The Crown – Favourites

By: Kelly Kearney

A war is brewing in the Falkland Islands while Prime Minister Thatcher is otherwise distracted by her missing son Mark who is, admittedly, her favorite child. When the Iron Lady breaks down in the Queen’s presence, it’s the first time we see the emotionless woman as human with emotions and fears to which Elizabeth can relate. What The Queen can’t wrap her head around is choosing a favorite child and, after speaking with Phillip, she becomes determined to not only get to know her four children but to test her maternal love and see how it ranks.

Playing Favourites All the Way to the Battlefield

The year is 1982 and we begin with what looks like a car race with characters we haven’t been introduced to but can assume they are somehow tied to PM Thatcher’s (Gillian Anderson) break down in the Queen’s (Olivia Colman) presence. Their meeting about the floundering economy quickly turns into a personal conversation between two women of roughly the same age and their children. Margaret’s favorite son, Mark, has gone missing and she is beside herself with worry. Elizabeth, who whips out the tissues and the brandy, is both shaken by her PM’s emotional unraveling but also by the admission that she ranks her love for her own children – a foreign concept to most including her Majesty. Margaret explains that her son, who was participating in a Paris-to-Dakar stock car rally from the earlier scene, managed to accidentally cross over the French border and was last seen two days prior in a small Algerian village. It is assumed he is lost somewhere in the Saharan Desert. While the news bothers the Queen, what really sticks out to her is the favorite remark. Later she tells Phillip (Tobias Menzies) what the PM said and he doesn’t share in his wife’s shock. In fact, he admits Anne is his favorite out of their brood of four and Elizabeth is equally stunned by his truth. Anne is their first “son” while he views Charles as Mummy’s favorite effeminate boy. Elizabeth refuses to admit to having a favorite, but Phillip laughs that off and tells her to get to know them and then determine if that is true.

Next we head to the Falkland Islands where a skirmish between Argentinian workers is starting to heat up. We see them remove the island’s flag donning the Union Jack and replacing it with their own. Cut to London and The Queen meets with her secretary Martin (Charles Edwards) about this favorite child business and asks him to add some child bonding time to her schedule. First up is Prince Edward (Angus Imrie) who over lunch reveals he has been bullied at his boarding school and in retaliation became a snitch! Next on the list is Anne (Erin Doherty) who feels shoved into the royal shadows by her brother’s new wife. The world loves Diana and Anne is utterly jealous. To ease her pain she has been stepping out on her husband and having an affair with her bodyguard. Mummy is not pleased and offers her some empty advice on dealing with marriage and emotions. “Do nothing” isn’t exactly what Anne, who is spiraling down a hole of depression, needed to hear. “Is doing nothing your solution to everything,” Anne asks and, considering the audience, it really is. The Queen’s goals in life, to lead, has been successful thanks to her ability to keep everyone, her children included, at arm’s length. Admittedly, she couldn’t even hold her children and wonders out loud if her detached parenting style led to all of their problems. She has never been able to put the crown down and put on the maternal hat as those jobs conflict in her mind. As Sovereign to the people there is the crowned Queen and everyone else is beneath her.

Meanwhile, the show takes some liberties with timelines for dramatic purposes and starts to point to Mark Thatcher’s disappearance as the catalyst for his mother’s decisions to turn the Falkland’s troubles into full out war. The two having very little to do with each other plays well for dramatic effect and so the mourning mother turns her fears for Mark into preparation for battle. It’s not long before Margaret gets word that her son has been found unharmed and we take a closer look at her own parenting techniques. If you detested Thatcher before, wait until you see how she treats her twin children!  Going out of her way to celebrate his return, Margaret makes a glorious meal in honor of the horribly arrogant and spoiled Mark (Freddie Fox). Carol (Rebecca Humphries) the quiet and seemingly ignored daughter is also present for dinner, but all eyes are on the stock car driver and his terrifying adventure. It’s a dinner for three with the spotlight on one and Carol is beyond exhausted playing second fiddle to the prince of her mother’s heart. She confronts her mother about how she has been treated and that’s when Carol gets an earful about how Margaret’s views on her two children. Mark is strong, a trait Thatcher is drawn to, and Carol is “limited.” Mark has the skills and perseverance to make a name for himself while Carol’s only worth is becoming a housewife and so she is treated like the glorified help. As the first female Prime Minister one would assume Margaret would have more hope for her gender, but when it comes right down to it she is a misogynist just like the men in Parliament who tried to block her rise to success.

Prince Andrew the Problem Child

Still trying to determine the place each of her children ranks in her heart, Andrew (Tom Byrne) makes his grand entrance (by helicopter) for their impromptu mother/son bonding moment. Immediately it is clear that The Crown is not going to shy away from the Epstein sized elephant in the room when it comes to the middle son. The Duke of York’s ego is extravagant and his tastes for women are creepy and disturbing, as learned from his excitement over his actress girlfriend’s latest project. The film The Awakening of Emily is about a “vulnerable, helpless teenager who meets several twisted and perverted older predators,” something that Andrew understands well, even though he has publicly denied it. If that’s not proof he is the worst of all the Queen’s children, he goes on to openly admit he has dreamt of killing Charles, his children and taking his place in line to the throne. So, one son is a narc and the other is gets his jollies from murder and young women. Fingers crossed for her eldest who she meets in Highgrove only to learn his year-old marriage to Diana has turned into a battleground. Charles (Josh O’Connor) tells his mother that his wife bores him and he would rather find intellectual stimulation with his “friend” Camilla Parker Bowles. Their rift is obvious since Diana (Emma Corrin) refuses to come out of her room to spend time with her verbally abusive husband and mother-in-law. In a surprising turn of events Elizabeth reprimands her son for choosing to live so close to his obsession (Camilla only lives a few miles away) while subsequently ignoring his pregnant wife. She all but orders him to man up, quit his philandering ways and be a husband to his wife. It is his duty as heir to her throne to do as Mummy says.

After meeting with all four children Elizabeth has determined that exactly zero are her favorite and all of them are a mess to which she is to blame. Could her hands off “do nothing” attitude be the catalyst to their tragically destructive behaviors? She does her best to lay the guilt on anyone but herself and uses the Crown as her excuse. A Queen is busy leading and, thus, the nannies do the bulk of the child rearing. Regardless of Elizabeth’s reasoning, the episode makes it clear that she is at least partly to blame for their inabilities to rise to the royal occasion. We see this when she admits to Phillip that when it comes to leading she is aces, but at motherhood she is a failure. She has always struggled to show her children affection (the Monarchy never really made room for human emotions) and so she missed crucial opportunities to nurture them with love. It’s a theme we have seen time and again in this series – Elizabeth a spectator, comfortably sitting on the sidelines as the staff does the work a mother should do or at least want to do. The want is key here because Elizabeth confesses she never had the urge to mother them as the instinct is absent from her makeup. This is especially true with Andrew who she worries could be lost to them forever (see the current family photos conveniently absent of Andrew) if he doesn’t change. For all the worry she has for her heirs, Elizabeth’s hands off style of parenting will prove disastrous for her children and their relationships. At least in her twilight years she can take solace in the fact three out of the four have found happiness, but what a long and bumpy road to the finish line it was. Perhaps the next generation will get it right or, like her soon-to-be grandson William, at least give up trying to please the Crown for a taste normalcy. Only time will tell, but so far the younger generation of royals seem to have thrived and that must mean the Monarchy is evolving with the times; something Queen Elizabeth has always strived for but never really managed to make that wish come true.