Fic Written in 2018 Meme

Everyone else is doing it, so I couldn't resist: the Fic Written in 2018 Meme!

( It got pretty long )

Snowflake Challenge Day 3

In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc.) and explain why you love it so much.

Ugh this is such a hard choice! There are so many possibilities!

One of my favorite TV episodes ever is “Dear Mrs. Kennedy” in season two of The Crown, because I love that show (the sumptuous costumes! The beautiful sets! The wonderful acting! The history) and this episode is one of the best constructed and also the most well-designed to appeal to my id.

Which is certainly saying something in a show where there’s an entire episode revolving around whether Prince Philip will kneel to his wife during her coronation (he does) and another where he’s ordered to wear a tie with little hearts on it in order to show that he, unlike his buddy the womanizing jerk, is a good family man who loves his wife. And takes orders from her.

However, “Dear Mrs. Kennedy” is about Elizabeth’s relationship with Mrs. Kennedy, and I really like the way that it evolves over the course of the episode. At first she’s jealous because Mrs. Kennedy seems to embody all the things that she’s not: she’s brilliant and well-educated and witty, while Elizabeth is dull and stodgy and often ignorant.

But then they meet, and Elizabeth is bowled over by Mrs. Kennedy’s famous charm… only to learn later that not only was Mrs. Kennedy not charmed in return, but in fact she made fun of her at a dinner party later that week.

(Then Elizabeth goes to Ghana and causes a sensation by dancing with President Nkrumah, which is delightful in quite a separate way.)

And then! And then! Jack Kennedy tells his wife that Elizabeth has heard about her unkind comments (he thinks it’s hilarious and makes jokes about cat fights while Jackie sits petrified with horror), and next time the Kennedys are in London Jackie arranges a meeting at Buckingham Palace specifically so she can abase herself apologize (this does not involve kneeling in the show but I like to imagine that someday someone will write the fic where it does), which involves explaining that a doctor has been dosing both Jackie and Jack with shots of “vitamins” that are almost certainly amphetamines.

There’s something about this admission that just gets me - the fact that the Kennedys, one of the most powerful couples in the world, are at the mercy of this quack doctor, and the bravery of admitting something so potentially humiliating to someone who has good reason to be angry at her.

And they don’t exactly become friends after that, but there’s respect and understanding between them. At the end of the episode Queen Elizabeth is watching the news on the day Kennedy was shot, and Jackie is on TV still wearing her bloody clothes, and the Queen Mother thinks its because Jackie is distraught but Elizabeth understands - no - she’s wearing those bloody clothes on purpose: this is a political action, a cry for justice.

And it’s just so rare for relationships between women on TV to be so fraught, neither simple friendship nor straight-up enmity, but complicated and changing over time.

...also, I’m just saying, Jackie Kennedy kneels to the queen would be a great fic. The First Lady of the United States kneeling to the Queen of England - I’m sure Jackie would be alive to the painful political overtones even if this is a purely private act. The flush rising to her cheeks! The downcast eyes, the lowered eyelashes grazing her cheeks! And the queen sits in her chair, coolly sipping her tea.