![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerHistory! Politics! Loyalty! Religious and ethical dilemmas! Echoes of World War II! MORE LOYALTY. If someone sat down to write a show SPECIFICALLY FOR ME, The Crown might be the result. That scene where Prince Philip is Under Suspicion and he basically gets called to heel by the palace, right down to the part where they make him wear a tie studded with little tiny hearts to show his devotion to the Queen – good God.
Or the part in season one where he argues with Elizabeth about whether he should kneel at her coronation. The solemnity of the coronation – the seriousness with which the show treats all its politics, while still showing that many of the political decisions are made for comparatively petty personal reasons.
It would be hard to pick a single favorite episode: the second season in particular has a particularly fine slate. The episode where Queen Elizabeth meets Jackie Kennedy? The episode where Prince Philip insists on sending his unfortunate son to the miserable boarding school he himself attended as a child, and we get flashbacks to Philip’s horrible childhood? (Philip makes many poor parenting decisions, but he is clearly doing better than his own terrible father.)
I think my favorite is the episode where Queen Elizabeth struggles with the question of forgiveness – which, because she is sovereign, is not merely an emotional or moral question but one with enormous practical and political weight. Her uncle David, who abdicated in order to be with “the woman he loves” (a construction he repeats almost like an incantation whenever he refers to Wallis Simpson), wants a chance to serve his country again, perhaps as ambassador.
Can she forgive him? Does forgiving him have to mean giving him a second chance? And when she learns things that make it impossible for her to do either, how can she, as a Christian, reconcile that inability to forgive with her Christian duty of forgiveness?
There’s a particularly fine scene where she discusses this with the American evangelist Billy Graham, and she really wants him to give her an out on this one and he politely but firmly insists that no, the duty to forgive is absolute. It’s just so human and relatable - I think we’ve all had a moment (not necessarily with regard to forgiveness) where we really, really wanted to be told that what we wanted was, conveniently, also the right thing to do - even though it really wasn’t.
And then, just when the impasse seems absolutely impossible, Graham offers Elizabeth counsel on what to do if one simply can’t forgive. It seemed rare and refreshing to me to see that acknowledgment that knowing what is right, and even wanting to do what is right, is not the same thing as being able to do it.
From a non-Christian perspective, one could very well argue that Elizabeth doesn’t have a duty to forgive in this case - and even within a Christian perspective I think one could argue what precisely forgiveness would mean for him. But Elizabeth is approaching it from a Christian perspective, specifically an Anglican perspective, and I appreciate that in this and in other things (the various wrangles about divorce, in particular) the show takes that seriously and shows us what that means to this characters in this time period.
I also appreciate that you never get a moment where the writers pause to let us know that yes, they're really on our side about, say, the ludicrousness of 1950s divorce laws in Britain. They let the material stand on its own and don't editorialize, even when the characters have views that to most modern viewers seem wrong or just weird, like the royal family's steadfast belief in the divine right of kings or Winston Churchill and Tommy Lascelles (the queen's private secretary) denunciations of the scourge of - wait for it - individualism.
When's the last time you saw a halfway sympathetic character anywhere denounce individualism without being thoroughly trounced and taught the error in their ways? It's refreshing, bracing even, for its novelty value alone.
And it gives the show a certain weight and solidity. The world of the show feels real, and truly different from our own, not just the modern world in fancy dress. I watched it all in about two weeks and I highly, highly recommend it.
Or the part in season one where he argues with Elizabeth about whether he should kneel at her coronation. The solemnity of the coronation – the seriousness with which the show treats all its politics, while still showing that many of the political decisions are made for comparatively petty personal reasons.
It would be hard to pick a single favorite episode: the second season in particular has a particularly fine slate. The episode where Queen Elizabeth meets Jackie Kennedy? The episode where Prince Philip insists on sending his unfortunate son to the miserable boarding school he himself attended as a child, and we get flashbacks to Philip’s horrible childhood? (Philip makes many poor parenting decisions, but he is clearly doing better than his own terrible father.)
I think my favorite is the episode where Queen Elizabeth struggles with the question of forgiveness – which, because she is sovereign, is not merely an emotional or moral question but one with enormous practical and political weight. Her uncle David, who abdicated in order to be with “the woman he loves” (a construction he repeats almost like an incantation whenever he refers to Wallis Simpson), wants a chance to serve his country again, perhaps as ambassador.
Can she forgive him? Does forgiving him have to mean giving him a second chance? And when she learns things that make it impossible for her to do either, how can she, as a Christian, reconcile that inability to forgive with her Christian duty of forgiveness?
There’s a particularly fine scene where she discusses this with the American evangelist Billy Graham, and she really wants him to give her an out on this one and he politely but firmly insists that no, the duty to forgive is absolute. It’s just so human and relatable - I think we’ve all had a moment (not necessarily with regard to forgiveness) where we really, really wanted to be told that what we wanted was, conveniently, also the right thing to do - even though it really wasn’t.
And then, just when the impasse seems absolutely impossible, Graham offers Elizabeth counsel on what to do if one simply can’t forgive. It seemed rare and refreshing to me to see that acknowledgment that knowing what is right, and even wanting to do what is right, is not the same thing as being able to do it.
From a non-Christian perspective, one could very well argue that Elizabeth doesn’t have a duty to forgive in this case - and even within a Christian perspective I think one could argue what precisely forgiveness would mean for him. But Elizabeth is approaching it from a Christian perspective, specifically an Anglican perspective, and I appreciate that in this and in other things (the various wrangles about divorce, in particular) the show takes that seriously and shows us what that means to this characters in this time period.
I also appreciate that you never get a moment where the writers pause to let us know that yes, they're really on our side about, say, the ludicrousness of 1950s divorce laws in Britain. They let the material stand on its own and don't editorialize, even when the characters have views that to most modern viewers seem wrong or just weird, like the royal family's steadfast belief in the divine right of kings or Winston Churchill and Tommy Lascelles (the queen's private secretary) denunciations of the scourge of - wait for it - individualism.
When's the last time you saw a halfway sympathetic character anywhere denounce individualism without being thoroughly trounced and taught the error in their ways? It's refreshing, bracing even, for its novelty value alone.
And it gives the show a certain weight and solidity. The world of the show feels real, and truly different from our own, not just the modern world in fancy dress. I watched it all in about two weeks and I highly, highly recommend it.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-12 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-12 02:56 pm (UTC)I did think a lot of trouble could have been avoided if Elizabeth Windsor had won just once, and let her sister and Peter Townsend run off to Gretna Green to get married. Or France, or wherever it would have caused her the least jurisdictional problems. Although probably it would have just caused different horrible problems, so I may be wrong.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-12 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-12 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-12 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-12 10:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-12 03:07 pm (UTC)