Over-Analyzing The Crown: S4E7 The Hereditary Principle
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
Princess Margaret in The Crown, on her way to see her new therapist.
To be totally honest, I’ve been dreading blogging about this specific episode since before the season even dropped on Netflix. Early reviews called out the inflammatory plotline of this episode, which blames the Queen Mother for her mentally disabled nieces being put in a hospital and hidden from their family. This characterization does not conform with actual historical evidence, but ends the episode with pictures and birth and death dates of both of the actual women discussed here, implying that it IS the true story. Obviously the show is a drama, and people who watch it should realize that without being explicitly told that the series is not a documentary, but I personally think The Crown went too far in this episode.
I have chosen not to include pictures of Nerissa or Katherine Bowles-Lyon here in this blog post, as it does not seem that they were capable of consenting to photographs. If you’d like to find photographs of them, you can easily Google them and find them elsewhere.The story according to the Crown: During her first therapy session, Princess Margaret finds out that she has two mentally disabled cousins - Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon. She checks the Burke’s peerage records with her sister, the Queen, and they find that both cousins were listed as deceased. Margaret drives her friend Dazzle to the psychiatric hospital where the sisters live, has him go in undercover to meet her cousins, and discovers that they (and several other more distant relatives - named Idonea, Etheldreda, and Rosemary) had been in the mental hospital back in the 1940s . When Margaret goes to speak to her mother about this, it is revealed that the Queen Mother was aware of situation and had kept it a secret from her daughters for their entire lives. She justified this action by claiming that it was done to preserve the integrity of the royal family’s bloodline after her husband became king. Margaret’s therapist reveals to her later that the gene responsible for the cousins’ disability did not run in the royal family line at all.
The actual story: In April 1987, The Sun broke the news that the Queen had two mentally disabled first cousins, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, who had lived in a mental institution for almost 50 years, although their deaths had been recorded in the records of British aristocracy (Burke’s Peerage and Debrett’s handbook of British noble families) decades before (Source: Maclean’s - April 20, 1987). Nerissa had died in 1986 at the age of 66 and had been buried near the hospital in a grave with a plastic marker. The story also reported that three other cousins of the sisters (Idonea, Etheldreda, and Rosemary) had actually been placed in the same hospital on the same day as Nerissa and Katherine; Rosemary died in 1972 but Idonea and Etheldreda were still in the hospital with Katherine when the story broke. (Source: UPI). The Royal Family gave only a very brief statement on the issue, saying that the Queen was aware of the situation but that it was a private matter for the immediate Bowes-Lyon family.
The therapist’s words about the genetic disorder not actually running in the royal line is completely correct, as I’ll discuss in more depth below.
The entire frame story of Margaret discovering the sisters, getting Dazzle to go into the hospital undercover, and confronting her mother appears to be entirely invented. For the record, I don’t have any problem with a frame story like this being concocted to tell the story; my big issue is that The Crown lays blame at the feet of the Queen Mother and makes her sound like a friggin Nazi with lines about “the purity of the bloodline,” when in real life, she had nothing to do with it and didn’t even know that her nieces were in a psychiatric hospital until 1982.
Here’s a quick break down of all that.
The genetic disorder - Nerissa and Katherine had a genetic disorder that passed down from their maternal grandfather, Baron Clinton (Charles Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis). Three of their maternal cousins, Idonea, Rosemary, and Ethelreda, also had the same disorder. I could not find any records that actually named what this genetic disorder was; in the 1930s-1940s, they were simply called “imbeciles.” Their defect left them unable to speak and with a mental age of about three.
I could not find any family tree that showed all the people relevant to this discussion, so I made my own. This is obviously a very simplified and abbreviated version just to show the relationships of the royal family to the cousins discussed in this episode, but I hope it helps elucidate the situation. As the therapist says in the episode, the gene that resulted in Nerissa and Katherine’s condition came from their mother, who was not a blood relative of the Bowes-Lyons. Thus, the gene at issue had absolutely nothing to do with the royal family’s genetics.
The show depicts them as knowing who the royal family is and knowing that they are their family. Although the 1987 article from Macleans states that Katherine “has no knowledge of her royal connections,” the 2011 documentary “The Queen’s Hidden Cousins” quoted a nurse who worked with the sisters as saying “If the Queen or Queen Mum were ever on television, they’d curtsey – very regal, very low. Obviously there was some sort of memory.” (Source: Daily Mail)In The Crown Podcast episode on The Hereditary Principle, head of research Annie Salzberger gave a bit more detail about the sisters’ condition. (Source: Podcast episode transcript)
“We don't have Katherine's files, but we have Nerissa’s, and Nerissa is diagnosed ‘imbecile’. That's the official term. Now that doesn't kind of equate to anything today. So then we had to try to read through records to understand how they described any symptoms of this illness or physical aspects to it, or it was just mental. So, so her record state that she quote ‘makes unintelligible noises all the time, is very affectionate, and can say a few babyish words’. And then staff also described Katherine as ‘alert’. ‘She understands what she's being told, but she only communicates pointing noises and smiles. She is severely mentally handicapped, but has no physical disabilities’ that, um, their family relative describes them as ‘lovely children’, ‘like frightened does’ and that we know that they recognize each other, but they don't recognize other family members, which really interested the doctors.”
