Well, it’s official. I finally finished watching the last part of the last season of The Crown, a biographical drama on Netflix depicting the life of the late Queen Elizabeth II. This later season covers some crucial turning points in the lives of the people in the royal family. In episode 8, “Ritz,” Margaret, Elizabeth’s younger sister, has to confront serious health issues. She suffers a serious stroke while partying with her friends. She is reciting a poem while smoking a Chesterfield cigarette, and then she loses consciousness, and she hears loud ringing in her ears. Before she knows it, she has collapsed. She gets serious medical attention, and the doctors tell her she has to make serious changes to her lifestyle, one of which is that she cannot smoke any more cigarettes or drink alcohol. In the earlier seasons, Margaret is seen in just about every scene smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of alcohol. Even after she gets a lung operation (the same one that her father, King George, underwent because he, too, smoked a lot), she continues to smoke. However, as she gets older, the doctors tell her that she cannot continue smoking and drinking anymore because they could be triggering her strokes. This is really painful for Margaret, and she starts to have a “screw-it” mentality, thinking, “Well, I’m going to die anyway.” After she gets her first stroke, she is shown having to learn how to speak and walk again, and the staff are shown dumping her many bottles of whiskey and her Chesterfield cigarettes down the toilet. While on vacation with her longtime friend, Ann, she still smokes cigarettes and drinks alcohol, and while in the shower, she experiences the ringing in her ears and then collapses. She turns on the hot water and collapses, leaving her with serious burns on her feet. Elizabeth is worried about Margaret’s health, but Margaret tells her that it doesn’t matter anymore and that she is going to die anyway, so she might as well do what she wants. Margaret’s birthday is coming up, and she wants to celebrate her birthday at The Ritz. However, Elizabeth doesn’t want anyone to know about her time at The Ritz because she is still a public figure and anything she reveals about her past could be used against her, so when Margaret tries to bring it up at her birthday celebration, Elizabeth cuts her off and gives a moving speech about her relationship with Margaret. There is a flashback to May 8, 1945, to when Margaret and Elizabeth are looking out the window and seeing everyone celebrating Victory Day in the streets because World War II has ended and the Allied Powers, which included Britain, won. Margaret and Elizabeth leave Buckingham Palace, which they are not supposed to do, and go to a hotel in London called The Ritz. Elizabeth thinks they shouldn’t be doing this because it’s against the rules, but Margaret just wants to party and have a good time. An African American soldier leads Elizabeth downstairs to a jazz club where people are partying and dancing. Elizabeth dances with the soldier and has a lot of fun, and Margaret and her friends go downstairs to find Elizabeth dancing and so they join in. They walk back together to Buckingham Palace the next day. This memory is significant because so much has changed between Margaret and Elizabeth since Elizabeth became Queen. Before becoming queen, Margaret and Elizabeth were sisters having fun and running around the palace. But there is one scene in one of the seasons that sets up the tension between Elizabeth and Margaret as adults. Since she is firstborn, Elizabeth faces a lot more pressure to keep herself together, and her father, the king, trains her in government and politics because she is destined to become queen when he passes away. Elizabeth feels a lot of pressure, especially since she is reserved while Margaret is outgoing. Margaret tells her that she could be queen because she likes to boss people around, but when Tommy Lascelles, the private secretary in the palace, hears of this, he immediately tells Margaret that she is not fit to be queen and that Elizabeth is. When Elizabeth becomes queen, she begins to distance herself from Margaret. Margaret wants to do what she wants, including marrying Peter Townsend, who she has an affair with. However, Elizabeth can’t let Margaret do what she wants anymore since there are laws and structures that end up prohibiting Margaret from marrying Peter. Peter ends up getting kicked out of the palace and has to spend time abroad away from Margaret, and Peter ends up marrying someone else, leaving Margaret feeling frustrated and resentful towards Elizabeth. Even as they become adults, Margaret asks for work to do, but Elizabeth can’t just give her a job because she is under a lot of restrictions as well about what she can and cannot do as queen. So, Margaret has to find work to do, and while seeking therapy for her mental health, she ends up finding out about two cousins who were cast out by the royal family for having mental illness and tracks them down. Honestly, I admire Margaret in the show for doing this because quite a few characters in the show struggle with their mental health, yet it’s seen as taboo to discuss it. In season 4, Princess Diana suffers from an eating disorder but no one in the royal family asks if she is doing okay. They just think she is acting out or sulking, but in reality, she is in a terrible unhappy marriage with a man who has been unfaithful to her, and not only that, but Camilla, the woman he is having an affair with, relishes in manipulating the young Diana into feeling worse about herself.
