The Jerks
We open the episode on Edward and Wallis dancing and canoodling in the Palace, having just decided he's going chuck it all so they can live the rest of their days in flagrante delicto. One must get one's last licks in on royal ground.
The Spare
Bertie says he hopes Wallis is worth it, the implication being, "Um... her?" He then asks if Edward loves her more than his country, more than his brother. The answer? "Yes." Edward is especially unmoved at what this might do to Elizabeth and Margaret, and when Bertie insists he must take That Woman and never return, that rat-hearted probably fascist Edward drawls, "Brother has indeed turned against brother." Then he casually extorts Bertie: cash for their disappearance. Kinda can't blame them for paying him. I wouldn't want him around either.
The Princesses
These two are quite good casting -- the young Margaret especially echoes Vanessa Kirby's eyebrows. The future King George calls them to him and says, "Your uncle has let us all down. He put love before family. I want you to promise me one thing: that you will never put any one, or anything, before one another. You are sisters above all else. Never let one another down. Understood?" They both solemnly swear to do it. That is a lovely promise to extract from them, but sadly at a time when he has no real concept of what it'll mean for Elizabeth to keep it. (Also, looking at this shot... I mean, Margaret was six here. If someone had dragged 22-year old Peter Townsend in and said, "This guy will want to marry Margaret in 17 years," Bertie would've fainted dead away.)
The Balmoral Stand-In
Stunning, eh? It's called The Ardverikie Estate, and they do weddings. My husband and I may have to get divorced just so we can go there and do it all up again.
The Sitting Room
I enjoy the subtle differences in the sets -- for Balmoral, it's just that bit more relaxed-feeling, despite still being enormous. Balmoral is privately owned and thus not part of Crown lands (so revenues do not feed back to Parliament and the Queen could sell it if she likes). Albert first bought it for Victoria; Georve V inherited it, and then it passed to Edward VIII, who post-abdication made George VI pay him for it. Because of course. Now it's Elizabeth's, to do with what she likes. (Which I'm sure means passing it down to Charles.)
The Delight
Margaret, glamorous and happy on her 25th birthday, announces that she's still very much warm for Peter Townsend's form and would like to bang him at her own leisure once more. "I've kept my side of the bargain. Now I hope you'll keep yours," she says, and is delighted when Elizabeth once again makes a promise she can't keep.
The Mustache
But GUESS what Angel of Doom has a trick up his sleeve. This scene plays as if Tommy Lascelles knew, when he first counseled Elizabeth on the Royal Marriage Act, that he was withholding information and leading the ladies down the proverbial primrose path. And now it's time for the mustache to make Michael Adeane lower the boom on said primroses and crush the pollen right out of them.
The Pawn
Poor Adeane has to go in there and tell a hopeful Elizabeth that, WHOOPS, the RM Act only says that Margaret qualifies to WANT to get married -- not that she is free to do so. "If both houses of Parliament approve, only then, after twelve months..." he drones on, as Elizabeth realizes she is going to have to take a machete to these thorn bushes. Wow, I'm really into gardening metaphors today.
The Bedroom
On the phone with Lascelles, Michael Adeane is forced to listen to The Mustache boil this sucker down to a thesis paragraph: Because they gambled wrong, and two years apart did NOT snuff out Margaret's infatuation, now the Queen is in a terrible position. If she forbids the union, it "turns sister against sister and splits the Royal House down the middle," and if she permits it then she runs afoul of the very Church she runs. Thank you, Tommy. You are a human highlighter -- a veritable walking, talking Cliffs Notes.
The Symbolism
The DP and director really, really like to put Elizabeth in ths room sitting alone in a beam of heavenly light. The symbolism is stirring, but is also giving me a concussion from whacking me on the noggin.