Was it a cover up? It’s a bit unclear. Nerissa and Katherine were sent away to Royal Earlswood Hospital in 1941, when Nerissa was 22 and Katherine was 15. Although the show portrays the cousins’ commitment as resulting from George VI’s rise to the throne and the royal family’s need to keep them hidden away, in reality, they were placed in the hospital nearly five years after Edward VIII abdicated.
Lady Elizabeth Anson, a niece of Nerissa and Katherine’s, spoke to The Sun at the time and said that the family had not actually attempted to conceal the sisters, but that her grandmother (the sisters’ mother) was often careless with filling out her forms for Burke’s and Debrett’s.
It is possible that the Bowes-Lyon family may have been unusually wary of any allegations of mental illness, as 1800s gossip rumored that a Bowes-Lyon child born with significant physical disabilities was kept locked away in their ancestral seat at Glamis Castle (yes, the same Glamis from Shakespeare’s Macbeth). The Smithsonian Magazine wrote about “the monster of Glamis” in 2012 and looked at lots of historical accounts of various Victorians stumbling around trying to find the secrets of the castle, but it does not seem like there’s any hard proof to indicate that this was ever anything more than a story.Did the Queen Mother know? The Sun also noted at the end of the article that the Queen Mother only learned about Nerissa and Katherine’s survival around 1982. When she found out about them, she sent them money with which to buy candy and toys.
Did the Royal Family neglect the sisters? The Daily Mail reported in 2011, at the time the documentary “The Queen’s Hiddens Cousins” aired, that Nerissa and Katherine’s last reported visitors were in the 1960s.
A general manager for the East Surrey Health Authority said to the Associated Press in 1987, "Both sisters had regular visits from their families up until the early 1960s when one of their closest relatives died. Since then, they have had few visitors. My understanding is that Katherine had no regular visitors.” (Source: Vogue). Records indicate that the closest thing either sister had to a family visit in the 1980s was when a reporter from The Sun pretended to be a relative to get in and take pictures of Katherine for the article breaking the story. One former nurse also said they did not receive birthday cards or anything at Christmas (source: Express).
However, Express also reported that the queen was upset about the documentary’s allegations that her cousins were neglected, saying that they were false. A statement from an anonymous source “close to Buckingham Palace” said: “The Queen is very, very upset at the thought that this programme is being made which is just not true. Both Katherine and Nerissa were visited very regularly by their family but neither could speak, and throughout their lives had the thinking age of four years old. They were unable to recognise visitors, often becoming hugely distressed as they struggled to work out who was with them. They also both regularly received presents, especially at Christmas, a fact disputed in this supposedly factual documentary. Neither sister knew who the presents were from but they enjoyed the moment of receiving a lovely gift. If Channel 4 had bothered to get the facts right and ask people who knew the true story, this would be a different matter. They just didn’t ask anybody and came up with this upsetting nonsense which brings nothing but hurt.”
The Crown DID actually cast people with real disabilities as Nerissa, Katherine, their cousins, and the others living at the hospital. I haven’t found a ton of information on this, but it has been discussed briefly in The Crown podcast. (Source: The Crown podcast transcript). Episode director Jessica Hobbs was very adamant that Nerissa, Katherine, and all the other residents at the Royal Earlswood be represented by actors who had similar conditions. Casting director Kate Bone apparently went to lots of different groups, institutions, and hospitals to find people with mental disabilities who would be interested in acting in the show. The show specifically brought all these actors into the set the day before so they could get familiar with it and be comfortable with the location. Hobbs said in the podcast, “We just wanted to make sure that there weren't going to be triggers of distress or might be uncomfortable for them or frightening. So that was, you know, it was just a whole process of how we worked towards it. It was one of the two best days I've had onset in my life because at the end of it, you could just, the crew were in awe basically. These people were amazing and they loved it. And that was for me, the big thing.”
Hobbs also went on to discuss the fact that the institution itself was not necessarily a bad thing. She said: “I didn't want to make a moralistic judgment. I didn't want to say ‘it’s a Dickensian institution, it was appalling’. It was all, you know, my mother worked in mental health before I was born, but she was a nurse at an institution. So I’d heard the most wonderful stories about the way people were and what they did and who they thought they were on different days and how you could communicate. And I just wanted to make sure that there was also love and the way that people were portrayed on set and that there were, there was connection between carers. There are extraordinary carers that have worked over the years. It was just finding that balance. The story for me was that that the family shut them away because they were ashamed and worried about being tainted. And I think that that's just historically, what we've continued to do as a community. But I also think we haven't provided help and support for those families who need extra help. So these situations have come about because of the way we've approached it as a community.”
