

The pink Funko Pop! figure of Queen Elizabeth II shows her in a pink coat, dress, and hat with red feather ensemble that she’s worn on numerous occasions.

The Queen’s coats are commonly designed by her dresser Angela Kelly at this point, and I would guess this one is as well (I haven't been able to find the designer/maker's name anywhere). Her pink hat with red feather trim is by milliner Rachel Trevor Morgan. The dress peeking out from under the coat actually has red and pink color blocking, which you only really notice if you’re looking at it really carefully. I was delighted to see that the Funko Pop! figurine does actually include this element, as the little sliver of dress on the figurine is clearly red, not pink.

I tried to get close up photos of the brooch on the figurine, as the Queen really loves brooches and was hoping it would clearly match one of hers, but even with my macro lens, only managed to grasp a vague oval shape with some slight detailing, but not enough to really get a clear idea of the shape. After looking through every photo I could find of the Queen wearing this outfit (thanks to Royal Hats for keeping such brilliant track of her hats and outfits), my guess is that it’s likely meant to evoke the Tudor Rose Brooch that she wore for Christmas at Sandringham in 2014. From her Majesty’s Jewel Vault discusses this brooch more over here.

The figurine also sports a tiny white line around the neck which is barely visible under the head. This is likely meant to evoke the Queen’s string of pearls.

The Queen’s ever present Launer handbag is lovingly recreated in the figurine. She’s carried similar black bags from Launer throughout her entire reign. I’m not a handbag aficionado or expert, but by my untrained eye, it resembles the Launer Traviata. The Queen’s most commonly used Launer bags are discussed in depth in this article from Town & Country.

The figurine also sports the Queen’s ever-present Cornelia James gloves, which she wears at most public appearances (she shakes so many hands that it’s just a sensible precaution, even pre-COVID).

The matching brightly colored coat and hat look has basically served as a uniform for the Queen for the past few decades at royal events, and there are many memes dedicated to how consistent her look is. she said before that she specifically wears bright colors so that everyone can see her.

The pink edition also came with a corgi figurine, which appears to most closely match the lower left corgi in this 2016 Vanity Fair cover photo and farthest to the left in the Queen’s portrait with her corgis on the steps (both by Annie Leibovitz). This corgi is referred to as Willow in the Vanity Fair article. If so, this is a very poignant tribute, as Willow was the very last of the Queen’s corgis. She died in 2018.

Credit: WPA Pool

The green and purple Funko Pop! figurine of the Queen, which released December 3, 2018, is the same shape and set up of her pink one, but matches the color scheme of the light green and purple ensemble she wore to her grandchild Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle in May 2018. This is a little odd as that outfit had numerous different details, including a different hat shape and trimming, a different fastening on the coat, a different brooch, and a multicolored dress underneath. The color scheme is quite distinctive though, and I don’t think she’s been seen wearing those colors on any other occasion. I’m guessing that while they were putting out a Duke and Duchess of Sussex set, they decided they might as well crank out a “royal wedding themed” version of the Queen using the same mold they already had used for the pink outfit. It’s a little sad actually; I would have love to see the actual trimming of that hat in plastic miniature form.

As for the Queen’s actual outfit at Prince Harry’s wedding: The hat was designed by the Queen’s dresser Angela Kelly and made by Stella McLaren. The Queen’s pale green dress and coat were made by Stewart Parvin. She carried another Launer handbag, although I haven’t been able to pin down the exact style.

Credit: Shutterstock

Credit: Jeff Spicer

Charles, Prince of Wales

Charles’s Funko Pop! figurine features him in an style he’s favored for decades - a double breasted suit with a floral buttonhole and a pocket square. This exact color combination seems to combine a few photos though, as I couldn’t find any that showed Charles in this exact outfit. This is a bit odd, as every other royal Funko Pop! figurine appears to be based on an exact outfit and often even an exact photograph, as the poses are usually emulated as well. (If anyone does manage to find a picture of Prince Charles that matches this figurine, please let me know!)

Charles is really consistent in his clothing brands, so if this is based off one or more photos of Charles, the figurine clothes likely are based off of a suit made by either Gieves & Hawkes or Anderson & Sheppard, shoes from Crockett & Jones, and a shirt from Turnbull & Asser.

The flower, interestingly enough, seems to resemble a remembrance day poppy.

Credit: Tim Graham

Credit: Everett/Shutterstock

Diana, Princess of Wales

Diana’s Funko Pop! sports a black off-the-shoulder gown by Victor Edelston that she wore on several occasions, including when she famously danced with John Travolta at the White House in 1985. The ensemble recreated in this figurine, however, echoes the specific outfit she wore on November 2, 1987 at a banquet in Bonn, Germany. She accessorized with the Spencer tiara, a sapphire and diamond jewelry suite which featured a necklace, bracelet, and earrings, and a black clutch.

The Spencer Tiara, as its name suggests, is owned by Diana’s family and parts of it date back to 1919. Diana and both her sisters wore the Spencer Tiara at their respective weddings. The Court Jeweller has more details and pictures of the tiara over here.

This dress is actually so famous that it has its own Wikipedia entry! Wikipedia says that the dress is actually midnight blue, not black, but it reads as black in all the pictures and is commonly described as black. When Diana sold her collection of gowns at Christie’s in New York in 1997 after her divorce from Prince Charles, the “Travolta dress” went for £100,000. All proceeds of the auction went to the Royal Marsden Hospital Cancer Fund and AIDS Crisis Trust.

The suite of jewelry was given to Diana by the Sultan of Oman in 1986.

There is also an alternate version of this figurine which appears to be identical in the black dress one except that the dress and clutch are both red. I could not find any photos of Diana having this exact same dress in red, but she did have some vaguely similar dresses. Apparently her midnight blue gown was specially made for her after she saw the dress in burgundy in Edelstein’s studio, so this figurine may be a tribute to that story.

Credit: Chris Jackson

Credit: Getty

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge

William’s Funko Pop! Figurine looks to match an outfit he wore on a three-weak tour of New Zealand and Australia in April 2014. His figurine sports a single-breasted navy suit, blue and maroon tie, white shirt, and medals, although he isn’t wearing a red flower like he did in real life.

He’s worn this outfit again since, in November 2018 at a remembrance festival. Apparently he’s worn that tie on and off since 2006; it’s actually in the colors of his old regiment, the Blues And Royals.

William’s watch is also quite visible in his figurine - this may be his Omega Seamaster Professional. It’s rumored that it was a gift from his mother, but I haven’t seen this confirmed anywhere.

William’s medals commemorate his military service (in addition to the Blues and Royals, he also served in the RAF Search and Rescue). These medals specifically are the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Credit: WPA Pool

Credit: WPA Pool

Credit: Max Mumby

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge
Kate Middleton’s Funko Pop! recreates a Roland Mouret gown in royal blue that she wore on June 9, 2016 at a SportsAid event. She wore it with gold hoops and a clutch, which she carried in front of her much like is shown in the figurine. Her sapphire and diamond engagement ring, originally Princess Diana’s, is also visible on the figurine.

Kate often wears Roland Mouret dresses and has gravitated to sapphire blue outfits on multiple occasions. Kate is known for driving major sales to brands she wears in a phenomenon often called “The Kate Middleton Effect.” This effect has been seen in outfits worn by her sister-in-law Meghan Markle as well.

Her trademark voluminous brown waves are on display here as well, and are somewhat emulated in her Funko Pop! figurine.

Credit: Dave J Hogan

Credit: Samir Hussein

Credit: Anthony Devlin

Prince Harry (He was not given the title Duke of Sussex until he got married)

Prince Harry has the distinction of being the only royal with two entirely different Funko Pop! figurine looks. His December 2017 Funko Pop! figurine wore an outfit almost exactly similar to Prince William’s, except that he sports one more medal. This matches the outfit that he wore at the Dunkirk world premiere on July 13, 2017. In it, he’s wearing a blue and maroon striped Blues and Royals tie just like his brother’s. It appears that he’s worn it on many other occasions as well.