The Wind
Sadly, you can't tell from this shot that it was gale force winds outside on the day they shot this. Everyone soldiers through this bit admirably, but it's necessarily pretty brief. The sound guy must have wanted to weep. Elizabeth tries to be all smooth in telling Margaret that a wrinkle has cropped up in the marriage plan, and Margaret -- who I do think knew how to spot weakness and aim her dart at it -- immediately launches into a guilt trip: "Peter has been through hell, waiting like a martyr, locking himself away, talking to no one. I'm crying into my pillow. Why? Because we were doing you a favor. To make your life easier." Liz is all, "Um, right, totes! Just have to burn a few pieces of paper and bribe an archbish or three, and we'll be right as rain."
The Bonding
Phil and Chaz are fishing together, although Chaz is (CORRECTLY) grossed out by the worm, by baiting the hook, by the dead worm, and by the idea of clubbing the fish he catches to death so that they can eat it (Philip obliges). Later, Philip sensitively observes to Elizabeth, "Our children are the wrong way 'round. Our daughter's a boy and our son, God bless him, is a girl." Did you want to hug Charles ever before? You might now. I'm assuming we have no idea if Philip ever said such a thing, but he did have low tolerance for Charles's sensitivity. He was the hammer and Chaz was the nail.
The Little Birdie
The Queen Mum is a mischievous one. She's either letting Tommy Lascelles puppet her, or she's doing it herself; either way, she creeps up behind Elizabeth and tsks that Phil is too hard on Chaz, blaming it on him struggling with his role in the shadows and going on about how he just simply hasn't settled into their life. And conveniently, Lascelles had a capital idea: Pack Philip off to Australia to open the Olympic Games. Yes. Because what's REALLY going to help him get used to the idea is removing him from it entirely.
The Gloom
Philip is none too pleased at the idea of being gone for months on end, just so he can essentially run an errand and cut a ribbon. Elizabeth insists people just think he'll enjoy the spotlight and want him to be happy, but he notes that, no, they just want HER to be happy. He gets that they want him to come back changed, and when she bristles, he invites her to pick a better adjective. She blanks and responds, "All right yes. Changed." Ouch. That's sort of nuclear, right there. I think this might have worked better for me if, instead of Elizabeth seeming SO weak of mind and easily manipulated, we'd seen something between these two conversations -- something that again hits on how much Philip is squirming, and then abandoning her to go party with his friends. I might have tried to save one of those beats to go here.
The Bro-In-Law
As the public fervently awaits word of whether Margaret will marry, and she sulks with a cigarette, she runs across Phil and they both bitch aboue Elizabeth being annoying. He then tells Margaret teasingly that she and Peter seem "far too in love and far too happy." She soberly notes that it's easy to be in love with someone who isn't right in front of you, to which Philip says, "Perhaps that's why she's sending me away." ZING. And also, YES, PROBABLY.
The Addict
Poor Anthony Eden. He's heading up to Balmoral to report to the Queen about his trip to Cairo, but he's also whacked out on smack. It's treated like he's on morphine or heroin; in life he was prescribed Benzedrine and then something called Dexamyl for his stomach pain that turned out to be a mad-crazy hallucinogen. But I don't know whether either was intravenous. It's more cinematic to have him juice himself up and then bliss out on the high, which he does. In the Queen's bathroom. As one does.
The Scenery
Another HIDEOUS amble through the country. This is all setting up the Suez Canal crisis, which Eden famously handled poorly on account of the aforementioned yam-yam. I just love that the second he arrived, and essentially fresh off a plane from Egypt, the Queen was like, "You clearly want a really long walk in the country! COME ON THEN." That fully tracks for me. I genuinely think she was of the mind there is nothing a lengthy stroll can't solve.
The Greenscreen
I wonder if it was still too windy to get good audio, or something, because while they clearly WENT to this location, the close-ups all look like really bad green-screen work.
The Overhead
I thought you might enjoy having a squizz at the overhead angle, which we so cherish from season upon season of Downton.
The In-Law
Philip sasses the QM about whether she and her puppet Lascelles -- or has he got that backward? -- are responsible for his exile. She has NO PATIENCE for his petulance, telling him that he's got more freedom in his role than any consort in history, "and you repay it by scowling and skulking like an adolescent." SING IT, LIZ THE ELDER. She reckons if he goes, he'll revel in the attention for a bit and come back newly sympathetic to and supportive of Elizabeth and her duty. Except she says it in a way that suggests he WILL come back nicer -- indeed, changed -- or else taste the business end of her sceptre.