There has been a bit of discussion online about whether the episode is exploitative of people with disabilities. I won’t venture an opinion on this, but it does sound like The Crown crew really did attempt to portray all the residents of the hospital with dignity and care. And this is a super low bar, but just by casting people with actual disabilities in this role, they’re doing better than a lot of the entertainment industry, where it’s still very standard practice to cast non-disabled actors. Bustle did a great job exploring the scope of this issue in this article in 2019, but this issue still really exists today, as shown by the recent outcry over Sia casting a neurotypical actress as a nonverbal autistic character in her upcoming film Music.
Sidenote: I’m pretty sure it would be fantastically unethical for a therapist to disclose the medical history and records of third parties to her patient, but I guess the story had to be kicked off in this episode somehow.
Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones with her dog Rolly (Credit: PA Images).
Now that the big controversy over this episode has been discussed, let’s move on to over-analyzing the episode from its start.
At the beginning of the episode, Princess Margaret appears to be up to her old tricks, getting ready for a fun night to the sounds of “C’est Si Bon” by Dean Martin (a 1962 recording of a 1947 song). But as this episode will make clear, Margaret is now 54 (as will be confirmed by a newscast later in the episode), and her party hard lifestyle is starting to catch up to her. Throughout this opening scene, she’s smoking and coughing in a way that’s similar to how her father coughed before his death (which we saw in S1E2). A butler takes away her dog and a handsome younger man bikes up to her house and rings his bell to get her attention.
I couldn’t find much detail about any of Princess Margaret’s dogs, but we know that she did own several terriers and spaniels as an adult. A cavalier king charles spaniel Rolly was probably the most famous of these, as he took a few engagement pictures with Margaret and her fiance Anthony Armstrong-Jones in February 1960. (Source: Pets by Royal Appointment, By Brian Hoey)
There’s coverage of the royal variety show at the Palladium on the tv in the background. The Queen and Prince Philip are seen in full formal dress, with the queen sporting a tiara. This appears to be the November 1984 Royal Variety Show, given Margaret’s age and the timing of her surgery later in the episode. Fun fact: The Queen and Prince Philip actually didn’t attend the 1984 royal variety show; the senior royals at that event were, instead, the Queen Mother, Prince Charles, and Princess Diana (the only royal variety show she ever attended).
I would like to talk about all the tiaras in The Crown more in depth in the future, but for now, I’ll just note that the tiara the Queen is wearing at the Royal Variety Show scene appears to be her favorite, which is known as the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara. You can go read more about it at The Court Jeweller, who has in depth entries on almost every tiara and jewel worn by the Queen. As you can see in the photo comparison below though, it’s not….necessarily a very good replica. It looks far too metallic and dark, while the real tiara is very bright and glittering in photos. It also looks like it may be a tiny bit too tall? It sits very differently on Olivia Colman’s head than the real one does on Queen Elizabeth’s.
The fact that Margaret is not at this big event and is instead partying at home subtly begins the episode’s theme of Margaret increasingly moving to the margins of the royal family, rather than being at the center (this will come up again a few more times). In real life, the last time she had been at a royal variety show was 1968, a decade and a half before this episode is set. She’ll attend the variety show in 1990 as well.
Upper Left: The Crown. Upper Right: Queen Elizabeth in similar dress (Credit: Eric Vandeville / Getty).
Lower Left: Queen Elizabeth in similar dress (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty)
Lower Middle: Queen Elizabeth (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).
Left: Olivia Colman on The Crown; Right: Queen Elizabeth II wearing the real Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara.
Somewhere else, we see the television on at a psychiatric hospital of some sort, full of adult patients milling around in a large room. As God Save the Queen plays on the television set, two women in particular stand up to attention and salute. They are seen taking their medicines, but don’t utter a word.
Margaret dances to David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” (1983) with her man friend while literally wearing dark red shoes (“put on your red shoes and dance”). Her friend is quickly revealed to be Derek “Dazzle” Jennings, who tells her that he’s greatly enjoyed spending time with her, but implies that their time together must end. Dazzle specifically calls her “ma’am,” indicating his relative youth and his respect for her status. In real life, we know that Margaret really did have all her friends call her “Ma’am” and was a stickler for etiquette.
Margaret has been dressed in similar dresses the entire season - structurally simple a-line dresses in bright colored prints and jewel tone colors. However, from what I can tell, the historical Margaret really only dressed like that when she was actually at her house on Mustique. I scoured through lots of photos of her fashion from the 70s and 80s, and in general, she dressed far more conservatively and more like her sister when she was going about in England and at formal events. The decision to dress her this way throughout most of Season 4 seems to indicate that she’s still living in the past and wishing for her days on Mustique with her young and sexy boyfriend Roddy Llewellyn
Derek “Dazzle” Jennings was a real friend of Margaret’s who was 16 years younger than her. He was very popular and had a wide circle of friends including various celebrities, but in 1984, took the orders and became a priest. He was “famously” gay, just as Queen Elizabeth says later in the show. Author Noel Botham claims in his book Margaret: The Last Real Princess, that Margaret was actually infatuated with Dazzle and “used any excuse to place herself near him,” but that she did know about his sexuality and was aware that nothing was likely to happen between them. Overall, their relationship was far more spiritual than romantic, as Dazzle did really try to convert Princess Margaret to Catholicism (as is shown later in the show), and they stayed friends until Dazzle’s death in 1994 (contrary to what The Crown shows).
