But Will There Be Corgis? Thread Where We Discuss Netflix's THE CROWN

best character is elizabeth, forzen at the centre dissolving herself in duty; margaret is the most fun character

yeah elizabeth for me is the best character; rmde @ margaret & phillip with their endless "wants" & "needs" worse than actual corgis imo (/jk)

maybe it's just the older sister in me that sympathizes with lizzy

it's fucking hard work being the square responsible one!

this is v good but i have to remind myself what kind of life i'm seeing, what's being dramatized. lethal smog has the same weight as whether philip has enough to do day to day.

yeah I'm a bit torn between thinking ^that is kind of the point of the series and wondering if I should really be spending hours contemplating said basically appalling point. In TV drama terms though, so far my only real complaint is that Edward is no fun as a villain, he's just really contemptible and joyless to spend time with.

he isn't the villain, he's the warning

I had a feeling "villain" might be objected to, and I don't disagree about his importance to the show's central idea of the function of the monarchy. Maybe it's the actor? I stand by "joyless to spend time with" so when he's central to an episode I find them a bit more of a slog (but I'm only halfway through in case that matters).

as an american i shd probably look into what duties the monarch has. the 'heavy hangs the crown' type stuff between harris and foy is the show's strongest, but again i'm like... why. why is it like this.

It seemed like that to them. At the time.

Not an expert on this by any means but it seems like in 195whatever they still had a huge hangover from empire and from, of course, the wars, where they felt the idea of the steady "leadership" of a dutiful self-effacing monarch made a bit more sense.

As they do less and less of consequence nowadays, they're just reality-show-type celebrities given stilts by history, so it seems silly to us now. But even non-royal britishes in 1952ish might well have regarded the persons and fates of individual royals as a sort of proxy for the national identity, in the way perhaps that we regard sports stars. To what extent is Cleveland's fate entwined with LeBron's? It isn't, except for the person who feels that it is.

yes, the series is basically about duty vs the call of modernity (which is already super-unusual, i can't actually think of another drama that's done this in the present-day era)

my feeling (having watched it all) is that it's surprsingly harsh on ppl who don't usually get harshed on (churchill, for one): but yes, it is entirely (and deliberately) told from inside the buck house bubble

i suspect if it had tried to make much of the view from outdside, it would actually probably sentimentalise both

i also suspect that it will get less rigorous as it approaches the present

my favoutite exchange was a burn from queen mary (of teck, aka edward/george's mum) pointing out that philip's family (the schleswig-holstein-sonderburg-glücksburgs) are jumped up parvenus, whose line did not -- of course -- go back a thousand years

it was just to win a minor family argument but she was irritated

From the perspective of now, the royals who basically said "hey, we're rich and we have basically nothing to do, so let's just party and fuck" are actually sort of on the right side of history. The ones who thought they had a moral obligation to lead, set a good example, and carefully read government documents actually come off looking sorta like chumps. Because a parliamentary government can run fine without them (in fact, most do).

But just like we take the internal logic of a show seriously when we watch "The Tudors" or "Wolf Hall" or "Man for All Seasons" or, heck, "Game of Thrones," to enjoy "The Crown" requires inhabiting, however temporarily, its point of view.

That said, "The Crown" might be made more exciting with tits 'n' dragons.

i think the approach will make it v interesting in later seasons - all of the things that Elizabeth has to give up, repress, compromise & reject entirely now will all become (for her) depressingly moot as her role as queen becomes more & more meaningless

The ones who thought they had a moral obligation to lead, set a good example, and carefully read government documents actually come off looking sorta like chumps.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=FTQ

yes -- and i think it's a bit deeper even than this, as well, bcz the ones who say "let's party and fuck" (who are totally the ones who make sense, even more in the 60s than the 50s, are also the ones where it's obvious that they're doing nothing to justify the colossal privilege: elizabeth's determination is a double one, to prove she can be a satisfactory monarch even though she's a young girl with a very odd and inadequate education (except in the constitution), one that can match up to her dad, and victoria and the other semi-mythical elizabeth, but also to justify the privilege by an iron committment to a selfless version of the duty she owes and the role she must commit to (the dowdiness is an expression of this, like the other elizabeth's quasi-holy virginity)