The Reunion
Meanwhile, Peter returns -- to fanfare from the press -- and the embrace between him and Margaret is INTENSE. They inhale each other. They grab and grasp and claw and paw and pick their teeth with each other's epiglotti. But, you know, romantically.
The Gloom
Sadly, Elizabeth is being told that Parliament won't bless Margaret's union to a divorced man whose first spouse still lives and breathes. Anthony Eden informs her that the only thing Margaret can do is renounce her titles and agree to a plan by which she is removed from the family, married in a civil ceremony abroad, and forced to live outside the country for many years: "You will have kept your word, and she will have prevailed, and will be Mrs. Peter Townsend." This is apparently NOT AT ALL how it ended up. Reportedly, Elizabeth and Eden drew up a plan that explicitly allowed Margaret to live in England, continue her public duties, and keep her title, and only excluding her children from the line of succession. But Margaret and Peter split up three days after the first draft was finished. I can't imagine it was all for show; there had better be a DOOZY of a box of diaries somewhere at Buck House, waiting to be discovered.
The Rage
Anyway, when Elizabeth tells Margaret that Parliament said no, and possibly then some gloom-and-doom things about her having to renounce her titles and piss off to the continent just like Edward, Margaret insists she's FINE with that and WHO CARES ANYWAY. FOOT STOMP. Elizabeth begs her to think long and hard, and Margaret derives some pleasure in purring that perhaps Elizabeth should be the one thinking, because the public worships them as a couple and they represent what society wants: "a kinder, more tolerant attitude toward marriage and divorce." Elizabeth insists none of this is HER attitude, but Margaret correctly notes that it's being done by a government in her name so what's the difference.
The Bummer
Then, Peter and Margaret are chased by the paps on their way to a party, where Margaret's friends seem a bit sarcastically supportive of the two of them and Peter feels extremely old. So what does he do? He goes to bed. He seriously slips out and tucks himself in while The Youngs party. I guess this party is a weekender, because he's in a room with a nametag on it, snug as a bug in sensible men's pajamas...
The Kissing
... when Margaret tipsily creeps in and calls all her friends "children," and notes she's wild with lust for Peter and his 8:30 p.m. bedtime and glass of warm milk. Then they make out without even a care for whether his dentures are still in their cup.
The Costumes
What a dress, though. It's got an aura of Baroness Schraeder about it, right? If only Margaret -- or Elizabeth, frankly -- could have gone to HER for advice.
The Scenery
We pause for another deliciously dramatic shot.
The Defiance
Elizabeth decides she thinks this is all bullshit. She tells Eden that George made her and Margaret swear never to be divided, but now as Queen she can't keep that vow, and the thing in her way is Cabinet. A Cabinet, mind, that has four divorced members, including Eden. And Eden's first wife was not dead when he remarried. She finds it unfair indeed that these people should escape judgment when Margaret cannot, and in very polite words tells him to go stick it to his Cabinet and make them shove their hypocrisies up their enormous old blowholes.
The Conclave
THEN, Liz takes a meeting with the Four Archbishops of the Apocalypse, who tell her in no uncertain terms that supporting the marriage will break the oath she took at her coronation. This is the part where I wish Elizabeth had pulled a Henry VIII and rewritten the church laws from top to bottom, while someone in the corner sat and wove a tapesty in her honor and then probably got beheaded for sneezing (I mean, if you're going to go H8, go all the way).
The Repetition
For the fourth or fifth time so far, we're reminded that the public totally supports Margaret and believes she should get to marry whomever she chooses. Philip throws in his two pence, suggesting that Elizabeth should stop listening to the archbishops and stop acting like the head of the Church, and just react like a mother and a sister and a wife and a person: "a living, breathing thing," he qualifies, as if to underscore that he doesn't believe that her Queen Mode qualifies. She really, really, really chafes at that. I'd be interested to know if Phil really was this chill about the whole thing. It's a good look on him, but the problem with it is that instead of trying to support her as she juggles her roles, he scoffs at The Crown, the one that weighs the most heavily upon her.