Upper Left: The Crown; Upper Right: Princess Margaret (Credit: Bettmann / Getty).
Lower Left: Princess Margaret (Credit: Georges De Keerle / Getty).
Prince Edward’s 21st birthday party contrasted with a quieter party at the psychiatric hospital. Both scenes from The Crown.
In the next scene, Margaret dresses more to match her sister (as she did in real life) for a lunch between the two- and bemoans her lack of luck with men. She specifically notes that Colin Tennant had said that she and Dazzle should be kept apart for public safety. We’ve seen Colin Tennant, Baron Glenconner a few times in the show; he married Margaret’s friend Lady Anne at the beginning of S2E4 Beryl and was also seen on Mustique in S3E10 Cri de Coeur, also with Lady Anne (who introduced Margaret to Roddy Llewellyn, both in the show and in real life). In real life, Colin bought Mustique and was the one who gave a plot of land on the island to Princess Margaret as a wedding gift.
I love that it’s Queen Elizabeth who had to specifically tell Margaret that Dazzle was “a friend of Dorothy.” This is slang for “gay” which dates back to at least World War II, and was used as a way for gay men to identify themselves without putting themselves in danger at a time when homosexuality was illegal. It’s unclear exactly where this term came from, but some think it was a reference to the Wizard of Oz books and films, whose themes and colorful characters resonated with the gay community at the time. Judy Garland herself, who played Dorothy in the most famous film version of the Wizard of Oz, was an undeniable gay icon.
Margaret initally can’t believe that Dazzle is gay, noting with surprise “He looked at me with great adoring eyes. “ Elizabeth calmly responds, “I think you’ll find that ti’s because you’re a royal princess and he’s a raging snob.” Their conversation is interrupted when Margaret begins to cough up blood, which must have terrified the two women, as this is how their father first found out about his illness in S1E1 of the series (although in real life, he was not diagnosed with lung cancer until 1951).
Next is a very brief scene of Margaret undergoing exploratory surgery and news reports about her condition. In real life, this surgery removed an “innocent” portion of her lung, which has been interpreted to mean “non-malignant.” Margaret was never actually diagnosed with any form of cancer. We later see her recovering at the hospital, dressed fabulously in a very colorful blouse while using a nebulizer to breathe. Note that there’s a tea set laid out in the hospital room near her (which seems very on brand).
The news reports that Princess Margaret smoked 60 cigarettes a day. This is accurate to life. She allegedly gave up smoking briefly after the operation, but within 3 months was back at it (although she’d reduced her consumption down to 30 cigarettes a day). The princess would not fully give up smoking or drinking until at least 8 years after her lung surgery in 1985. (Source: Daily Mail)We get more shots at the hospital and the two unknown adult women watching the news about Margaret’s condition on TV. They look incredibly distressed by Margaret’s health.
In the next scene, we see snippets of two birthday parties - Prince Edward’s 21st birthday with the royal family at the palace and Katherine’s birthday at the mental hospital. Even though we haven’t been introduced to the older women yet, this juxtaposition clearly connects them to the royal family, shot by shot. The fancy tiered cake at the palace juxtaposes with a tiny cake at the hospital, with a single candle on top.
Philip gives a speech for his youngest son Edward’s birthday, noting that he didn’t actually want to have a 3rd and 4th child but his wife won them in a negotiation in an argument (on a yacht, in Lisbon, in a storm - specifically referring to scenes going back to S2E3’s Lisbon. He goes on to say that while the eldest two came out of duty, the younger two came out of joy (not pleasure, as he initially said). Charles and Anne, the eldest two, laughingly refer to their younger brothers as “the b team.” Philip also pretends to forget his son’s name right before the toast, which leaves Edward unamused.At Edward’s party, Margaret is dressed in a solid color dark blue shirt which is a bit more toned down than most things she’s worn this season, perhaps indicating how unwell she is feeling. She sits with her sister and they reminisce over Edward’s christening, when the two of them held their babies in a photo; this refers to the very last scene of Season 2 and the final shot of the S1-S2 cast of the Crown.
In the background, Edward hysterically receives both a trombone and a scuba helmet and messes around with them, to the delight of the younger royals.
The final shot of Season 2 of The Crown at Prince Edward’s christening.
Margaret asks the Queen to give her more responsibility as a royal, as she plans on giving up men, cigarettes, and perhaps even alcohol (as she waves another drink away). She specifically says, “Your sister needs to stay afloat with a sense of meaning.” This calls back to Margaret’s previous requests for more work in S1E8 Pride and Joy and S3E2 Margaretology, which has resulted in first, Winston Churchill taking away Margaret’s deputization to do the queen’s work while the queen is away on tour due to Margaret’s over the top ways, and later, the Queen and Prince Philip deciding that Margaret is too impulsive and unreliable to be given more responsibility.