Season 6, part 2, shows how Diana’s sons, William and Harry, grapple with the death of their mother, Princess Diana, and their strained relationship with their dad, Charles. William faces a lot of pressure because he is the older of the two siblings, and as the season continues, Harry and William’s relationship grows increasingly tense. William argues that he faces a lot more pressure than Harry in the public eye, and Harry becomes envious that William is seen as the perfect child while he, Harry, is seen as the redundant child, the spare. (Honestly, after watching this season, I want to read Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare.) In a later episode, Harry and William go to a party that is themed “Colonials and Natives.” William dresses up as a lion, while Harry decides to wear a Nazi uniform with a swastika on the armband. At first, it seems like no one notices, but two students end up taking a picture of Harry’s Nazi uniform and share it with the press, and the newspapers eat this up. Obviously, the royal family isn’t happy to know that Harry did this when they read the morning papers the next day, and Harry feels a lot of humiliation and anger after finding out that someone took a photo of him wearing the uniform and sent it to the press. While meeting with the Queen, Prime Minister Tony Blair tries to make it seem like it was no big deal, and that Harry was just being a teenage boy who didn’t know any better, but Queen Elizabeth tells him that Harry did this two weeks before Buckingham Palace was going to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, so they can’t just pretend like it was no big deal. This made me think of when photos and videos of Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau wearing blackface resurfaced, and Trudeau addressed it and apologized because at the time he didn’t know it was offensive. Harry also said that he regretted wearing that Nazi uniform, and later on decided to meet with a rabbi and get educated on the Holocaust. There have been times when I have called people out on stuff that was racist, sexist or homophobic. However, there have definitely been times when I have said something that was uninformed or ignorant myself, and I had to apologize and then educate myself, but I’ve grown in the process of doing this. One time, a few years ago, I made an offensive joke, and someone told me “Hey, that’s offensive,” and at first, I took it personally, but then I realized that what I said was in fact ignorant and so now I don’t tell that joke anymore because I understand that it was hurtful.
Season 6 also shows William’s relationship with Catherine, or Kate, Middleton. Kate’s mother and Kate are walking through London, when they spot Princess Diana and her son, William, signing autographs and giving out magazines to adoring fans. Catherine and her mother approach Diana and William, and Catherine is starstruck and falls in love with William. Back home, she is shown sitting in bed with magazines splashed with William’s handsome face, and her mother tells her that she can find a way so that Kate will end up with William. Kate doesn’t believe it’s possible, but as the show progresses, her mother basically gets her to stalk William. Kate’s mom listens to the radio to figure out where William is staying and where he is going to college. She finds out that William is taking a gap year and so she sends Kate on the same gap year. She finds out that William is going to St. Andrews, so she sends Kate there, too. William falls in love with Kate, even though he is dating another girl named Lola. Lola, like William is wealthy, while Kate works at a restaurant to support herself, so it seems like she doesn’t have a chance at first. However, when William finds out that Kate borrowed the books for the art class they have together, he approaches her and they talk about their memories of the gap year program. They are having a great conversation, but then Lola comes along and feels disrespected that William is flirting with Kate. When a girl asks William for an autograph, he snaps at her to go away. Both Kate and Lola think he was being rude, but then he tells them that they don’t know what it’s like being ogled all the time and constantly having girls harass him for autographs. However, as young women in a sexist society, they deal with being ogled all the time, so they both ditch him. William dealing with the fame and being good-looking reminded me of this guy who worked at Target named Alex. In 2014, a young woman snapped a photo of a sixteen-year-old cashier working at Target named Alex because he was good-looking, and the photo went viral on social media. Alex didn’t know that someone had snapped a photo of him, but pretty soon he achieved this Internet fame and he found it overwhelming, with news agencies camping outside his home and his phone blowing up with notifications and messages. He had to leave his high school and had to be homeschooled due to all the unwanted attention he was getting. He said he preferred a private life away from the spotlight, and I feel that William in The Crown was like Alex from Target because he didn’t want all this publicity. He wanted to be private about his life, but everywhere he went, even in college, girls kept approaching him for autographs and he had very little to no privacy, to the point where a young woman’s mother (i.e. Kate’s mom) is tracking his whereabouts so that her daughter can achieve her dream of being William’s girlfriend. There is one scene where William and his bodyguard are getting groceries, and no one else is around. That is one of the few scenes (probably the only scene, actually) where William is in a public place and doesn’t have to deal with screaming girls and camera-happy paparazzi. In an earlier episode, he gets letters from his schoolmates letting him know to reach out to them if he needs anything, but then he gets another bag of letters from mostly girls around the world. Some are sympathetic, but most of the letters are about how cute and sexy William is. It’s a lot of pressure for William to deal with because he is still grieving the loss of his mom and juggling schoolwork and extracurricular activities, and he just wants to have that time to himself to deal with his grief, not attend all of these engagements and deal with fame.