^^^which is a bonkers insupportable topsyturvy view, but without it, there's just nothing left to ground the wealth and the palaces, etc, as any kind of equitable settlement -- and that's where elizabeth is coming from

re the constitution: she refers to bagehot* when he comes into conversation as "badgett", but her teacher -- a professor with a northern accent, who drinks -- calls him "batshit"... which is not IMO an accident

*(walter bagehot, the 19th centry theorist of the constitution and apologist for the victorian monarchy)

until i watched this i don't think i ever *fully* appreciated just how insane the mythology of the monarchy is when applied to a human being

It has been announced Brenda is getting a £370 mill full electrical/mechanical refurb to her house scot free, now that's what you call full bennies.

Just finished watching this with Kate (ie, my girlfriend, not a certain princess) over the past few days. Good stuff, all points above taken on board of course.

Our favorite character was the mustachioed hatchetman.

"Bon voyage."

he was so good!

Pretty much whenever he appeared on screen I assumed he was about to have someone killed.

marming like a badass

= tommy lascelles (rhymes with tassles)

his royal mustache

I rather enjoyed this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3657397/A-most-devoted-subject-and-a-most-exacting-critic.html

Tommy's bête noir was the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII and ultimately Duke of Windsor. "He is the most attractive man I have ever met," Tommy declared on appointment to his household in 1921. Disillusionment was swift. "I have wasted the best years of my life," he said after resigning in 1929, outraged by the Prince's neglect of duty and loose morals.

Half a century later, when I was writing a biography of George V, I asked Lascelles what he remembered of the King, who had summoned him back to royal service in 1935. He said: "The King gave me an MVO for looking after his son. It was the hardest-earned medal I ever had." From a man who had won a Military Cross on the Western Front, that was indeed a savage epitaph on the Prince.

He wrote no less bitterly of Mrs Simpson in his retrospect of the Abdication crisis printed in the present volume: "The vast majority of the King's subjects… would not tolerate their Monarch taking as his wife, and their Queen, a shop-soiled American, with two living husbands and a voice like a rusty saw."

Also what the hell:

Tommy undoubtedly gave a steadying hand to a master notorious for his outbursts, and it was his diplomacy that kept both the King and Churchill on dry land after each had declared his intention of watching the D-Day bombardment of the French coast from a cruiser.

whoa

I loved that awesome temper tantrum by the King in ep1 when he is getting ready

And learning about Antony Eden's health problems, jeez:

Eden had an ulcer, exacerbated by overwork, as early as the 1920s. His life was changed forever by a medical mishap: during an operation on 12 April 1953, to remove gallstones, his bile duct was damaged, leaving Eden susceptible to recurrent infections, biliary obstruction, and liver failure. He suffered from cholangitis, an abdominal infection which became so agonising that he was admitted to hospital in 1956 with a temperature reaching 106 °F (41 °C). He required major surgery on three occasions to alleviate the problem. Eden would almost certainly have become Prime Minister when Churchill suffered a severe stroke on 23 June 1953, had he not been recovering from corrective surgery in the United States on the same day.

He was also prescribed Benzedrine, the wonder drug of the 1950s. Regarded then as a harmless stimulant, it belongs to the family of drugs called amphetamines, and at that time they were prescribed and used in a very casual way. Among the side effects of Benzedrine are insomnia, restlessness, and mood swings, all of which Eden suffered during the Suez Crisis; indeed, earlier in his premiership he complained of being kept awake at night by the sound of motor scooters. Eden's drug use is now commonly agreed to have been a part of the reason for his bad judgment while Prime Minister. Eden was secretly hospitalised with a high fever, possibly as a result of his heavy medication, on 5–8 October 1956. He underwent further surgery at a New York hospital in April 1957.