Unfortunately, in the next scene between the two sisters, Margaret’s request is quickly denied and she actually has her last remaining responsibilities as counsellor of state taken away. As Margaret said to Elizabeth, “it can’t be good news or you wouldn’t have brought Lurch.” (referring to the Queen’s private secretary as the Adams Family butler). As Charteris explains, by law, only 6 people can be deputized to act for the monarch at a time, and now that Prince Edward has come of age, he is replacing poor Margo in that role, as he is higher up in the line of succession.
The 1937 Regency Act allows the monarch to have a list of six senior royals, known as Counsellors of State, who can be called on to deputize for the sovereign in an official capacity. This is known and has been standard practice since that time, so I sincerely doubt Princess Margaret would have actually been taken surprise by this change. In recent years, the list has been trimmed down even more to only 4 people - both Princess Anne and Prince Edward have now been replaced as Counsellors of State at this point by Prince Charles’s own sons. (Source: Royal.uk)
Margaret’s argument about why she should remain counsellor of state - “I have the maturity, I have the wisdom; Edward’s a boy. He’s an immature useless boy.” - is very similar to her mother’s own lament back in S1E8 Pride and Joy, in which she says her experience as queen by her husband’s side was wasted after the king’s death and the crown passed to an immature girl (her own daughter Elizabeth).
Elizabeth, who’s trying but is honestly a bit oblivious to other people’s troubles, as usual, says that now Margaret will have more time to pursue her own interests. Margaret tells her bitterly, “I don’t want more time. Time it scares me. It fills me with dread. I want something to fill it with.” She says her friends worth knowing won’t have anything to do with her, and the charities don’t want her now that they have princess Diana (as she is “younger, nicer, prettier”). Her complaints about Diana getting so much attention echo Princess Anne’s previous statements in S4E4’s Favourites and Charles’s in S4E6’s Terra Nullius.
We see a very quick order of the garter ceremony in which …presumably something important happens, but the show certainly doesn’t tell us. The queen is in her order of the garter robes, but Edward wasn’t inducted into the order of the garter until 2006. Is there a counsellor of state ceremony? I couldn’t figure this out, so if you know, please tell me.
Margaret then flies off to her property on the private Caribbean island of Mustique, which is run by her friends Colin Tennant and his wife, Lady Anne Glenconner. She emerges from the plane slowly (refusing an offer of help from some sort of helper) while wearing a wild jewel-tone patterned dress. This contrasts with her arriving at Anne’s house already passed out in the car from drinking in the early, pre-Roddy moments of S3E10’s Cri de Coeur. Anne meets her in a white jumpsuit covered with brightly colored flowers, looking very concerned. She asks Margaret “Is everything alright,” and gets a brisk “no” in response.
I actually wish Anne had a bit more to do in this series than accompany Margaret and look concerned. She’s fascinating in her own right and published her memoir last year (Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown) to great acclaim.
Margaret continues to hangs out on Mustique looking incredibly sad, not really listening to Colin as he drones on about the island’s board of directors, doing cross word puzzles that come in over the fax machine, and dreaming of seeing Roddy Llewellyn swimming in her pool. For the record, I will never forgive The Crown for only giving us one episode featuring the gorgeous Harry Treadaway as Roddy; the show portrayed their relationship as a very brief fling, but in reality, they dated for eight years! They had been together for about three years, actually, before the tabloids broke the story, and were together until 1980 sometime. Queen Elizabeth refused to invite him into her home. Fun fact, Llewellyn released a self-titled pop album in 1978. (Source: Vanity Fair). They only broke up when Roddy fell in love with someone else and got married. They still remained friends, and Margaret became friends with Roddy’s wife as well. How much fun would it have been to see all that portrayed in The Crown?
It is possible that Margaret missed Roddy as much as is portrayed in the show. Lady Anne said in a documentary that after Margaret’s funeral, the queen came up and thanked her for introducing Margaret to Roddy, as he made her very happy.
FUN FACT: Princess Margaret actually totally did crossword puzzles. I found a fantastic little article published in The Canberra Times in May 1954, noting that Princess Margaret won “a prize of three guineas worth of books for a correct entry in a weekly magazine crossword puzzle.” The editor in charge of the contest actually thought her entry was a joke at first, but confirmed its veracity with Buckingham Palace. Margaret was 23 years old at the time.
Top: Colin Tennant and his wife Lady Anne Glenconner on The Crown. Bottom Left: Colin, Margaret, and Anne (Credit: PA Images). Bottom Right: Colin and Anne (Credit: Slim Aarons / Getty).
Top: The Crown.
Bottom Left: Margaret with friend (Credit: Anwar Hussein / Getty).
Bottom Right: Margaret with friends (Credit: Lichfield / Getty).