His medals specifically are: the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, and the Afghanistan Operational Service Medal.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

A double portrait of Prince Harry and Prince William, 2009, Nikki Philipps

For his wedding on May 19, 2018, Prince Harry wore a frockcoat uniform of the Blues and Royals, which notably feature fabric braids down the front and red stripes on the side of the legs. Here, he’s wearing four medal ribbons: the K.C.V.O. (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order), The Queen’s Golden Jubilee, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and Afghanistan with Rosette. He’s also wearing his Pilots’ Wing badge (above the ribbons) and the Star of the Grand Cross Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (below the ribbons). (Source: Royal Central)

Dege & Skinner made Harry’s frockcoat for the wedding, and also made the uniforms that both Harry and William wore for their official double portrait in 2009 (painted by Nikki Philipps). Dege & Skinner actually was originally only asked to make miniature frockcoat uniforms for the four pageboys at the wedding, but they offered to make Harry a new coat as well, so he accepted.

Harry’s choice to keep his beard even while wearing a military uniform was a little surprising, as military rules tend to ban facial hair while in uniform. However, since he’s not in active service, it was allowed, and really seems to indicate his desire to do things his own way.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

Meghan’s Funko Pop! figurine, of course, features her in her famous wedding day look.

Meghan’s dress, made from silk cady and featuring a bateau neckline and three quarter sleeves, was designed by Claire Waight Keller at Givenchy.

While the dress was relatively simple, Meghan’s wedding veil featured embroidery of distinctive flowers from all 53 countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, as well as flowers from her native state, California, and from the garden of Kensington Palace. At full length, it was five meters, almost 16.5 feet long! There’s a full list of all the flowers featured over at Royal.uk which is super fun to read through! Funko did a decent job trying to emulate the veil, considering their size and production restrictions, and you can kind of see that the different patterns are supposed to represent various flowers.

The Queen lent Meghan Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau to wear for the wedding. This tiara dates back to 1932 and features a centre detachable brooch from 1893. A lot of detail was lost in the figurine’s rendition of the tiara, of course, but there’s definitely enough there that you can easily tell what tiara it’s supposed to be.

Meghan also wore Cartier earrings and a bracelet. Her engagement ring is vaguely represented in the figurine, but not in any sort of detail.

The wedding bouquet included a variety of flowers, including a few that Prince Harry actually went out and picked from Kensington Palace’s garden. Forget-Me-Nots, his mother Diana’s favorite flower, were particularly featured. As is traditional for royal brides, the bouquet also included a few sprigs of myrtle picked from a plant originally grown on the Isle of Wight by Queen Victoria. The figurine includes a few of these details, but it doesn’t have as much detail or texture as the actual bouquet, of course.

Season 1 Tiaras and Crowns of "The Crown"

All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

Other Posts about Crowns and Tiaras:
Diadems, Tiaras, and Crowns, Oh My! - an overview of types, definitions, and purposes
Disney Crowns and Tiaras: Historical and Modern Inspirations (Part I) - Snow White, Alice in Wonderland (cartoon and live), Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent, Robin Hood, and the Great Mouse Detective
Disney Crowns and Tiaras: Historical and Modern Inspirations (Part II): Cinderella, Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog, and The Sword in the Stone!

In a previous post that focused mostly on the medals and sashes often worn by royal characters on formal occasions in The Crown, I included a small amount of information on tiaras in the show, but never went into much depth. I’ve been wanting to do an quick overview of every tiara and crown worn by an English royal woman on the show for a while, and am just now getting around to it. My brain needs a break from all the research and just needed a quick look at something pretty so - here you go!

The Court Jeweller’s past in-depth blog posts featuring ALL the jewels in The Crown S1-S3 and overviewing the jewels in S4 were absolutely invaluable in gathering information about each tiara and crown in the show. Ella Kay does a brilliant job over there and has blogged about tiaras and jewels for years and years, so if this quick overview piques your interest, please go read everything on her blog; it’s absolutely fascinating and incredibly in depth on all sorts of royal jewellery from many different countries. The Tiarapedia she’s put together is also an incredibly valuable resource for anyone looking for tiara information.

S1E1 Wolferton Splash: Princess Elizabeth wears Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara for her wedding. (Information from the Court Jeweller’s blog post on this episode)

L to R: Claire Foy as Princess Elizabeth wearing a replica of Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara for The Crown. Princess Elizabeth wears the real Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara on her wedding day in November 20, 1947 (Credit: Popperfoto / Getty). Famously, the fringe broke and had to be hurriedly repaired before the ceremony (you can see that it looks slightly uneven around the middle).

S1E3 Windsor: The new Queen Elizabeth wears the Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot Tiara while out at a formal occasion. I could not find any photos of Elizabeth wearing this tiara in this episode except on The Court Jeweller blog, but you can go see it over there on her blog post about this episode.

S1E5 Smoke and Mirrors: In a flashback, Elizabeth’s father Bertie (whose regnal name was George VI) tries on the St. Edward’s Crown. Elizabeth also tries on this crown in the present. Note: she’s wearing almost exactly the same colors and outfit she wore in S1E1 when she gazed on the crown toward the end of the episode, possibly indicating how she’s inherited the throne so much sooner than planned.

L to R: Claire Foy as Elizabeth II in The Crown, trying on a replica of St. Edward’s Crown; Elizabeth II posing with St. Edward’s Crown in real life (Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty).

Next, Elizabeth tries on the imperial crown. I couldn’t find photos of this moment except at The Court Jeweller, but you can go look at the screenshots over there.

Queen Elizabeth goes out on the town in her furs and tiara: The Vladimir Tiara, worn with pearl pendants

L to R: Claire Foy as Elizabeth II wearing a replica of the Vladimir Tiara in The Crown; Elizabeth II wearing the Vladimir Tiara (Credit: Anwar Hussein / Getty).

The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret are both shown wearing tiaras at the coronation . The Queen Mother did in fact wear the circlet from her crown, although the replica of it is a bit awkward. In real life, Princess Margaret wore the Cartier Halo Tiara at the coronation, but The Court Jeweller reports that there were copyright issues preventing it from being used, so they replaced it with another. I’m not quite the tiara expert that others are, but the tiara in the show seems to slightly resemble Queen Mary’s Diamond Bandeau, which Meghan Markle wore on her wedding day to Prince Harry. (Information from The Court Jeweller’s blog on this episode)

Margaret also wore some sort of coronet for part of the coronation ceremony. In the United Kingdom, peers (what we would think of as nobles, with a specific title such as Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount, or Baron) wear specific coronets for their rank to the coronation of a new monarch along with their coronation robes. Coronets do not have any stones. Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth also both wore simple coronets at their father’s coronation.

L to R: Victoria Hamilton as the Queen Mother and Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret in The Crown. Hamilton wears a replica of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s crown, without its arches. Margaret’s tiara in this scene does not appear to be a replica of any one tiara but somewhat resembles the Queen Mary’s Diamond Bandeau.; the real life Queen Mother (wearing her crown) and Princess Margaret (wearing a coronet) at the coronation (and a very bored Prince Charles)(Credit: Hulton Deutsch / Getty); Princess Margaret wearing the Halo Scroll Tiara.

In The Crown, the Queen is shown wearing the George IV State Diadem, which is traditionally worn by queens and queens consort in procession to coronations and state openings of Parliament. Elizabeth wore the diadem on her way to the coronation and on her procession down the aisle, was then crowned with St. Edward’s crown, and then wore the Imperial State Crown as she left Westminster Abbey.

L to R: Claire Foy as Elizabeth II wearing a replica of the George IV State Diadem on The Crown; Elizabeth II wearing the real George IV State Diadem as she arrives at Westminster Abbey for her coronation on June 2, 1953 (Credit: Topical Press Agency / Getty).

L to R: Promo photo of Claire Foy from The Crown wearing the replica St. Edward’s Crown; Elizabeth II wearing St. Edward’s Crown after her coronation on June 2, 1953 (Credit: Print Collector / Getty); Promo photo of Claire Foy from The Crown wearing the replica Imperial State Crown; Elizabeth II wearing the Imperial State Crown at the end of her coronation in Westminster Abbey.

