1x10 Gloriana

[7.7/10] If you’ll forgive me for spoiling a couple of decades old films, there’s a parallel between the endings to 1972’s The Godfather and 1998’s Elizabeth. In both instances, the films convey the sense of their protagonists coming into their own as the head of a family and an institution by showing a sequence where they’ve ordered the assassinations of their enemies. It is meant to be a sign of corruption, a sign of the inexorable pull of the bodies of which they are now the heads. Michael Coreleone and Elizabeth I (of the film at least) tried to stay pure, but eventually gave into the reality of their roles and accepted that you have to conspire, you have to plot, you have to play those games.

What I find fascinating about “Gloriana” the finale of The Crown’s first season, is that in some ways it’s telling the same kind of story. In hindsight, this season is about many things: the fall of one generation, the rise of another, the turn of a nation, the internecine fights of family made that much more sharp-edged in the spotlight of royalty. But most of all, it is about the transformation of Elizabeth II from a person to “The Crown”.

This episode lays that idea on pretty thick. The former King Edward gives a thoughtful, writerly monologue about the eternal tension between being a person with ties to those close to you and being a monarch with responsibilities to God and country. The dramatization of the tension between the oath of loyalty Elizabeth made to her father and sister in their home, and the one she made to her country as part of her coronation is not subtle. And just in case you missed the subtext of all that, the close of the episode depicts her in the crown, with a royal photographer voicing over the idea of her as a person drifting away, to be replaced with only The Queen.

And yet, what I find so interesting about the episode, and about that transition, is that it’s the opposite of Michael Coroleone’s and the cinematic Elizabeth I’s. Where they are encouraged to shuffle off their idealism and naivete, and start engaging in the horse-trading and dirty work of leading their respective families, Elizabeth II’s path is to stop playing those games, to stop fighting within the system. The sign of her corruption, her consumption, by this institution, is giving up and giving in, realizing that there is no fight, only the will of a system that wants what it wants, regardless of what you want. Hers is to disappear into that system, become its figurehead, and leave the self behind.

It is, as with so much of The Crown, to feel too bad for people, even people in fictionalized retellings, who live in incredible opulence with a level of privilege most of us will never be closer than three wrought iron gates to. But there is something sad, arguably even tragic about that.

In “Gloriana”’s opening, the departing King Edward gives the soon-to-be King George confirmation of his decision, and tells him he fears George won’t thank him for it. It’s easy to imagine that as the grind of leadership, the constant appointments and responsibilities expected of the erstwhile sovereign that conceivably give one little chance for rest. But on The Crown’s perspective, the truer burden is the loss of self within the symbolism one must uphold, the steady tendrils of cabinet and parliament and the church and yes, the crown, that wrap themselves around you, until they are you, and what you were is gradually squeezed out.

The case study of that is straightforward, but maddening. After all the rigamarole for Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, it turns out that the Queen Mother and Tommy were still plotting against them, and the wait for marriage was a snipe hunt the whole time. The powers that be do not want Margaet and Peter to marry. They assumed that the two years apart would be enough to break it off. But even though the couple waited patiently through all this, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

God help her, Margaret wants to right that wrong. She impores her Prime Minister to lean onto the Cabinet and parliament to do something. She tastefully reminds him that many members of the cabinet are divorced, so hypocrisy reigns. She rings in the heads of the church and pushes back on their complaints. She genuinely fights to uphold her word to her sister.

I think that’s what’s so heartbreaking about this. This isn’t Elizabeth turning evil or suddenly not caring about her family. This is her fighting and coming to feel like there’s no hope of success. This is her being ground down into submission by a force that pressed her into that throne and never let up since. This isn’t giving into the dark side; it’s fighting the good fight and giving up when it feels unwinnable. You win, Windsor. She’s no longer a person. She is, instead, a hood ornament on, as Philip would put it, a broken down old beater, utterly incapable of changing the car’s direction, even when it’s bearing down on her beloved sister.

I feel bad for Maragaret, even if I’ve often thought of her as a spoiled child for much of this. But by god, she seems earnestly in love with Peter. She waited out the separation period. She did what was necessary to protect The Crown, with the understanding that once she did, the freedom to marry would be hers. To have done all that, and Lucy (or in this case, Tommy) pull the football away is a dreadful thing. She’s right to be devastated. She’s right to be angry, even if that anger is misdirected. And seeing her talk about the only man who can hold her together, only to see them split apart by forces beyond them, feels downright cruel, particularly when the obstacle is backwards moralizing about divorce from a church founded by a royal who wanted to be able to split from his wife.

But theirs isn’t the only relationship facing trials thanks to the machinations of the Queen Mother and Tommy and their ilk. Philip is all but banished to Australia, ostensibly to give him somewhere to shine, but in actuality, and so many words, to get him to “settle.” The implication is clear. It doesn’t matter that he’ll be away from his wife. It doesn’t matter that he’ll be away from his kids. He needs to get with the program. And while Elizabeth seems to have some regrets about it, at the end of the day, she basically says to him, “You need to be broken in by this thing the way I have.” That is a tough thing.

What’s interesting is the way the show draws the comparison between Elizbeth and the abdicated King Edward. He tells her that there will always be two parts of her: the person and the crown. Both cannot coexist. Both will b e in eternal struggle. And the agony of that tension will not cease.

But for all Edward’s infamy through all this -- he is the cudgel that men of state use to warn Elizabeth off from the slightest hint of reform -- he chose love over the crown. He picked being a person over being a monarch. He chose the person he was closest to over tradition and expectation and institution. It’s fair to call it selfish, especially considering the burden his brother was forced to carry. But there’s also something noble about holding onto what you love in the face of backwards prohibitions against it.

The contrast is especially noteworthy because Elizabeth makes the opposite choice. Edwards’ betrayal spurs George to ask his daughters to make a promise on the eve of his ascension to the throne. The irony is that it’s the demands of that throne, and the same backwards restrictions that forced Edward out, that spurs her to break them.

Sometimes corruption is not a sullying, a persuasion of someone to fight dirty. Sometimes, instead, it’s simply getting them to submit, to stop fighting, to let the wheels that have been set in motion since 1066 continue turning without you as a hindrance. Elizabeth is not a mob boss. She is not a Machiavellian virgin queen. She is, instead, on The Crown’s account, simply someone who kept acquiescing until there was none of her left.