The Crown

I am completely on the hook…. it has not been long that I have started using Netflix…. actually it has been a couple of months… I do not have the time to watch TV, and there are ongoing TV series that I do not manage to catch up…

Then this weekend my husband and I were without knowing what to watch and we remembered our Netflix application… we decided to check it out and I saw the big add for the newest release …. The Crown….

I love history and the monarchy as I have expressed here before, intrigues me… we clicked on it and quickly got into the story…

The story we all somewhat know… Queen Elisabeth II is still ruling and we may not be British, but the British Monarch is present in everybody’s life as the press make sure we know it all about the Royal Family or at least we think we know it all….

I watched the movie the Queen, but the Crown is different… first because it is not a snapshot! It is supposed to portrait the reign of Queen Elisabeth decade after decade.  The narrative takes its time, allow you get into her story, build your own understanding of the characters, develop with them, feel their feelings…

I was born in the 70´s and when I realised what the British Monarch was, it was already in the 90´s… now watching the Crown, and see the Queen’s relationship with her husband and the portraits of her family life, it somewhat surprises me… it is a if I had the impression that the Royal Family was not a normal family… that they were not allowed to have feelings and interact with each other as I interact with my own family… you note quickly that my perception is wrong but not so wrong…

There is a dialogue between the Queen mother ( Elisabeth’s grandmother and Elisabeth as Queen, immediately after the death of her father) that describes that the Crown is bigger than anything… that it is even bigger than the Monarch… as the Queen mother says to Elisabeth when the latter complains that it is difficult not to do anything as this is not a job at all… the Queen mother replies ” You must do nothing…no expression, nothing that gives any hint of your opinion… you cannot take sides… the hardest job is to do nothing at all… the less you say, show, feel… the better”

This is the Crown for you!!  A job given by birth… would you feel obliged to take it???