In November 2006, private papers uncovered in the Eden family archives disclosed that Eden had been prescribed a powerful combination of amphetamines and barbiturates called drinamyl. Better known in post-war Britain as "purple hearts", the drug can impair judgement, cause paranoia, and even make the person taking them lose contact with reality. Drinamyl was banned in 1978

Lascelles was great, yeah

best moment in the show is the dressing down the Queen gives to Churchill and Salisbury

the drug can impair judgement, cause paranoia, and even make the person taking them lose contact with reality.

The ideal modern politician.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to invade Egypt"

lol

bennies, huh. well that's the most fun anyone's had as PM surely

Something else I didn't realize -- Eden's widow is still alive...and is a niece of Winston Churchill!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarissa_Eden

looked up the lascelles family, vaguely hoping they'd been Gormenghastly Keeper of the Mustache since the norman conquest, telling monarchs no for 1000 years -- turns out the earliest one that's well enough known to get into wikipedia is francis, during the civil war, who was mp for stank and north allerton -- and a regicide latterly in the barebones parliament

i've probably already posted the story i know abt eden at some point down the years : he was friends with ian fleming -- james bond is also a benzedrine enthusiast -- and after one of his illnesses went to stay in jamaica at fleming's holiday house goldeneye… the awfulness of the food in the fleming household was legendary, and eden was convinced he was hallucinating large rats in the rafters (he wasn't, they were real-life rats)… more rattled than rested, he returned to downing street to handle the suez crisis

Eden and the Suez seems to be a walking, talking 'what not to do.'

yeah no kidding

My gift to ilx is this image of CORGIS IN SWEATERS

http://cdn-img.instyle.com/sites/default/files/styles/684xflex/public/1481064512/120616-Royal-Family-ugly-sweaters-NEW.jpg

lol

Just started this, so good

Based on that photo, one of the important functions of modern British royalty is to provide comic relief. Presumably the UK needs such jollity at the moment.

based on that post, one might think you thought that was a photo of people

the continued existence of the british royalty provides no relief - only disgust

saw a trailer for this prog "it's a revolution from the inside" or some such trash

the only thing I like inspired by contemporary british royalty of which I can think is king charles III a play and I guess anarchy in the UK a song

I'm ashamed to admit that it was only the novelty double sweater that made me realise the above photo is not real.

Anyway, I've been watching this series, just finished episode 8... And while it's very well made and entertaining without falling for needless scandalisation of well-known historical events, I'm a bit surprised that it doesn't really provide any proper voice that'd be critical of the continued existence of monarchy in a Western democracy. Especially since it's such an ensemble piece with multiple viewpoints, and yet the only critical words to that effect so far were uttered by the newspaper editor, who was only a small bit character and mostly painted as a villain who caused poor Margaret's breakup with the Who guitarist.

Some of Philips's quips seem to also hint at this direction, but they're mostly just used to illustrate his frustration of being the Queen Husband with no deeper critical implications.

I mean, I get it that the writer and most of the intended audience are probably staunch royalists, but it seems pretty absurd that in a series that otherwise tries to provide a fairly objective look into monarchy in a time period where is becoming increasigly obsolete, they have no one stating the obvious and saying that it is. Surely 1950s Britain already had some anti-monarchists among leftists etc? The absence of that feels like a gaping hole in the side of the narrative that it just refuses to accept. (Unless that happens in the last two episode that I havent' yet watched?)

"that it just refuses to acknowledge"

The antiroyalist perspective is also missing from Game of Thrones, Excalibur, Frozen, Cinderella, and Star Wars iirc.

I am not sure I agree that "the writer and most of the intended audience are probably staunch royalists"; it's more like "this is the story they wanted to tell."

FWIW ex-King David says some stuff about how it's perfectly rational to prefer ceremonial magic to boring truth.

The Little Mermaid needed more scenes about the exploitation of the mollusks

The antiroyalist perspective is also missing from Game of Thrones, Excalibur, Frozen, Cinderella, and Star Wars iirc.

Are you being serious? In case y
ou are, this series is clearly framed as a fair realistic and multifaceted look into the role of the monarch in a modern society, while

...Cinderella isn't. So it's not unfair to accept the former to address the huge question that's inextricably tied to its central theme. Cinderella deals with something totally different than the justification of the position of the monarch.

"it's not unfair to expect"