3x06 Tywysog Cymru

[7.7/10] I tore Philip to shreds over his actions in “Paterfamilias”, the episode where he ships Charles off to a boarding school the boy was plainly unsuited for. But you know what? Say what you will about Philip and about his choices there, but he made them because he cared about Charles, not as a piece of the royal apparatus, but as his son. I may disagree with his decisions as a parent, but Philip sent Charles to Gordonstoun because it had given him purpose and strength as a young man, and he’d hoped it would do the same for his child.

But Elizabeth’s choices in "Tywysog Cymru" are the opposite. At the beginning of the episode, she’s offered a choice: keep Charles at Cambridge where he’s finally happy for the good of her son, or ship him off to what may as well be a foreign country for the good of the Commonwealth. And in the end, she doesn’t just pick the latter; she dictates it to her son without even a second to consider how he feels or even hear him out. There's no comfort, no discussion, no fond farewell. Just an order to do his duty without question.

That duty is to go to the University of Wales for a term and learn enough Welsh to give an investiture speech in the native tongue of the land he’s about to become prince of. Of course, as luck would have it, the best teacher of the Welsh language in all the land just so happens to be a republican nationalist for Wales, who’s appalled at having to teach the progeny of the royal line that he sees as paternalistic occupiers.

The trajectory is predictable, but well done. Professor Millward is resistant and prickly at first, but eventually takes a shine to Charles. Charles is not the world’s most devoted student in Wales initially, but after a stern talking to from his teacher, starts setting his mind to the task and finds unexpected success. Charles learns the plight of the people as Wales, and Millward learns that with the right tutor, the heir apparent could be his ally, not his enemy.

Soon enough, Charles is able to pronounce “atmosphere” in Welsh with all its proper frictives and glottal stops, putting a smile on his mentor’s face. And Professor Millward chuckles at a book of English tongue-twisters, gifted to him by the newly-invested prince, despite them setting him off a few scenes prior. All’s well for the warm and fuzzy.

If you’ve seen any inspirational student/teacher stories, you’ve seen the basics of this plot before. But The Crown handles the idea well. Guest star Mark Lewis Jones cuts the right figure of the irascible professor unwilling to stand on the usual ceremony for the royal scion, and series newcomer Josh O’Conner does well as the retiring but sensitive young adult version of Charles. Their growing bond is relatively quick and certainly full of familiar tropes, but those story beats are venerable for a reason; with the right performance and presentation, they work to help us see two people in very different positions change one another for the better.

While Charles learning to take this command performance seriously, and Prof. Millward recognizing a bit of brightness in England’s future is all well and good, it’s not the most interesting part of the story for me. Instead, it’s when the professor invites the young prince into his home, and perhaps for the first time ever, Charles sees a loving family. The vision of two parents who are warm with their son, who take him to say goodnight, who treat their child like, well, a child, and not an asset to be molded and trained, is shattering for someone who’s never experienced it.

So while it’s a little facile, there is force to Charles’ thinly-veiled “Wales deserves to be heard, and so do I” speech. He sympathizes with the country on a personal level, not just because he’s moved by Prof. Millward’s story of a Welsh-speaking town submerged to ensure Liverpool’s drinking water, but because he knows personally what it’s like to be ignored and dictated to by the powers that be in London, so it’s easy for him to relate his teacher’s righteous indignation at the whole thing. The episode signposts the point a little too hard, but it’s a strong comparison that, like the best episodes of The Crown, makes the political personal.

And if the episode had ended there, with Charles’ triumphant speech in Welsh that subtly expresses his solidarity, and a warm bond with his once curt instructor, it would have been perfectly good, with a touch of the warm and inspirational to send the audience home.

What makes it a great episode is that it goes one step further, leaning into the blowback Charles would receive at home for his supposed impudence, and the cold reception he receives from his own mother when he presses the issue.

The scene between Elizabeth and Charles is, frankly, hard to watch. In “Paterfamilias”, Elizabeth was the one trying to protect her son. Now, she’s the one keeping him at arm’s length and excoriating him for daring to express himself. You feel for Charles. His “I’m not a robot like you, Mom!” routine is a familiar one for all teenagers. But it takes on a particularly sad resonance when he’s not simply a normal young adult have to make the compromises we all do to get along the world, but instead a thinking, feeling young man who is treated like a commodity whose public value is to be maximized rather than a person who is to be heard, least of all by his mother.

That is the beauty, and the tragedy, of a show like The Crown that's able to trace a character’s life for decades. We can recall Queen Mary telling Elizabeth the importance and difficulty of not being seen to have a perspective, and the young queen bristling at the prospect of sanding her humanity down. Well, now we can see that the process is complete, that she’s been indoctrinated into the expectation and detachment of The Crown, to where she almost cannot remember what it was like to buck against such limits. Now it’s her who’s repeating her grandmother’s words to her own son, a vessel for the repression of a distant, unfeeling institution, rather than a young adult herself trying to hang onto her soul.

That battle has seemingly been already lost. And worse yet, she is cruel and uncaring to a son who feels unheard and, more damningly, unloved. To tell a shy child who is finding his own voice for the first time that the country doesn’t want to hear it, that the family doesn’t want to hear it, that his mother doesn’t want to hear it, is a cold a rebuke as you’re likely to find this side of a Scottish winter.

It is said that the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s apathy. If that's the case, then Charles, who is seemingly wanted by his mother only as a symbol, not as a person with his own thoughts and feelings, is truly bereft of such affections. Much was made in the first two seasons of Elizabeth’s gradual consumption by this thing that is The Crown. Well, there is no greater sign that the transformation is complete, that she has fully become a company man, than her apathetic response to an earnest plea for a beating heart to be acknowledged, and the damage done to a young man given everything in the world, except his mother’s love.