S1E6 Gelignite: Elizabeth wears the Lover’s Knot Tiara again for a formal event. Again, I couldn’t find generally available screenshots for this, so you’ll have to check it out over on The Court Jeweller’s post on the episode.

S1E8 Pride and Joy: Princess Margaret, representing the Queen while Elizabeth and Philip are touring the commonwealth, is originally given the weird tiara she wore at the coronation to wear, but asks to change it instead. At the actual event, she wears the replica version of the Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot Tiara. I couldn’t find any photos of the real Princess Margaret wearing the lover’s knot (because it wasn’t hers, which is made clear within the episode’s dialogue), but here’s the real Queen Elizabeth wearing it. (Information from The Court Jeweller’s post on this episode)

A portrait of the Queen Mother wearing the Greville Tiara by Richard Stone (1986).

L to R: Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret on The Crown wearing a replica of Queen’s Mary’s Lover’s Knot Tiara; Elizabeth II wearing the real Lover’s Knot tiara (Credit: Mirrorpix).

S1E9 Assassins: Elizabeth wears the Lover’s Knot tiara for dinner at Downing Street (in honor of Winston Churchill’s stepping down from office). You can see The Court Jeweller’s screenshots in her blog post on the episode over here. A few other tiaras appear at Churchill’s formal dinner, but as I’m only covering royal tiaras, you’ll have to go check those out over there.

Do you think they just hadn’t had time to make more tiaras for her to wear in this first season? It’s rather odd that they repeated the lover’s knot so many times in one season.

S1E10 Gloriana: The Queen Mother wears the Greville Tiara during a ball at Balmoral. I couldn’t find any other screenshots of her wearing this, but you can see it over on the Crown Jeweller’s blog post on the topic. Here’s a portrait of the real Queen Mother wearing the Greville Tiara though.

Elizabeth wears the Lover’s Knot tiara (again). Margaret wears the weird coronation tiara again. Seriously, I really think they just hadn’t had time to make many tiara replicas at this point.

In the very final shot of Season 1, Elizabeth II is shown wearing the George IV State Diadem again for her portrait as queen.

L to R: Claire Foy as Elizabeth II wearing a replica of the George IV State Diadem on The Crown; Elizabeth II wearing the George IV State Diadem.

It was great fun putting this together and actually rather quick for me, so I’ll be putting together an overview for each season here soon. Stay tuned. :)

Over-Analyzing The Crown: S4E8 48:1

All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1”
Season 1 Tiaras and Crowns of “The Crown”; The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown
Visual Cinderella References in The Crown S4E3 Fairytale

Since I had great fun over-analyzing every episode of Season 3 of The Crown last year, I’m doing the same thing this year! So if you haven’t watched Season 4 Episode 8 of the Crown yet and don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading now. :)

Content Warning: Some discussion of human rights violations, political violence, coup d’etats, murders, mass death. I’ll give a CW right before those portions of the post as well.

• The episode starts off with a flashback to April 21, 1947, with a cameo by Claire Foy as Princess Elizabeth before she rose to the throne. It’s her 21st birthday, and from Capetown, South Africa, Elizabeth speaks to “all the peoples of the British Commonwealth and Empire, wherever they live, whatever race they come from, and whatever language they speak.”
  Toward the end, she famously says, “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” This speech is, I believe, a word for word rendition of her actual 21st birthday speech, which can be read in full here.
  As she continues to speak, we pan away to people from all over the commonwealth listening to her voice on the radio while going about their day. It’s a short but very affecting montage. I really wish that they told us which towns/cities/countries we were seeing though.

  • Fun fact: This is actually the earliest chronological appearance of the Queen (apart from some childhood flashbacks), as the first episode in The Crown started with her wedding on November 20, 1947. Claire Foy’s reappearance was much remarked upon when she was spotted filming these scene back in November 2019.

  • This speech was supposedly given from the garden of Government House in Cape Town. I guess they moved it to the porch in the show for dramatic purposes. At the time, Elizabeth was touring South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) with her parents and younger sister.
    However, IT LOOKS LIKE there’s actually evidence that the 21st birthday speech was not delivered live or recorded in Cape Town at all, but may have been pre-recorded a week earlier at a hotel in Rhodesia.

    • The Telegraph noted in 2018:

      A new book, Queen of the World by biographer Robert Hardman, has suggested it was impossible for the speech to have been delivered at 7pm in Cape Town on the birthday, cross-referencing the sun-dappled photographs of the Princess reading it with the timings of April sunsets, and unpublished diary accounts.

      One such diary, kept by the King’s press secretary Captain Lewis Ritchie and now locked in the Royal Archives, states that, on Sunday, April 13, 1947, at Victoria Falls Hotel in what was then Rhodesia: ‘At 6 pm, Princess Elizabeth recorded her speech for the BBC. It was afterwards played off for Her Royal Highness to hear and was a great triumph.’

      It was later broadcast from Cape Town as if live.”

  • The scenes we see, which all include radios of some sort, from what I can tell (but most of these are like 4 second pans so it’s hard to tell): (No, I’m not even going to try to guess too much which of these places is which, I am not familiar enough with the culture and racial makeup of all the people in these places to even try. Plus, I’ve already done a lot of research on who was in the Commonwealth in 1985 and I don’t want to have to do it for 1947 too, lol. The time of day, plants, animals, and landscape in each scene are definite clues, so if anyone wants to take a crack at guessing which is which, go for it).

    • Men listening from a barbershop set up outside (appears to be night)

    • Men and a boy walking through a rural pond with goats in the background (daytime)

    • Various people putting up their equipment after fishing on a beach (looks like dusk)

    • Women wringing out and hanging out clothes (daytime)

    • Men with rifles sitting outside of tents with camels in the background and surrounded by desert plants (daytime)

    • A man lying on a bed and two women sitting by him (sun coming through the window)

    • Various people sitting and standing outside a house in the rain, one woman sorting some sort of green crop. Chiles also feature in a basket out front.

    • Men inside and outside of a pickup truck filled with sheep (daytime)

    • Women, maids, and ranchers gathered around a radio listening (daytime - looks like morning light to me), distinctive orange flowers in a vase in the back.

    • A group of women playing games and talking in a common room at Oxford - Margaret Roberts shushes those that are talking and then walks out under the Hertford Bridge in Oxford, England (a city landmark).

Top: The Crown; Bottom: The real life Princess Elizabeth on her 21st birthday (Credit: Topical Press Agency / Getty).

Left: Margaret Thatcher back when she was Margaret Roberts in college; Right: Margaret Roberts in The Crown.

• The Commonwealth of Nations (usually just called the Commonwealth) is now a voluntary political association of 54 member states. Although the commonwealth members are not legally obligated to each other, the states basically work together to promote specific values. These core principles were outlined in the 1971 Singapore Declaration and the Lusaka Declaration of 1979 as: support for the United Nations and world peace, egalitarianism and individual liberty, the eradication of poverty, ignorance, disease, and economic inequality, opposition to racism and gender discrimination, free trade, institutional cooperation, multilateralism, and the rejection of international coercion.

  • The Head of the Commonwealth is Queen Elizabeth II; although the position is not technically hereditary, Prince Charles was appointed her successor to this role in 2018. This is a largely symbolic role with no involvement in the day to day governance of any of the commonwealth member states.
    As depicted in this episode, decisions involving the Commonwealth are generally made at the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). The Commonwealth Secretariat is the Commonwealth’s central agency and institution and is in charge of basically all the administrative aspects of the Commonwealth: setting up meetings, helping countries implement policies and decisions of the Commonwealth, and assisting with the development of various policies. The secretariat is run by an elected Commonwealth Secretary-General.
    Nearly all of the member countries of the commonwealth are former territories of the British Empire. (Source: The Commonwealth and the very helpful Wikipedia charts specifying the system of government of each state)
    I should note that in 1985-1986, when the majority of this episode is set, South Africa was not part of the Commonwealth, as it was basically kicked out after it became a republic in 1961 due to its racial apartheid policies. It was readmitted in 1994 after its first multi-racial elections were held.

