In every story with a beautiful princess there is almost always an evil queen of some sort or another, poisoning apples, filling shoes with hot coals, imprisoning innocent maids in towers, and generally making it difficult for any good princess to realize her full potential. What occurred to me as I watched The Queen is that in the heart of every queen is a princess defending her castle. Wicked is in the eye of the beholder.
Directed by Stephen Frears from a script by Peter Morgan, The Queen takes a peek into the life of Queen Elizabeth II during an abnormally interesting week in August 1997, the week that her former daughter-in-law Diana was killed in a car accident. Adding a fascinating counterweight to the story is the character of Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) who had literally just been elected the new Prime Minister in a sweeping victory for the Labor party, signaling the death knell of Thatcher-ite Britain.
The monarchical crisis triggered by Diana’s death was not necessarily obvious to those of us who observed the tragedy from a distance. But, as The Queen neatly shows, there was great outrage among British citizens at the House of Windsor’s refusal to comment or make any public display regarding Diana’s death. The fascinating thing about the story related in The Queen is that with which Elizabeth and the royals struggle - the difference between public duty and private life - is the very thing that brought them such problems with Diana in the first place.
The silence from the royal family in the wake of Diana’s death, the royal dignified distance from something for which there was no ‘official’ royal obligation, seemed to a mourning public an echo of the cruel treatment which drove Diana out of the family to begin with. As The Queen makes clear, it was not cruelty as much as a complete failure of royal standards and protocol in dealing with an unprecedented tragedy.
Tony Blair and his staff serve as the audience’s eyes and ears, watching dumbfounded as the royals make one stumble after another. The Queen insists there will be no public funeral. She is squeamish when Charles suggests he take the royal jet to Paris to retrieve Diana’s body. This is just the sort of waste the public is always bashing them for, she quails. After a bitterly acrimonious divorce, the queen observes matter-of-factly that Diana is no longer a part of the royal family. Officially, her death is not a state matter. Interestingly, since her death, the official position has changed to state that, as the mother of the future King of England, Diana always will be a member of the royal family. Unfortunately they hadn’t revised that section of the rule book upon her death.
Article comments
1 - Mark Sanders
Excellent review Kati. I have admired Queen Elizabeth II for many years. She is one of the few Heads of State in this world who has managed to retain her dignity and relevancy for decades, and not without an utter sense of conviction. She rules not from a sense of entitlement but rather from a powerful feeling of obligation and duty to her people and to the world. The British monarchy may never be the same since Diana's passing, but then too some day the world will never be the same without Queen Elizabeth.
Mark Sanders
Santa Monica, CA