The last episode is about Queen Elizabeth planning for her funeral in the future. She is overwhelmed at first that Prince Philip wants her to have this big celebration at her funeral because he himself wants to have a lively celebration after his death. She wants a quiet funeral at Balmoral with little noise. At the same time, she and her cabinet are arranging for her funeral in the future, Charles asks her permission to marry Camilla. The Queen wants to say yes, but the archbishops at the various churches approach her and say that it’s not as simple as giving her son her blessing because both Camilla and Charles are divorcees, and they had an affair while they were both married to other people. Their only option is to have a public ceremony where Camilla and Charles confess their “sins” (aka the fact that they had an affair together). Camilla and Charles end up marrying and many people celebrate the wedding.
The Queen also deals with an existential dilemma where she is questioning whether she should step down from her responsibilities as queen and find a successor. There are a few scenes in the last episode where she talks with her past versions of herself (played by Claire Foy, who was in seasons 1 and 2, and Olivia Colman, who was in seasons 3 and 4.) Olivia Colman’s version of Elizabeth tells the 80-year-old version (played by Imelda Staunton), that she should find someone to take her place because other countries have done it before, such as Luxembourg. The 80-year-old version of Elizabeth rejects this idea that she should find a successor, but word goes around that the Queen is finding a successor, and because Charles is firstborn, he is in line to be king when she passes away. Charles is super excited about this, and word gets around that Elizabeth is going to announce his succession to the throne. However, the younger version of Elizabeth (played by Claire Foy) appears and tells 80-year-old Elizabeth that she needs to continue to run things because she has been doing this job, being the Queen, for several decades and no one else has the kind of job experience she has gone through. So, when Charles and Camilla are at their wedding celebration, they think Elizabeth is going to announce Charles becoming king after she dies, but she doesn’t address it and only gives a short speech about how proud she is of Charles and Camilla getting married. Charles is very disappointed that she didn’t make the announcement, but by then she doesn’t have time to chit chat. Once she makes her speech, she leaves the party and goes to pray in a private place in the church away from all the noise. I thought it was so cool how they brought out all three Elizabeths to show how much time has passed from the time Elizabeth became Queen to when she was 80 years old. Also, all three actresses were excellent in their roles as Queen Elizabeth, and they’re great actresses in general. My family and I watched Women Talking, a very intense film about a community of female Mennonites who escape sexual abuse in the male-dominated colony they have spent years in. Claire Foy played one of the women in the movie and she was absolutely incredible. Honestly, that film still gives me chills. I really loved Olivia Colman in The Favourite, which is a movie in which she plays another British queen, this time Queen Anne. The raw energy she brought to that role was incredible, and I was so happy when she won that Academy Award at the 91st Academy Awards for Best Actress. I also saw her in some supporting roles in The Lobster and Fleabag. In Fleabag she plays the main character’s godmother, and in The Lobster, she plays a hotel manager who doesn’t elicit any emotion when telling Colin Farrell’s character that he must find a partner in 45 days, or else he will be transformed into an animal of his choice. It was a very dark and disturbing movie, and by the end I’m pretty sure I had nightmares. But as a single person I found this movie very relatable at times, even though it’s a dystopian movie. And Imelda Staunton made a really good Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I will always remember her pink checkered suits, her smug smile as she enforced all these draconian policies at Hogwarts, the annoying way she said “Hem-hem” whenever she wanted to make a point, the torture she put Harry through when she forced him to write “I must not tell lies,” and the scene where she gets swept away by large winged horses called thestrals while Harry tells her “I’m sorry Umbridge…I must not tell lies,” turning the tables after the disrespect and pain she put that young wizard through. Yep, I will remember all these things because Imelda played her so darn well.
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