  • The Commonwealth in 1985 (the list of commonwealth countries at the bottom of this 1985 document from The South African Institute of International Affairs reviewing the events at CHOGM in Nassau in 1985 was very helpful in compiling this last. This document also provides valuable contemporaneous background information from a supposedly neutral research source based in South Africa; I’ve skimmed this over and haven’t found anything terribly objectionable in it, but if I’ve missed something, please let me know.)

    • 16 of the member states were also Commonwealth realms and had the Queen as their head of state. Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis (sometimes Saint Christopher and Nevis), Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, *Tuvalu, and United Kingdom
      *(Tuvalu was a special member and didn’t have a representative at CHOGM but appears to have been counted for the 48:1 episode and line purposes)

    • 28 of the member states were republics of various types: Bangladesh, Botswana, Cyprus, Dominica, Fiji , The Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, India, Kenya, Kiribati, Malawi, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, *Nauru, Nigeria, Western Samoa (now known as Samoa), Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
      Since 1985, 6 other republics have joined - Cameroon, Mozambique, Namibia, Pakistan, Rwanda, and South Africa.
      *[Nauru was a special member and didn’t have a representative at CHOGM but appears to have been counted for the 48:1 episode and line purposes]

    • 5 of the member states are monarchies that do not have Queen Elizabeth at the head: Brunei, Swaziland (known known as Eswatini), Lesotho, Malaysia, Tonga

• The Commonwealth montage, still backed by the audio of Elizabeth’s speech, ends with baby Margaret Thatcher (Margaret Roberts at this point in her life) at Oxford, listening to the radio, walking joyfully across campus in full Oxford academic dress (which is still worn for examinations and on numerous other occasions), and then pursuing office in the conservative association at Oxford. Once again, Margaret is shown primarily in blue and is the only woman seen in the association pictures. She stands out quite emphatically from the others. This seems to call back to how she stood out among all the men in her cabinet photos in S4E1 The Balmoral Test.

  • We also get a shot of her working in a chemistry lab, which does reflect Margaret Thatcher’s real career as a research chemist after college.

  • Then we get a quick shot of her graduation from Oxford, with her parents at her side, posing for photographs.

Left: Press Secretary Michael Shea on The Crown; Right: the Real life Michael Shea (Credit: PA).

Top: Sir Shridath Surendranath Ramphal on The Crown; Bottom: Sir Shridath Surendranath Ramphal with the Queen in real life.

(Note: I have lightened the top image a bit just so the details can be seen. I have to do this with screenshots from The Crown pretty regularly, alas.)

• Next we’re introduced to Michael Shea’s rather purple prose in his novel “Ixion's Wheel: A Threnody,” which is presented on the screen as its typed, to suit its….hilarious pretentiousness. After he finishes it on his typewriter, he submits it to his editor. She describes it as his “War and Peace,” and he jokingly asks that it be thought of as Ulysses instead. She dramatically jokes, “I shall set aside a year of my life,” and later says, “You deserve congratulations for being able to carry it up the stairs.”

  • War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, is famously long and clocks in at over 500,000 words in most English translations. Although there’s more than one famous literature piece known as Ulysses, Shea is likely referring to James Joyce’s novel Ulysses here, which is around 265,000 words long. For reference, most novels these days are between 60,000-100,000 words long.

  • Text on the screen tells us that his editor’s office is in Bloomsbury, London. Bloomsbury is a very artsy and culturally important area in the city which features numerous museums and colleges and is also home to Bloomsbury publishing. Bloomsbury’s artsy-fartsy reputation actually began back in the early 1900s, when a group of English, writers, artists and intellectuals (including Virginia Woolf) lived in and around that neighborhood and became known as the Bloomsbury set.

    • The actual text on the screen:
      ”It was the volte-face of Eurydice except I was Aristaeus, driving her on towards the serpent. 'Malachi, Maalichi...' Twice she called me by my name, twice she beckoned me with her outstretched dactyl. I stood in darkness and she in light, and yet here i was the diurnal, and she was the crepuscular, if such a nugatory distinction pertain. The aurora was breaking, the island, sea-girt, was fast stirring. I looked at her again, her dermis pellucid in the lambent sunshine seemed as if a fish skin pulled taut. She gave me one last glancing look, and then stepped off, and plunged down into the waxing viridescence of the Ionian Waters below. Morus tua, vita mea. The End.”

      • I am not going to bother trying to interpret this all but here are a few bits:

        • Eurydice, Aristaeus, serpant: In Greek Mythology, Eurydice was a nymph married to the legendary musician/poet Orpheus in Greek mythology. Aristaeus, a minor god, tried to pursue her one day and while escaping, she stepped on a snake. She was bitten and died.
          After her death, the musician persuaded Hades to let her leave the underworld and come back with him. Hades agreed, on the condition that Orpheus that he had to walk in front of her and could not turn and look back at her until they were both completely in the daylight. Toward the end of the journey, after Orpheus had reached the light but Eurydice was still slightly behind, Orpheus turned to look at her. She was immediately whisked back to the underworld.

        • Malachi traditionally is said to have written the book of Malachi in the Hebrew Bible. Very little is known about him, and he may not have actually existed.

        • “Ionian waters” - refers to the Ionian Sea, which is a bay of the Mediterranean Sea that stretches from Southern Italy to Western Greece.

        • Morus tua, vita mea - Latin for “your death, my life.”

        • Ixion's Wheel: A Threnody - In Greek mythology, Ixion was the king of the Lapiths. He had a habit of getting into trouble, to say the least. He eventually was thrown out of Olympus and bound to an “ever-spinning fiery wheel for eternity” by Hermes.
          A Threnody is a song or poem to mourn the dead.

• Michael arrives at work at Buckingham Palace and happily greets everyone he walks by. His colleague Sarah tells him that a newspaper is asking for confirmation of “an apparently open secret in Commonwealth government circles that the Queen is deeply frustrated by Thatcher’s refusal to back sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.” Shea scoffs at the question and says, “You should know better than to come to me with nonsense like that, Sarah. In the 33 years she’s been on the throne, the Queen has never once expressed a point of view about her prime ministers, positive or negative, and never will. Political impartiality and support of her prime minister is an article of faith to her.” This simple conversation basically previews all the plot points of this episode, in order.

  • We’ll see the press office throughout the episode and get to know its staff decently well. Pay attention to Sarah. She’ll be important in the next episode.

  • A TV in the background shows video footage of police in South Africa beating black protestors. A reporter notes that the brutality against protestors is causing increased international outrage.

• Next, we see the Queen meeting with a man she refers to as “Sonny” to discuss the atrocities in South Africa and the need for economic sanctions from the Commonwealth. The episode never quite tells us this, but Sonny is, in fact Sir Shridath Surendranath Ramphal, also known as Sir Sonny Ramphal, who served as Commonwealth Secretary-General from 1975-1990. Sonny notes that 48 of the commonwealth countries are now committed to sanctions, but that there must be “total unanimity” to implement them. Thatcher remains opposed.
  Note: The Crown can be pretty bad about telling us who specific people are sometimes, but this one seems pretty egregious. I genuinely had no idea who Sonny was and thought he was just an advisor for the queen. It’s not realistic to expect your viewers to come in with in-depth knowledge of who ran the Commonwealth in the 1980s or even to be able to intuit that he’s working /for/ the Commonwealth when we really only see Sonny in his interactions with the Queen and Margaret Thatcher throughout this episode. It would have taken five seconds to mention that he was the secretary-general; why was this step not taken?

  • The Queen is wearing a green and orange plaid dress. This color combination is unusual enough that I feel like it probably symbolizes something? I can’t put an exact finger on it, but it may refer to the flag of QwaQwa, one of South Africa’s bantustans. Bantustans were territories that the ruling party pushed black South Africans into with the intention of segregating out the population; the Government stripped black citizens of their citizenship and most of their political and civil rights and declared them citizens of the bantustans instead.

