The Crown – The Hereditary Principle

When it comes to mental and emotional issues, the Royal family could fill a library of magazine racks. For Princess Margaret her struggles have always manifested in depression and destructive behaviors. After an illness puts the breaks on her good times, the Princess spirals down a hole that she needs a professional to help her climb out of. In the process of self-discovery the Princess uncovers a secret that has plagued their bloodline for decades.

Dazzling the Princess

Episode seven opens on Princess-Party-All-The-Time Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) smoking a cigarette and putting her face on for what we can only assume is a night out. On the television we see Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) is attending an Entertainment Benevolent Fund and that quickly segues to patients in a psychiatric hospital who are also watching their Queen live and in color. Its not immediately clear who these people are, but two things are certain: they adore the royal family and they must be somehow tied to the plot. More on that later. In the meantime, we watch as Margaret is still trying to figure out what her purpose is in the family and in her own life. Its not long before we find out what Margaret was getting ready for when her flirtatious “friend with benefits” Derek “Dazzle” Jennings (Tom Burke) shows up for a night of drinking, dancing and an all-around thrasher of a good time. As the night winds down Dazzle tells Margaret this will have to be their last night together as he is taking his vows and becoming a priest! The next morning at the breakfast table Margaret tells her sister that she has fallen in love with Derek, which shocks the Queen because she assumed Dazzle was “a friend of Dorothy’s.” Falling for a gay priest is never going to work out, but Derek’s absence in Margaret’s life has her in dark mood. It gets darker when she has a coughing fit at the table and a trickle of blood lands on her napkin. Something is wrong with the Princess.

The world, as well as the psychiatric patients in the hospital, learn of Margaret’s illness on the news when it is reported that the Princess is in the hospital for exploratory surgery. As the mental ward prays for the Princess, one patient named Katherine (Trudie Emery) is prepping for her birthday. Fast forward a few weeks and Margaret is home from the hospital as the family gathers to wish Prince Edward (Angus Imrie) a happy birthday. Their celebration is masterfully spliced with scenes from patient Katherine’s birthday. As the royal festivities continue, Elizabeth sits with her sister and as she sucks down some oxygen Margaret mentions a change in her life. Thanks to her illness it has made her reevaluate everything. Now she wants to give up the party life and men for a concentration on her royal duties. She asks her sister to fill her schedule so as to feel like she has a “sense of meaning.” The Queen doesn’t give Margaret an answer, but the following day she pops in for a visit to talk about the 1937 Regency Act, which is just a hoity toity way of asking her sister to give up her role as counsellor of the state. Now that Prince Edward is twenty-one years old he needs to start taking on royal duties and the first thing on the list is Margaret’s favorite job. She always enjoyed her role in granting lordship to the well deserved and, after begging Elizabeth to give her more responsibilities, taking them was not part of her plan. Pleading with Elizabeth to allow her to continue in that role, Margaret reminds her sister of their earlier discussion about finding meaning in her life and work. It’s a dignity thing as much as it is a too much time on her hands to worry about her health and she cannot believe her sister cannot grant her this one wish. The Queen offers her no sympathy and tells Margaret they have to live with decisions like these. They? Who is they? Margaret points out it’s only her who is forced to live with this disappointment.

Having nothing but time and illness in her future, Margaret whisks herself away to a tropical location for rest and relaxation. The rest would be easier if Margaret wasn’t suffering from severe depression. That is when Charles (Josh O’Connor) is summoned to speak to his aunt about getting help. He tells her that Diana is pregnant and suffering from her own form of doom and gloom and her moods seem to be contagious. Living with her has resulted in his own depression and now he is seeing a professional and it seems to be helping. He was asked to share his truth with his aunt in hopes she would take the hint and go see a therapist herself.

The Princess and the Head Shrinker

As expected the Princess begrudgingly seeks help, but she isn’t happy about it. She tells her therapist, Penelope Carter (Gemma Jones), she is no fan of counselling and just wants to get this ordeal over with. With some prodding the therapist gets Margaret to admit she has been depressed for a while, which then prompts the woman to question if mental illness runs in the family. It is a question Penelope already knows the answer to. It had been rumored that the royal family had secrets and among those were Margaret’s institutionalized cousins Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon. Now we see why Katherine and the mental ward played prominently at the start of the episode! The two cousins spent most of their lives in Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives and Margaret had no idea about this! Once her revealing session with the therapist is over, Margaret rushes to her sister to ask if the news about their cousins was true. The Queen says it is, but to her knowledge both Katherine and Nerissa are dead. It was even recorded in the family’s royal history books, to which Elizabeth shows her Margaret. Knowing this family and how good they are at covering up any family drama, Margaret doesn’t trust the death story and calls her old friend Dazzle to help her dig up the truth. The two head to Earlswood with the Princess staying in the car while her priest in training uses his collar to get the hospital officials to talk. The undercover plan works and Derek comes back to the car with the news that the cousins are still alive and residing in Earlswood. Not only that, but they also have enough of their faculties left to know that they are of royal blood and have managed to keep up with all the family comings and goings in the news. They are not as afflicted as the family thought they were, but that isn’t all. Derek also found out there are more than two! There are five to be exact and all with similar mental health and developmental issues.

The Cruelty of the Crown

After finding out her family has been locking away their mentally ill cousins Margaret is flaming mad. She takes this news to the Queen Mother (Marion Bailey) who isn’t shocked by the news in the least. She tells her daughter that the family had no choice but to hide them away as, the stability of the Crown depended on it. Margaret, who is starting to place herself in her cousin’s shoes, calls their actions cruel and shameful. The Queen Mother tries to get Margaret to understand that their bloodline would have been scrutinized and that the hereditary principle was at risk of becoming impure. To remain in power the crown requires a hundred percent purity and thanks to their Uncle Jock the cousins didn’t fit the bill. If you cannot “fit the perfect mold” then you risk the family’s ruling position and Margaret can barely believe what she is hearing. Especially when Charles married Diana, who definitely does not fit the stable mold!

After the realization that her issues are inherited, Margaret goes back to her therapist to tell her what she uncovered. She wonders if her destiny will end in madness, but the therapist puts her mind at ease when she explains the cousins’ struggles. Their issues are genetic and come from their maternal grandfather. It made its appearance in their bloodline through her aunt who married her Uncle Jock. So, the affliction is inherited through marriage. And besides, what Margaret struggles with is an emotional illness and not a developmental one. If the affliction was through marriage then why did the family lock these poor people away? Margaret’s mind hasn’t changed on that one. She still finds this treatment to be cruel and unforgivable, especially when she knows she could have suffered from the same fate!

As the curtain draws closed on this episode, we get one last moment between Margaret and Derek. The Princess is utterly disgusted with how her family has treated the cousins and Dazzle tells her maybe it’s time to distance from her family, leave Church of England and become a Catholic. Margaret is a royal she just can’t leave the monarchy and her birthright, its all she knows and besides, she is important. She puts on heirs and proudly bellows her title of “Sister to the queen! Daughter of the Emperor King,” she is at the center of this family! Apparently, Margaret found her purpose and she has no time for silly clergymen like Derek. At that she bids him adieu and goes back to her life of drinking and smoking. Princess-Party-All-The-Time has decided to fill whatever time she has left on this earth with relishing her title and burying her fears of sickness and death under a blanket of good times. That is what she is good at and that will be her purpose. As the credits roll we get a photographic glimpse of the real Katherine and Nerissa alongside their birth and death dates. Princess Margaret was lucky the worst the Queen did was give her royal duties to Edward as the alternative of a bed in Earlswood would have been a fate worse then death.