Prince Charles comes in to visit Margaret and finds her in the pool. We get a great shot from Margaret’s point of view looking up through the water at Prince Charles and Anne. They walk about a bit and talk together. Charles’s gardening interests (previously discussed in Fairytale and Favourites) come up again as he points out all the gardens at Margaret’s estate (which, of course, were put in by Roddy). Charles also mentions that Diana is pregnant again, but that the couple continues to quarrel all the time.
Charles actually was pretty close to his Aunt Margot in real life. Prince Charles did and still wears double breasted suits very much like this. Margaret puts on a dark loose dress and hair turban to walk with her nephew, which resembles many things the real Margaret wore at Mustique.
Uh, apparently only Margaret’s nephew and niece care about her in CrownWorld, and her adult children give zero shits about her, as we’ve NEVER seen them, even though at this point in the story, her son David would be 23 and her daughter Sarah would be 20. The longer I think about this fact, the more it weirds me out that they apparently didn’t even make an appearance at Edward’s 21st birthday party, even though they would of course be close to their similarly aged cousin. David actually started lessons in the Buckingham Palace schoolroom with his cousin Prince Andrew at age 5 and Sarah was a bridesmaid at Charles and Diana’s wedding. So…they were definitely there, even if the show hasn’t even alluded to them since the moon landing (I’m fairly sure they attended the rocket launch party at Buckingham palace with their parents in S3’s Moondust as children, but they aren’t credited on the IMDB page for the episode. Will have to investigate).
I really enjoy the back and forth conversation of - “I’ve started to see someone.” “ Yes, we all know.” “No, not Camilla.” Charles doesn’t even pretend to be surprised that Margaret assumes he and Camilla are having an affair. Charles ends up suggesting that Margaret see a mental health professional as he himself is, or as Margaret calls them, “a head shrinker.” (Charles: “Aunt Margot, you can’t call them that”). Prince Charles really did go to therapy to help deal with his marriage problems for quite some time, reportedly 14 years.
This apparently was all Princess Anne’s idea, by the way. Charles promised his sister that he would bring it up to Margaret, and mentioned that Anne actually found the professional he’s recommending to Margaret.
Top left: The Crown.
Bottom: Various pictures of Princess Margaret
Credit Left to Right: Keyston-France; Shutterstock; Slim Aarons / Getty
Left: The Crown. Right: The real life Prince Charles (Credit: David Cooper).
Anne Tenant comes back to England with Margaret and drives her to the therapist’s place. Margaret is doing her best to stay incognito, wearing a head scarf, big sunglasses, and a purple coat. She acts very stand-offish at the very idea of therapy, says that she finds the whole idea pathetic, and states, “Self pity won’t get you very far. You just have to get on with it.” Margaret ultimately does admit that she’s been feeling a little low and hasn’t been able to get out of her slump. The purple in her outfit appears to emphasize her intrinsic royalness, which will come up again and again in this episode.
Princess Margaret did see a therapist during her marriage to Tony Armstrong-Jones, but I couldn’t find any indication that she’d seen a therapist later in life.
The therapist asked if any family members had mental illness, which introduces the sisters’ storyline. Margaret states that the Prince of Wales “has his ups and downs. But I wouldn’t say that’s a condition. That’s just marriage.” (continuing the season’s constant focus on Charles and Diana’s struggling marriage). She also notes that “the duke of Gloucester got low from time to time. This appears to refer to Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester - the third son and fourth child of King George V and Queen Mary (and thus, Margaret’s uncle). I have only briefly researched Prince Henry since he’s only mentioned in passing, but he apparently was a rather nervous child with poor health and sometimes had nervous fits of crying or giggling. However, after he was sent to school (becoming the first son of a British monarch to attend school), he thrived and apparently become much more healthy and happy. As an adult, he apparently drank whisky excessively, which may be what Margaret is referring to here. He suffered a few strokes in the later years of his life, eventually ending up in a wheelchair and unable to speak.
Left: The Crown. Middle and Right Photos: the real life Princess Diana (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).
Next, Margaret hangs out with her sister the Queen while an Easter egg hunt goes on in the background (the royals apparently do have a private family Easter egg hunt) and tells her all about what she’s learned about their cousins Katherine and Nerissa. The Queen says she knew about their issues, but that they were long dead. The two women end up consulting Burke’s Peerage to look up the Bowes-Lyon sisters and find that Nerissa’s death date was listed as 1940 and Katherine’s was listed as 1961. In this scene, both women wear paisley prints in wildly different colors, showing their close relationship but also their significant differences.
Fantastic Queen-ism as Margaret pushes her button to summon help: “What are you doing, that’s my button.”
Margaret continues her trend of stubbornly denying her own ill health by insisting on climbing up the ladder to get the books off the shelf herself, refusing her sister’s offer of help.
Burke’s Peerage has been published since 1826 and features the ancestry and heraldry of “the Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Landed Gentry of the United Kingdom [and] the historical families of Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations.” These books are updated yearly. The firm also has published books covering “the Imperial, Royal and Mediatised families of Europe and Latin America, the Presidential and distinguished families of the United States, the ruling families of Africa and the Middle East and other prominent families worldwide.”