    • Content Warning: Human rights violations, racism, political violence, coup d’etats, murders, mass death. [italicized text]
      
      Apartheid was terrifically complicated and horrible and lasted for decades. I attempted to research it (because I was never actually taught about it in any class I ever took) and was quickly overwhelmed by the huge scope and destruction of it all. There’s no way I can encompass it all. Very briefly though, apartheid refers to the South African’s republic deliberate, systemic, society wide physical and economic discrimination against the majority population of the country, namely, black South Africans. It was the systemic and deliberate segregation. degradation, and abuse of millions of people. They were forced to live in specific areas, did not have freedom to move about their country, and were given inferior education systems and job opportunities. Many protestors against apartheid policy were beaten and killed. Tens of thousands of people were abducted and/or detained without trial for years. 21,000 people were killed in political violence during apartheid (including 14,000 deaths during the transition process from 1990-1994).(Source: Crime Against Humanity, Analyzing the Repression of the Apartheid State)
      
      End Content Warning.

• Margaret rants to her ministers, saying “Why do we allow our queen to fraternize with countries like Uganda, Malaysia, Nigeria, Swazi land?” She states that these countries have unelected dictators and despots with appalling human rights records. I find it really unintentionally funny that she says “I’ll give her a frank conversation about not wasting my time” while actually making dinner for her ministers (I mean, you’re the prime minister, you can probably hire someone to cook for you so you can spend your valuable time on like, running the country).

  • Thatcher can be difficult to relate to sometimes, but she actually makes some very good points in this episode. I’m /not/ an expert on any of the countries she’s mentioned, and am heavily heavily oversimplifying here, but I’ve researched them a bit and here’s just a small portion of what I discovered (I’m leaving out a LOT in every single case).
    
    Content Warning: Human rights violations, political violence, coup d’etats, murders, mass death. [italicized text]
    

    • Uganda: Only a few months before this episode takes place, President Milton Obote, who had led a government noted for huge human rights abuses throughout the Ugandan Bush War, had been overthrown in a coup d’etat. Amnesty International estimated at the time that Obote’s regime was responsible for more than 300,000 civilian deaths across Uganda.

    • Malaysia: In 1984, a diplomatic situation arose between Britain and Malaysia when several British newspapers reported on Sultan Iskandar of Johor’s coronation with headlines such as “Killer becomes King” (the Sultan had killed a man a few years earlier and been quickly pardoned by his father); the Malaysian government demanded an apology from the British government, which refused to do so. In addition, numerous Malaysian laws of the time (and even now) posed serious human rights concerns; media content and news was heavily controlled and the government often arbitrarily arrested those that threatened “social order” (such as political activists, labour activists, academics, and religious groups) and detained them for long periods without trial, sometimes for years.

    • Nigeria: Between Nigeria’s independence in 1960 and the events of this episode, six separate coup d’etats had taken place. Several of these regimes silenced their critics by jailing and threatening journalists, closing down newspapers, and banning organizations (there are still serious human rights issues regarding freedom of expression there still today). The government that had just come to power a few months before the events of this episode was notoriously and openly corrupt.

    • Swaziland: Political activities and trade unions were banned in Swaziland (now known as Eswatini) in 1973 when King Sobhuza II repealed the constitution, dissolved parliament, and assumed all powers of government. Parliament would not be allowed to meet again until 1979. The press was highly constrained and the king can waive an individual’s freedom of speech or press at will. Criticism of the king may result in prosecution for sedition or treason.
      
      End Content Warning.
      

  • Thatcher specifically makes her cabinet ministers kedgeree, which includes fish, rice, and eggs. It’s an Indian dish that was likely brought to the UK when India was a British colony, where it became a fashionable breakfast dish. This simple dish draws yet another line back to the UK’s former days as an empire and its connection to the Commonwealth.

Credit: Royal Collection Trust

Credit: WPA Pool / Getty

Credit: Royal Collection Trust

• Next we get the Queen trying on outfits for CHOGM, particularly a “sunshine chiffon” outfit which her advisor notes will pick up the yellow in the Commonwealth flag. Her wardrobe advisor (who is not named) specifically shows him her porcupine brooch, which refers to the Queen’s real life porcupine brooch, given to her by King Otumfuo Opoku Ware of the Ashanti Tribe in Ghana in 1972 (Ghana is, of course, part of the Commonwealth). Her advisor also mentions a diamond necklace that had been given to the Queen on her 21st birthday by South Africa.

  • Prince Andrew comes in to talk to his mother and tells her that he’s going to ask his younger brother Edward to be his best man, and not his older brother Charles. He relates this gleefully, in a “I’ll show Charles” way, and calls his brother an insecure, jealous fool. The Queen comments that this decision will “raise some eyebrows.” We also get a super brief glimpse of Sarah Ferguson (who was a friend of Princess Diana’s). Andrew and Sarah did not actually get engaged until after CHOGM 1985, as he did not propose to her until Feb. 19, 1986 (his 26th birthday). They married on July 23, 1986. Edward was indeed Andrew’s best man, although Charles gave a reading.

  • Andrew also refers to Charles’s vision of a “slimmed down” role for the monarchy. In real life, Charles has been advocating for this for years. Under his plan, the monarchy would become more cost effective, with only royals at the top of the line of succession actually supported by the Sovereign Grant. This dream is now closer to reality then ever before, as Prince Andrew himself is no longer participating in royal duties due to the backlash over his association with Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Markle have left their official roles as working royals, and COVID-19 has tightened purse strings and dialed back everyone’s appearances and roles.

  • Prince Andrew also says “like other second sons I could mention, I’d be so obviously be better [at being the heir] than him. Here, he’s referring to the Queen’s own father, a second son who became king only after his older brother abdicated from the throne.

  • In this conversation, the Queen also refers to her two families - her direct blood relatives and the commonwealth of nation. This tying together of the Commonwealth with her family and the immediate reference to her father helps illustrate again why the Commonwealth is so important to the Queen.

  • As Andrew walks away to greet Fergie, the Queen’s advisor notes that a specific dress will go well with the diamond necklace the people of South Africa gave the queen on her 21st birthday (when she gave that speech at the top of the episode). This necklace was indeed given to her on that occasion; , she has shortened it since and used the remaining diamonds to create a bracelet as well. (Source: The Order of Sartorial Splendor). She still pulls out this diamond necklace and bracelet for diplomatic visits, including her most recent visit to South Africa. I can’t figure out whether she actually wore it at CHOGM in 1985, but it seems possible, given the topic at hand.

• At the CHOGM meeting in the Bahamas, the Queen (wearing blue and red, picking up the blue in the Commonwealth flag but also representing the UK flag) addresses the meeting and says that the Commonwealth of Nations is her second family. Next, she fulfills her pledge to talk to Margaret Thatcher about sanctions against South Africa. The conversation doesn’t leave either woman vey happy.

  • Thatcher states that sanctions against apartheid won’t help and will just hurt and devastate both South Africa and the UK. She notes that the United Kingdom has three billion pounds of trade in South Africa. To put this in context, in 1985, the UK did about 105.9 billion in export trade and 101.4 billion in import trade. (Source: UK Trade, 1948-2019: Statistics)

• Although this character of Margaret Thatcher definitely has some points to make about the commonwealth, her views are also clearly influenced by an intense feeling of superiority and racism. Margaret is clearly just annoyed by the commonwealth’s existence– “There are ways of Britain being great again. And that is through a revitalized economy, not through association with unreliable tribal leaders in eccentric costumes.”

  • Margaret’s phrasing about making Britain great again was a common theme throughout her political career, dating back to a 1950 speech. Yup, she beat out Trump to the slogan by over 60 years.

  • The Queen’s rejoinder is that in some ways, she is herself, a tribal leader in eccentric costume, which points out Thatcher’s rather racist point of view. “To me all these countries are great countries with great histories….To you, the commonwealth is a distraction, a waste of time. It was the pledge I made forty years ago, on the wireless.” Margaret acknowledges that she remembers the speech and listened to it at the time, but continues on to say, “We cannot let the values of the past distract us from the realities of the present.” The Queen, clearly not too happy with Thatcher, says crisply, “48 countries of the commonwealth are now preparing a statement condemning south Africa and recommending sanctions, I am recommending you sign it.”