The Advice
And so Liz, bathed in another glow of light from the celestial flashlight of the angels, calls up someone whose advice The Crown would have us believe she wants: Edward. I do NOT know what to make of this, truly. I buy her wanting counsel. I buy her being very upset she can't get it from her father, or Mary of Teck. I buy LESS her not discussing it with her mother. And I REALLY don't know that she'd go knock-knock-knocking on Devil's door, especially knowing how much the abdication weighed on both her and the QM and what blame they placed on him for George's early demise (stress-smoking, I guess?). Also I just... CALL CHURCHILL OR SOMETHING. Talk to Clementine. ANYONE BUT THE DUKE OF WHINGESOR.
The Blech
Edward REALLY likes to wax pompous, so he goes on for a bit about how he knew Liz would call because "I share with [Marg] the fate of having a great love that captured much of the country's imagination, only to have it forbidden by the establishment." But even as he proclaims sympathy for Margaret, he drones on about how The Crown was the OTHER love of his life. Strap in, because this guy is ENAMORED of the sound of his own voice. Ahem: "I imagine you find yourself in a difficult position. Split down the middle. One half as sister, one half as queen.. a strange hybrid creature... We are half people, ripped from the pages of some bizarre mythology... two sides wihtin us, human and Crown, engaged in a fearful civil war which never ends and which blights our every human transaction as brother, husband, sister, wife mother." And I EDITED that, too. He closes by saying he will always be and feel like a half-king, and that she must protect the kingdom.
Honestly, do we think he's being portrayed as MEANING that, or saying it partly because if he pushes Elizabeth into rejecting Margaret, then she won't get to have the cake he ALSO wanted to eat? I think the show has taken the position that Edward did always have a bit of regret for what he gave up, but in life I would not have put it past him to jack with Margaret out of jealousy.
The Pants
Poor Marge looks so happy and hopeful in her enormously high-waisted trousers. If only she had known they would be the last pants Peter would see her in for a long, long time.
The Emotion
Claire Foy is wonderful in this scene -- you can see in her face that she is fighting with every pore to keep the tears from coming. As a clock ticks loudly through every pause, Elizabeth summons her courage and tells Margaret that supporting her required going against every single institution in England, down to the one she inhabits. "I was prepared to go thorugh it all and support you as a sister because I'd given you my word. But I realized as Queen that I have no choice. I cannot allow you to marry Peter and remian part of this family. That is my decision." Again, officially she and Eden had drafted a way to make this work. And in 2009, a letter from Margaret was unearthed suggesting that she knew the government was moving some of these mountains for her and that she needed to make a decision for herself. What happened in the interim, I don't know. It's more tragically romantic TV to have this happen, for sure, but it also means there's a very repetitive flavor to this arc: Margaret wants something, Elizabeth agrees, Elizabeth realizes she can't give it, Elizabeth tries to anyway and is thwarted, Elizabeth breaks Margaret's heart, Margaret hates her for it. Lather, rinse, repeat. Luckily, Vanessa Kirby and Claire Foy are so good in these scenes that it isn't as bothersome to watch them over and over again.
The Tear
Margaret, naturally, brings up that old pledge they made to George never to be divided -- and how this, essentially, breaks that promise. I wonder if he would have agreed. He asked them to choose each other because Edward had not chosen family. But when George wanted Edward to choose family, what he meant was, "Stay the course and remain king." He MEANT, "Choose the Crown." He clearly didn't foresee a situation in which choosing the Crown and choosing family were not the same thing, so it's unfair to throw this in Liz's face. Elizabeth wonders if Margaret can forgive her, and OF COURSE Margaret has the most 25-year old reaction, which is to announce that she will NEVER LOVE AGAIN, EVER, and her ovaries will dry up like raisins and shoot out her nose. "Peter is the only one who knows how to protect me," she whispers. "You don't know for a minute what it is to be unhinged. Flailing about. Peter is the only one who could hold me together. Without him, I'm lost."