We get a few shots of various family members running around in the background, including an obviously pregnant Diana leading around a toddling blonde Prince William. Per usual, she’s dressed in an almost perfect homage to some of Diana’s actual pregnancy outfits.
Sidenote: How much time has passed in this episode? Prince Edward turned 21 on March 10, 1985 and Easter that year took place on April 7, 1985. Diana goes from looking not at all pregnant at Edwards’s birthday party to SUPER pregnant at Easter, in the space of a few weeks. That’s….impressive. In addition, Prince Harry was actually born in 1984, but that minor detail change doesn’t really change much in this story.
Margaret is next seen at Buckingham Palace doing a crossword puzzle and refusing to pick up the phone when Dazzle calls. She initially says she doesn’t want to see him, but apparently changes her mind, as in the next scene, we see the two of them driving in a car. Dazzle is praying in Latin and asks Margaret when she had last driven, as she is ….somewhat bad at it (she almost runs over a bicyclist on the way). Dazzle, who is training to become a priest at this point, feels weird about lying about who he is to get into the hospital and check on Katherine and Nerissa, but Margaret bullies him into doing so anyway, saying “You can always confess later, now go.” Margaret hides out in the car (in the rain) until Dazzle comes back, confirming that he met Katherine and Nerissa (who are very much alive) and also telling her that there are several other relatives living there.
I didn’t actually find any info on whether Princess Margaret actually could drive or not, but I did find this somewhat hilarious article on the driving habits of the royals in the process (apparently Prince Philip still was driving around on private land in 2019, even though he was almost 98 at the time, and uh, Prince Edward’s 11-year-old son was also seen driving on private land).
I like that even when Margaret is going on a covert mission where she doesn’t want to be seen or recognized, she dresses fabulously in furs and big gold earrings.
Nerissa and Katherine have pictures of the Queen (Claire Foy) and Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) by their bedsides and clearly know that they are their royals and their family members. I read a LT of articles about Nerissa and Katherine while writing this blog post and didn’t find a single one that mentioned them having photos. However, they did indeed stand and salute when they saw the royals on the screen.
Upper Left: The Crown.
Upper Right: Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).
Lower Left: Princess Margaret (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty)
Lower Middle: Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret (Credit: AP)
Lower Right: Queen Elizabeth (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).
After this revelation, Margaret goes to her mother’s castle in Scotland. She pulls her mother away from her friends (including Lady Fermoy, Princess Diana’s grandmother) to confront her dramatically on a beach. Margaret is in the standard royal family Scotland uniform at this point (skirt, shirt, jacket, long coat, and headscarf). We haven’t seen Margaret dress like this much this season, but both she and her sister both commonly dressed like this in real life. The Queen Mother is in a blue and white dress with a cardigan and pearls that very much resembles the type of outfit the real Queen Mother wore her entire life.
Remember, we saw the Queen Mother tour and purchase her Scottish castle in S1’s Pride and Joy. This episode seems to constantly refer back to previous episodes. Everything in it points back to the mistakes of the past.
Margaret angrily shouts at her mother about five of their family members being “locked up and neglected.” The Queen Mother argues that Aunt Fenella (Katherine and Nerissa’s mother) was overwhelmed and that things were complicated around that time because of the abdication. Margaret then brilliantly yells, “Not everything that is wrong with this family can be explained away by the abdication!” which is totally true. As I previously mentioned, Katherine, Nerissa, and their three cousins were all placed in the hospital about five years after the abdication, so it’s unlikely that that actually played any role in their family’s decision to do so.
Margaret also yells that anyone in the family that doesn’t follow the rules and perfectly fit their role is rejected, underlining a constant theme throughout the show. We’ve seen Prince Philip, Princess Margaret, Prince Charles, and Diana all really struggle with their roles as royals throughout the series.
Later, Margaret sits in her mother’s castle looking positively ill, wearing the same outfit and using a plaid blanket to keep warm. Her mother, dressed formally for dinner, comes in and tells her all sorts of things about how the abdication changed things, and claims “Their professionally diagnosed idiocy and imbecility would make people question the integrity of the bloodline.” As I’ve discussed, this is bullshit, as the genetic disorder didn’t run in the royal line.
The Queen Mother notably refers to “the children of my brother” and “their first cousins,” while Margaret quite specifically names them all as individuals. When her mother refers to "their imbecility,” Margaret, shocked, says “don’t use their words.” This calls back to the earlier moment between Charles and Margaret when he told her she couldn’t call therapists head shrinkers. Each younger generation seems to be trying to teach their older generations to be better in this episode.
“The hereditary principle already hangs by such a precarious thread,” she says, giving the episode its title. This refers to the entire concept of hereditary monarchy, in which the throne passes from one member of a ruling family to another member of the same family.
Several examples of mental illness in the Windsor family are given: George III, Prince John, “your uncle” (presumably referring again to the duke of gloucester, who I discussed previously in this post).