Above: The Crown’s Britannia. Below: The real HMY Britannia. I believe the views are switched in the pictures (look for the big wooden doors as a reference point).

Left: PM Thatcher wears a blue dress in The Crown in her power color.
Top Right: I couldn’t find many pics of her wearing a blue dress like this (as she usually wore suits) but I did find this one picture from after her time as PM (Credit: Mario Testino).
Bottom Right: A reference photo of the Queen herself in a similar outfit (Credit: Joan Williams / Shutterstock).

• We get another fun appearance by Denis Thatcher (who I personally find endlessly entertaining). After Margaret refers to the HMY Britannia as a big boat, Denis Thatcher insists that the ship is called a yacht when the queen is on it.

  • A yacht is generally thought of as a medium sized pleasure boat, at least 33 feet in length. The large commercial yacht code of Great Britain defines a large yacht as one that is 79 feet long or more. Superyachts are defined as yachts longer than 130 feet. The Britannia however, was 412 feet long!

  • This isn’t the first time we’ve seen HMY Britannia on the series (HMY stands for “Her Majesty’s Yacht”). It also popped up in S2’s Lisbon scenes. The real royal yacht was retired from service in the 90s and now (in non covid times) serves as a floating ship museum. The Crown didn’t film on the boat, but staff of the show apparently toured the actual yacht, took lots of photos, and built their own version. You can see photos and the layout of the ship over on the ship museum’s website.

  • Margaret Thatcher ends her phone conversation with her husband by calling him a know it all and affectionately calling him “DT.” This really was PM Thatcher’s nickname for her husband, as was noted in numerous articles about the two and his own obituary in The Independent.

• In Margaret Thatcher’s own lodging in the Bahamas during CHOGM, we see her crossing out lots of statements with a red pen in a montage that shows a similar scene repeated over and over again. More and more people watch every time to see if Thatcher will approve of the statement. She rejects numerous words to refer to the actions against South Africa throughout the sequence: sanctions, proposals, measures, actions, and controls.
  The queen ultimately states that they need a writer to solve the problem, not a “useless politician[],” and looks to Michael Shea. And then Michael Shea’s story from the beginning of the episode is brought full circle and he finally comes up with the word that will satisfy Thatcher - signals. Sonny later notes that among the signals she accepted were several actions that she would never have agreed to if they were actually called sanctions.
  At the end of it all, when the Queen was feeling quite triumphant, Thatcher challenged her and the other CHOGM' leader’s view by noting: “Did one person move to the 48 or did the 48 move to the one? Yes, I agreed to signals, but as you may now, with one simple turn, signals can point to an entirely different direction.”

  • A 1985 article in The Times said “there were many differing interpretations on the extent to which Mrs Margaret Thatcher had had to compromise to make agreement possible.” Thatcher herself claimed that she persuaded the other Commonwealth leaders that her approach was correct, stating “They joined me.” However, the Prime Minister of New Zealand disagreed, saying that she had made significant concessions and that Britain had “surrendered its position as to its literal interpretation of sanctions. ”

    • So it does appear that this level of nitpicking about words really did occur. The Times article described the final seven-page article as containing sanctions, threats, and inducement to encourage South Africa’s government to begin a dialogue with representative black leaders about replacing apartheid with a non-racial governmental system. Mrs. Thatcher said the document contained “psychological signals” to South Africa that the international community was losing patience with them. However, the word “signals” does not actually appear in the text at all.

  • The actual accord included the following items:

    • We, therefore, call on the authorities in Pretoria [the administrative capital of South Africa at the time] for the following steps to be taken in a genuine manner and as a matter of urgency:

      1. Declare that the system of apartheid will be dismantled and specific and meaningful action taken in fulfilment of that intent.

      2. Terminate the existing state of emergency.

      3. Release immediately and unconditionally Nelson Mandela and all others imprisoned and detained for their opposition to apartheid.

      4. Establish political freedom and specifically lift the existing ban on the African National Congress and other political parties.

      5. Initiate, in the context of a suspension of violence on all sides, a process of dialogue across lines of colour, politics and religion, with a view to establishing a non-racial and representative government.

    • The accord also discussed numerous other continuing measures and efforts, including an arms embargo, avoiding any sports contacts with South Africa, and numerous economic measures against the country. Those economic measures included:

      • a ban on all new government loans to the Government of South Africa and its agencies..

      • a readiness to take unilaterally what action may be possible to preclude the import of Krugerrands;

      • no Government funding for trade missions to South Africa or for participation in exhibitions and trade fairs in South Africa;

      • a ban on the sale and export of computer equipment capable of use by South African military forces, police or security forces;

      • a ban on new contracts for the sale and export of nuclear goods, materials and technology to South Africa;

      • a ban on the sale and export of oil to South Africa;

      • a strict and rigorously controlled embargo on imports of arms, ammunition, military vehicles and paramilitary equipment from South Africa.,

      • an embargo on all military co-operation with South Africa. and

      • discouragement of all cultural and scientific events except where these contribute towards the ending of apartheid or have no possible role in promoting it.

  • A History Extra article about this episode pointed out that according to recently released records from PM Thatcher’s time, she was actually much more active in fighting against apartheid than previously thought. “‘Mrs Thatcher was much more critical of South Africa in private than people thought,’ says historian Dominic Sandbrook. ‘She gave the country’s leaders quite a lot of grief behind the scenes, including telling them to release Nelson Mandela. She told the South Africans that Britain didn’t like the system and that it had to change. But because she refused to condemn it publicly, people assumed it must be because she secretly supported them.’”

Above: The Crown. Below: The real life CHOGM 1985 picture (Credit: John Shelly Collection / Getty).

I collected pics of PM Thatcher’s various power blue suits and had nowhere else to put it, please enjoy.
Credit:
Top L to R: Tim Graham / Getty; Shutterstock; John Stillwell
Middle L to R: Jean Guichard / Getty; Mondadori Portfolio / Getty
Bottom Middle: Keystone / Getty; Bottom Right: David Montgomery / Getty

• For the formal CHOGM picture, the Queen and Margaret Thatcher wear very similar outfits to what they wore in real life. However, Thatcher’s real dress in real life was blue, not red. The change in colors seems to really signify her opposition to the queen in this episode.

  • From close inspection of the pictures, I believe that Queen Elizabeth both in real life and in The Crown wore The Grand Duchess of Vladimir Tiara. This tiara was first given to Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a German princess who married a son of Emperor Alexander II, on the occasion of her wedding in 1874. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Maria hid her jewels, including this tiara, in a bedroom the palace. Her son and a friend eventually disguised themselves as workmen, got into the palace, and snuck out the jewels, which were taken to safety. Her daughter Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna sold several of her mother’s jewels, including this tiara, to Queen Mary of the United Kingdom in 1921. The piece can be worn with pearls and pendants or without (a tiara worn without its pendant stones is described as “widowed”). (Source: The Court Jeweller)
    The Queen is also wearing a diamond necklace and earrings, but I’m not as familiar with her non-tiara jewelry and am not sure of their identity. They aren’t the South African diamonds though, as those look very different than what is represented here.

• Michael talks to his agent friend. She suggests he write a political thriller about White Hall. However, Michael, shocked, says that he’s old fashioned and “would never betray those confidences or the people I am sworn to serve.”

  • White Hall was a residence of the English monarchs from 1530-1698 until it burned down. After, a street was built on the former location of the palace and named Whitehall. A number of government buildings sit on that street and thus, it’s common to hear “White Hall” used as a reference to the government overall.

• Discouraged, Michael goes to work at Buckingham Palace, where he is warned that the newspaper “Today” is planning to write a story about the tensions between Thatcher and the queen over the apartheid sanction discussions at CHOGM.

