The Crown - a review

Part I - Toying with the notions of fate vs. personal responsibility for the life one leads

I had a great time recently bingeing on The Crown. Great production. Great acting. I mean, how can you beat Helena Bonham-Carter playing Princess Margaret? And who would have thought FBI Agent Dana Scully of the X-Files could turn herself into Dame Margaret Thatcher? Gillian Anderson pulled it off brilliantly, I thought. The show is well worth watching just for the acting.

I’ve always felt sorry for the British royal family. The Japanese royal family too. Seems to me you have to have done something thoroughly wicked in a former life to be born into the slavish roles that those wretched families have designed for you to play, where you are fated to live virtually entirely according to other people’s expectations. That’s true for all royal families to one degree or another; it’s just that I think the British and Japanese royals have done it the most sadistically.

I have a Danish friend who is convinced, as am I, that one of the great mistakes the Founding Fathers made was to put the head of state and the head of nation into the same person. The result is you get a politician - who must of necessity get their hands dirty to get things done in a world which cannot operate without compromises, some of which steal your soul. Better to have a king, he argues, and he thinks, with good reason, that the Scandinavians and the Dutch have done it the right way: created royals who retain much more of their ordinary citizen characteristics. But I think the Germans have the better solution: get yourself a respected senior statesperson, one who can reflect integrity and intellect and the best side of the nation and make them president. And then get yourself a prime minister to do the shitwork.

America has come up with terribly imperfect beings in both categories with its two-for-one approach. But so, it seems to me, have the British, with their not-ready-for-primetime royals working hand-in-hand with the likes of Boris Johnson.

But, to get back to the somewhat fictionalized version of royals on The Crown, if you want to believe the writers reflect what the real royals are like, more or less, you’ll develop more than a little sympathy for both Prince Charles and Diana. The Queen and Prince Phillip do a really heavy number on them for not being able to suck it up and conform to their expectations of how a royal is supposed to behave.  

People are quite sympathetic to Diana. They understand she was still a child when she was tapped to produce a future heir and a spare for the British throne. Bred, groomed, squeezed, molded, as opposed to raised, fostered, educated or mentored. You have no say in the contract. Others determine that you should have wealth and people to wait on you right and left in exchange for cutting ribbons and smiling from balconies. Charles had a much harder time of it. He wants his friend Camilla to share his days and nights with, not some ditzy girl who’s bound to steal his thunder. Both of them fall short, but for some complex reasons, Diana seems to have ridden off into history as a victim to be pitied, while Charles comes across as a complete dolt. Which makes me sympathetic to him.

Andrew Eaton, and Stephen Daldry,  the producers, and Peter Morgan, the chief writer of the series, just completed Season 4 of the series - and I understand there are two more in the offing. They chose entertainment over accuracy, and aimed for ways to capture the essence of their characters rather than imitate them or stick to historical facts in every detail. The actual royals, if you follow the gossip sheets, are justified in getting pissed off at the liberties taken. But it’s part of the deal. You get to be a royal. We get to not only force you to play the roles we want you to play; we get to play with your images in any way we choose.  You belong to us, baby, for all your crown jewels.

It beats being born in poverty and raised in ignorance, I imagine. But I wouldn’t exchange the life fate has given me in a million years for life as a British (or Japanese, or virtually any other) royal.  

The Crown still falls under the rubric of royalty porn. We'll have to wait a while longer for history to evolve and for this sort of thing to go out of style.

Just read in the news today that the first thing the Pilgrims did when landing in Plymouth was steal the corn of the Wampanoag Indians, who had been nearly wiped out from a plague and couldn't resist.

Man. What a species.

Dogs, I tell you. Put your faith in dogs, not in the human species.

Wonder if I can hold out for the true story on the Irish potato famine.

Guess it all depends on who gets to tell the story.