George III was famously the “mad king,” whose recurrent mental illness ultimately led to the establishment of a regency, in which his eldest son ruled as Prince Regent for the last 9 years of his father’s life. During these episodes, he was often manic and deranged, sometimes talking until foam actually ran out of his mouth. There are several theories as to what was wrong with George, including porphyria and bipolar disorder. (Source: BBC). He was the subject of a popular play (The Madness of George III), a film, and also shows up in the new Netflix series Bridgerton.
Prince John was the youngest child of George V and Queen Mary and therefore was also Margaret’s uncle. He began to have seizures when he was four years old and was diagnosed with epilepsy. John was sent to live at Sandringham House with his nanny and governess. He died in 1919 at the age of 13. At the time, no one really understood epilepsy and patients with epilepsy were often treated as though they were insane. His condition was not revealed to the public until after his death, so there was lots of speculation that he was being mistreated. (Source: Libby-Jane Charleston on Medium)
Margaret sits on the plane with a line of alcohol bottles conspicuously at her back. She may have tried to give up alcohol briefly, but is about to get right back to it. Back at her therapist’s, she ponders, “It’s all a family disease isn’t it? When they tell you you can’t marry, when they strip away your official role, when they side with your husband as your marriage falls apart, and now this. This final insult. That every diminishment, every rotten misfortune is written in my blood.” She then asks her therapist if she’s destined to be mad, at which point her therapist explains the actual origin of her cousins’ genetic disorder. Margaret ends up concluding that the girls never needed to be hidden away and what her family did to them was unforgivable.
This gorgeously delivered monologue (Helena Bonham Carter BETTER be nominated for a Tony for this episode) references her previous relationship with Peter Townsend (a big plotline in Season 1), the moment earlier in this episode when her role as Counsellor of State was given to Prince Edward, and the way that her family favored her husband Tony even when he was absent from her own birthday dinner and blatantly cheating on her (featured in S3E10 Cri de Coeur).
In the next scene, Margaret fiddles on the piano while talking to Dazzle. Her therapist has suggested psycho therapy, meds, and increased exercise to help her. Dazzle urges her to convert to Catholicism and tells her how joining the church gave him a faith and helped him; how “submitting oneself to something larger” lifted the gloom and emptiness in his life. She rejects this idea, and states that she has already committed herself to a larger power - the royal family - and converting would result in her being kicked out of the family.
Margaret is in serious denial about her life and her family. She states, “My title, my seniority, my proximity to the crown – it is my happiness. It’s who I am. I don’t expect you to understand.” When Dazzle points out that her family does terrible things to its outer members to protect itself, and that they only protect the center. Margaret insists, “But I am in the center! I am in the very center. I am the Queen’s sister, daughter of a king-emperor, and I will always be in the center.”
The “center” metaphor is very apt at describing Margaret’s situation throughout her life. Before her sister Elizabeth got married and had children, Margaret was second in line to the throne. With successive children and children’s children, she’s been pushed further and further away from the throne. At this point in her life, she is…8th in line to the throne, behind Prince Charles and his son Prince William, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward, Princess Anne and her children Peter and Zara Phillips. At the time of her death, she was 11th to the throne. The nature of hereditary monarchy is that those who aren’t actually the firstborn direct descendants of the monarch are continually pushed further back in line as more royals marry and have children. It’s just inevitable.
Margaret’s use of “king-emperor” hearkens back to her mother’s use of the term earlier in the episode. Her mother was in denial about the situation with Katherine, Nerissa, and their three cousins, and Margaret is totally in denial about her position here.
At the end of the scene, Margaret says they shouldn’t see each other again but asks, if he has a moment, for him to pray for her. As I noted earlier, the real life Dazzle really did try to convert Margaret to Catholicism. However, the two remained friends until his death in 1994. She was actually one of the last people he saw before his death.
Margaret, now feeling even more desolate and insignificant than ever, flies back to Mustique and gets a montage of party scenes. She’s seen in an acid yellow dress singing at a party, staring in her mirror, walking at a beach, and dancing by herself. She notably is back to smoking and drinking. She’s wearing brighter colors than ever in almost all these scenes, until the very end, when she’s sporting a much simpler and quieter printed dress. The episode ends with Margaret sitting alone at her pool (which of course, reminds her of Roddy and all that she’s lost), staring at her toes in the water and looking desperately sad and alone as the sun sets behind her.
The lyrics Margaret sings (from Fallin’ by Connie Francis) are on point as usual. “Yeah I was riding high, but then my ivory tower toppled and I tumbled from the sky. I got a feelin’ like I’m fallin’ and you’re the reason why.” The party music and noise is overtaken by the same sort of mystical music Diana has been getting all season (the instrumental arrangement is specifically “Voices”).
Her toes are specifically painted red, which calls back to the red finger nail polish she was wearing in S3E10 Cri de Coeur when she’s crying after her affair with Roddy was broken in the press and he tried to comfort her.