  • This is a big enough issue, that Michael Shea goes to the queen with her private secretary to report on the article to her. He says that the actual article will have little impact, but that it won’t be long before “bigger, more influential newspapers realize this warrants further scrutiny.” Shea advises that the Queen give some preemptive statement of support for the prime minister which would kill the gossip. Instead, the Queen asks, “What if on this occasion, I’d be happy to let the people know the displeasure is real?…You know how seriously I take my constitutional duty….to remain silent, but one has to draw a line in the sand.”

  • Here, they’re all talking about the sovereign’s traditional silence on all political issues in the UK’s constitutional monarchy. As CNN put it when reports of the queen’s views on Brexit became news in 2016, “Ever since her ancestor King Charles I lost his head in 1649 following the English Civil War with Parliament, British monarchs’ constitutional role has gradually distilled to this: representing the whole country – and steering clear of politics….The royal family’s position requires the support of parliamentarians – on either side of the political divide. To support one party – or cause – will only lead to trouble further down the line.”

  • There have been a few times where the Queen’s political views have slipped out, although she has never given a press interview and does not vote in elections. (Source: The Independent) Her views have emerged on the Scottish referendum, the delay in arresting a radical Islamist cleric, why the UK lost the American colonies, Turkey entering the EU, and of course, as shown in this episode, PM Thatcher’s approach to proposed sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. These views have pretty much all emerged due to leaks and people talking about their private conversations with her; she never speaks publicly on any political issues.

  When the queen suggests that she would be okay with confirming the rift between her and the PM to the press, Michael , looking aghast, advises strongly against it, saying that it “would risk doing serious and irreparable harm to the relationship between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street.” When the Queen insists on this course of action, Michael says that he would not go with the newspaper “Today,” but with a different one, with more heft and “a clear sense of the unprecedent nature of this, where they understood the rules of the game.” Shea insists on the private secretary (played here as Martin Charteris, although Charteris had retired years earlier) noting his objection, but then goes up to meet a few reporters from the Sunday Times at the pub.

  • Michael protests to the private secretary, saying the decision was reckless and irresponsible, and stated specifically that he wanted his objection noted. Eventually though, we see that he meets a few people at the pub, presumably reporters from the Sunday Times.

• Later, after the PM is tipped off about The Sunday Times piece, we get a fantastic scene in which the Buckingham Palace staff and the Downing Street staff both walk into Victoria station to get the newspapers fresh off the presses from opposite directions. There’s almost a West Side Story face-off feel about it all. The staff quickly distributes the paper and then we get a fun montage of shocked characters reading the paper: everyone in downing street, then Princess Margaret with her dog, Princess Anne with HER two dogs, Sonny reading it with several others, then we see Charles and Andrew reading it. Finally, we get to see Philip reading it to the queen, then to Denis, reading it to Margaret.

  • This framing of both powerful women being read the article by their husbands underlines their essential similarities, even as they’re facing off on such a polarizing issue. In addition, they’re both wearing grey prints at the time - the queen in a grey plaid and the PM in blue and grey print checks

  • The editor of the Sunday Times at the time actually wrote an article on the episode reminiscing about it all recently - you can read that over here.

• Later, right before their audience, we get another look at one of my favorite settings in the series - the Queen’s office in Buckingham Palace, which is bright yellow and COVERED in horse pictures.

  • This room is actually also briefly used in the recently released Bridgerton, as the Duke of Hastings’ office. This room is specifically the Large Smoking Room in Wilton House, which contains 55 gouache paintings of horses dating back to 1755. The yellow silk was only added to the walls in the last few years, so it’s possible that the room has appeared in other period dramas without my recognizing it (as it’s far more distinctive now with that yellow).
    The building, a former abbey, was actually originally granted to the forbears of its current owners by Henry VIII, although of course the house has gone through numerous renovations since then.
    Wilton House was a filming location for The Crown, Bridgerton, Pride and Prejudice (2004), Emma (2019), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Outlander (series 2), The Young Victoria (2007), and NUMEROUS other TV shows and films, so if you like period dramas, it may look familiar!

  • We get a very intense musical theme here which honestly reminds me so much of one of the Battlestar Galactica themes that it drives me NUTS. Like - similar chords and pounding beats and such.

•  Thatcher walks into her meeting to confront the queen with purpose. She notes that over the past 7 years, they’ve had 164 meetings. She states, “The editors told the Downing Street press secretary that the sources were unimpeachable, unprecedentedly close.”

  • A lot of this scene is just pure speculation and not based on facts that I can analyze, but it is an incredibly impressive one, in which Thatcher notes that of the two women, she is the one from a small street in a small town, not the Queen, thus implying that she is better able to judge the needs of the common man.

  • Their mutual Christian faiths are alluded to when Thatcher notes “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he only had good intentions. You see, he had money as well.” This line was plucked from a real life interview with Margaret Thatcher. I’m having trouble tracking down the exact source, but this specific quote is all over the place, so I believe it’s accurate. I’ll keep looking for a source and update this.

  • As they part, Margaret congratulates the queen on Andrew’s upcoming marriage, and points out that her son is getting married soon too. She then drops the bombshell that her son is now a busiessman, with significant interests in South Africa. This doesn’t exactly explain /everything/ she does throughout this episode, but it does illustrate how personal the issue actually is to her as well; she does not wish to ruin her son financially.

    • Mark Thatcher did indeed do business with South Africa and continued to be a shady ass dude and embarrassment to his family. He was a tax exile in Switzerland, then moved to the US, then had to move to South Africa to get away from tax evasion charges in the US, was investigated for loan sharking in South Africa, and then later was actually arrested for getting involved with a 2004 coup d’etat attempt in Equatorial Guinea. He is so shady, that it’s actually hilarious. The Guardian wrote an article about him at one point that said, “When Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher's blunt-speaking press secretary at Downing Street, was asked by the troublesome son how he could best help his mum win the 1987 general election, he reputedly answered: ‘Leave the country.’”

Top: Screenshot from The Crown, Netflix
Bottom: PA Images / Getty

Credit: Tim Graham / Getty

• The scene of the royal siblings hanging out, drinking, and bitching about their mother together right before Andrew’s wedding has become a fan favorite of the season, and it’s clear to see why. It’s rather iconic, particularly as it ends with Charles’s devastating put down of Andrew (noting that he’s a fringe member of the royal family who will never be king, so why would the press care about his wedding anyway?) and Edward’s final “That was impressively cunty.”

  • Charles said that the queen did what she had told him never ever to do - speak. This seems to be a pretty clear callback to the events of Season 3’s “Tywysog Cymru.” 

  • Charles’s put down of Andrew circles back to Andrew’s earlier claims that he’d be a better heir then Charles and that Charles is just jealous of him and…squashes them very thoroughly. His pointing out that William is now in line to the throne also points out the flaw in Andrew’s “i’m the second son” reasoning; if anything happens to Charles, it’s certainly not going to be Andrew who’s next in line to the throne.

  • These events really did happen pretty closely together. The Sunday Times story “Queen dismayed by ‘uncaring’ Thatcher” came out on July 20, 1986 and Andrew and Sarah married on July 23, 1986. And stories of the time really did note that the controversy over the article was somewhat threatening the good news of Andrew’s wedding. The LA Times said on July 22, 1986, “The growing political controversy that enveloped the traditionally neutral Buckingham Palace threatened to add a sour note to Wednesday’s royal wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.”

• In The Crown, after the press kerfuffle over the story continues even after the palace denied the story, the palace ends up betraying Michael Shea (who never wanted to talk to the press about the queen’s views in the first place, remember), blames him for the leak, and fires him. This is really not accurate to real life.

• One unfortunate consequence of the denial of the story – editor of the Sunday times has gone out guns blazing. The Private Secretary tells the Queen that the palace will have to give the press something to put out the fire - a culprit to deflect blame from the queen. He ultimately asks s Michael Shea to step down and be the culprit, even though Michael had strenuously advised against the plan from the beginning and objected to it.