The Quiet
"You'd think someone would get me a better rug for people to cry on, eh?"
The Last Hug
This is the part where, if Peter were Mr. Bates, he'd have popped over to his wife's house for a spot of murder. Nice, cleansing, obstacle-erasing murder. Instead, he and Margaret hug a tense and shocked goodbye, and he then reads a statement to the press -- which in real life he wrote for her but SHE released -- about how they've chosen to split. The news somberly announces that Margaret has chosen duty over love. I'm curious why everyone was so scandalized by the divorce in his past, but not the age difference. Margaret was quite religious, and apparently any breach with the Church actually did weigh heavily on her, particularly the issue of whether she'd be denied Communion. Townsend apparently didn't believe in this draft Elizabeth and Eden were in real life working on, because he once wrote, "She could have married me only if she had been prepared to give up everything—her position, her prestige, her privy purse. I simply hadn’t the weight, I knew it, to counterbalance all she would have lost."
The Background
Another nice shot gives us perspective on Elizabeth being fluffed into her full regnal regalia while Philip is fuzzy and a ways behind her. 'Twas ever thus. He interrupts dire reports from Egypt to tell her that he's going to head out to Oz after all -- and for five months, on a royal tour, because WHY NOT (even though they've just been there). He says, "It's a long way to go. A long time for a father to be away from his children. But no, if it gives me time to reflect, and to work out my priorities, and to settle, not just in our marriage but generally, it'll be worth it." His delivery is not terribly convincing, and Elizabeth sees RIGHT through that little charade to his bitter core.
The Scamp
She tries to suggest that everyone's trying to help. "Yes, put him on a boat to Australia and hope it works out. Or better still, sinks," Philip pouts. Elizabeth is totally not reassuring in this moment. She completely brushes off the fact that he's obviously pretty hurt; granted, he's not always productive in the way he voices it, but this is the first time where I've really been with Philip. He has been a subpar partner to her thus far in the series, but here the series portrays Elizabeth as the scolding, impatient mum who simply won't hear of or acknowledge any feelings. While he masks his hurt with sarcasm, she masks any uncertainty or insecurty with officiousness, brushing him off with a shake of the head and an insistence that it's all going to be fine.
The Adieu
So imagine her astonishment when he doesn't appreciate her glib assertion that perhaps he'll come to thank her for this trip someday. "Don't dress up betrayal as a favor," he says, flatly, and leaves her alone and sputtering. Man. The Crown has not been kind to Philip so far, but it has also framed Elizabeth as someone who leans so heavily on the advice of others that it's unclear what SHE ever really wants. Did she just do this because Tommy Lascelles and her mother knew how to control her? The character is a cipher. I have no idea whether Elizabeth truly believed packing Philip off was the solution, nor really a sense of why she didn't listen when he protested -- other, I guess, than perhaps being at her limit with him. But she was very warm with him otherwise in this hour. We were missing any actual frustration, or ANY continuation of the poisoned dynamic from episode nine, to give fuel to her decisions here.
The Resentment
So while Margaret tries to put on a happy face, and fails, even though she looks totally fabulous...
The Cinematography
... and Philip speeds away in an extremely picturesque funk...
The Drugs
... and Eden jacks himself up so much on giggle juice that he passes out during a newsreel about Egypt, to the point where I had to Google whether he actually did die on a conference table (he didn't; he still has to wonk up the Suez)...
The Last Glimpse
... Elizabeth is preparing to take this iconic pose in full garb, as the photographer gives her unrealistically florid and on-point art direction: "All hail, sage lady, whom a grateful isle hath blessed. Not moving, not breathing, our very own goddess, glorious Gloriana [from Spenser's "Faerie Queen"]." And then, with the flick of an eye...
The Crown
... the doubt slowly recedes from her face, and Elizabeth settles in as we hear that she must forget Elizabeth Windsor: "Now only Elizageth Regina." And so Mary of Teck's advice and prophecy has come true. The Crown, most likely, has won.