  • Shea did ultimately admit that he spoke to a Times reporter but denied the specifics of it and said his statements were misrepresented. A New York Times article from July 29, 1986 discussed this more in depth, (I had to access this article through a library database, so I can’t actually link it directly, alas - the original Heseltine Times letter is behind a paywall.):

    • “The letter [written by Queen’s private secretary Sir William Heseltine and sent to the Times of London] confirmed what had generally been suspected when it conceded that Michael Shea, the Queen's press secretary, was the so-called ‘palace mole’ who had a series of conversations with a Sunday Times reporter before the newspaper proclaimed to the world last week that the Queen found Mrs. Thatcher's policies 'uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive.’ But having conceded that much, Sir William went on to belittle Mr. Shea as a plausible source for the sort of disclosures The Sunday Times was purporting to make. It was the press secretary's job to speak to reporters and answer their questions, the letter said, but a press secretary ‘certainly does not'‘ know the Queen's views on political issues.
      With the palace press secretary finally revealed as the newspaper's main source, two related questions were left open to debate. One was whether The Sunday Times had broken or merely strained the ground rules for what was supposed to be a nonattributable background interview. The other was whether Mr. Shea had been using the conventions of a background interview, which would normally protect him from identification, to spread concern that Mrs. Thatcher's adamant stand in opposition to sanctions against South Africa was proving to be an embarrassment to the Queen in her role as Head of the Commonwealth.”

  • Shea actually stayed on as the Queen’s press secretary through June 1987 (so for almost a year after his role in the leak became public knowledge) and gave his notice in March of that year. (Source: AP, March 3 1987). At the time, when he was asked if he’d been fired, Shea said bluntly, “That’s ridiculous. I have held the post twice as long as any other press secretary, and I have had an offer that I cannot refuse.” He became head of public affairs for Hanson Trust afterward. He eventually wrote and published over 20 books, including a memoir which I have been desperately searching for and can’t find anywhere.

  • Shea had been the queen’s press secretary since 1978 and had actually managed several media crises that we’ve seen depicted throughout the show - including the eventual exposure of Sir Anthony Blunt (the royals’ art curator) as a former Soviet Spy (Seen in S3E1 Olding - in which his identity was revealed to the queen, but not exposed to the press at that time), the press frenzy around Charles and Diana’s wedding (S4E3 Fairytale), Michael Fagan’s break-in (S4E5 Fagan), and rumors of Charles and Diana’s rocky marriage (seen in S4E6 Terra Nullius).

• Queen watches as Shea takes his box out of the front gate, clearly very upset. The queen herself looks upset. Then she goes back and sits down, pulls out stuff from her red box, looks at a photo of her father. As the episode closes out, we get audio from the 21st birthday speech at the beginning of the episode, noting - “My whole life, whether it be long or short, will be devoted to your service, and the service of the whole imperial family to which we all belong.”

  • Julian Jarrold, who directed 48:1, said in The Crown’s official podcast that he really thought the Queen’s dedication to the Commonwealth and her work with CHOGM was in huge part a tribute to her late father. George VI was the first head of the commonwealth. I haven’t been able to find sources talking about his specific dedication to the Commonwealth, but since he was willing to let India and other republics enter the commonwealth (initially all commonwealth members were countries who recognized George VI as king) and took on the title of “head of the commonwealth” instead of king in the organization, it seems that he considered it important enough to compromise on his role within the organization.

• Eventually, in the Autumn of 1986, PM Thatcher did agree to join the rest of the European Community countries in imposing limited economic sanctions on South Africa. (Source: New York Times, Sept. 17, 1986) That August, after extreme pressure from other Commonwealth countries, Thatcher reluctantly said she’d agree to sanctions if all other 11 community members agreed to them. (Source: New York Times, Aug, 5, 1986) The countries agreed to ban imports of iron, steel, and gold coins from South Africa and also prohibited new investment there by European companies.

Visual Cinderella References in The Crown S4E3 Fairytale

All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

Benjamin Caron, who’s directed at least two episodes in every season of The Crown so far, posted a number of interesting photo comparisons on his Instagram a while back of scenes from S4E3 “Fairytale” and scenes from Disney’s 1950 animated Cinderella. He generally only posted these with something along the lines of “Fairytale,” so he has not actually specified whether these were deliberate shot recreations or not, but I’m guessing that they were. He DID specify in the comments that the famous mouse running across one scene was intentionally put in there as an homage to the mice in Cinderella.

Diana in her Cinderella blue in her kindergarten classroom, positioned in front of a children’s display of Cinderella’s carriage and horses.

I’ve taken all these scenes, put them side by side (on Instagram, you have to flip back and forth), and placed them in roughly chronological order within the episode, for your perusal and enjoyment. All credit goes to The Crown, Disney’ s Cinderella, and of course, director Benjamin Caron.

You may see a few stray instagram buttons and dots, as I took these screenshots directly from there.

This all seems to be inspired by the words of the actual archbishop on Charles and Diana’s wedding day, which were played over the end of the episode: “Here is the stuff of which fairy tales are made. A prince and princess on their wedding day. But fairytales usually end at this point with the simple phrase, ‘They lived happily ever after.' As husband and wife live out their vows, loving and cherishing one another, sharing life’s splendors and miseries, achievements and setbacks, they will be transformed in the process. Our faith sees the wedding day not as the place of arrival, but the place where the adventure really begins.”

And that’s why you shouldn’t label a couple’s story, because you have no idea what’s going on in it. But that’s just my two cents, lol.

The outstretched hand of the stepsister is reflected in Princess Margaret’s outstretched hand for a manicure, as she (along with all the other royal women) wait to hear whether Charles proposed or not.
Although Margaret isn’t as unpleasant as the stepsisters, she ultimately loses the spotlight to the pretty and popular Cinderella/Diana, as is noted later in the season.

The mouse that launched a thousand tweets runs across the foreground as the Queen Mother waits for word on Charles’s proposal.

Benjamin Caron really did confirm in the comments of this post that the placement was intentional.

Then you have Jaq and Gus Gus from Cinderella.

The clock ticking as everyone waits on Charles’s news vs. the famous clock striking midnight in Cinderella.

“Balmoral Castle” in The Crown, which was actually portrayed by Ardverikie House vs. the King’s Castle in Cinderella.

Diana staring up at Prince Charles in the same way that Cinderella staring up at her prince. I previously noted in my post on Fairytale that Diana wears a ton of blue and yellow. Is that…a Cinderella reference? Although Cinderella’s dress is actually a light silver (yes, this is a hill I will die on), it’s always portrayed as blue in promotional material. And the Prince in Cinderella wears white and yellow.

The gates opening at Buckingham Palace vs. The gates at the King’s castle in Cinderella.

Diana goes up the staircase at Buckingham Palace to meet Prince Charles’s family for a formal dinner (notably wearing a dress that’s blue, white, and yellow plaid) vs. Cinderella begins her walk up the staircase to the ball at the castle.

The announcer in The Crown vs. The announcer in Cinderella.

A third party lens view of Charles and Diana vs. a third party lens view of the Prince and Cinderella.

The mail arriving in The Crown vs. The mail arriving in Cinderella.

Diana’s grandmother giving her princess lessons (which, as i mentioned in my previous blog on this episode, did NOT happen in real life) vs. the stepmother Lady Tremaine in Cinderella. It seems that Diana didn’t get along with this grandmother for quite some time (she testified against Diana’s mother getting custody in her parents’ divorce), so this reference seems pretty apt actually.

Also why does Lady Tremaine’s dress kind of resemble the pie crust collars Diana wears several times in this episode?

Diana looking out the window for her prince vs. Cinderella looking out the window for her prince.

Diana running down the spiral stairs in the palace vs. Cinderella going down the spiral-ish stairs from her bedroom to the main house.

The pumpkin carriage in Cinderella vs. the pumpkin (far right, sort of buried under the instagram button) in the kitchen scene in The Crown.

Since the pumpkin came from the household’s garden for its own use, it actually kind of works to have the pumpkin in the palace kitchen!

Diana staring in her mirror in despair vs. Cinderella looking in her mirror.

The fireworks around the palace in The Crown vs. the fireworks outside a digital recreation of Cinderella’s castle at Walt Disney World, as seen in the logo before each Disney film.