The Crown is deeply personal

The much anticipated third season of Netflix’s The Crown hit the streaming service on November 18. The show is rightly much praised, for everything from its impeccable set design to understated yet insightful dialogue. I find each and every episode a pleasure to watch.

The most interesting thing for me about The Crown is the way it explores the tension between the Crown—the position of sovereign head-of-State of Great Britain and the broader Commonwealth—and the person and family who exist behind the Crown (i.e. the Queen and the Royal Family). There’s no sense of ‘imposter syndrome’ from Elizabeth, but the show details any number of circumstances where her official duties as sovereign clash mightily with who she is as, as the show constantly reminds us, a rather ordinary human.

Historically, the Crown or Sovereign was considered to be close in the pyramid of human existence to God. Indeed, a series of plot lines in the first two seasons explore the tension between Elizabeth as the earthly head of the Church of England and a (somewhat) modern woman.

More broadly, however, The Crown’s real brilliance is in its exploration of the internal life of perhaps the world’s most famous woman. She is at once a vessel for national hopes and a figure of unity and stability, and an absent mother, jealous wife, and least-favourite daughter. The show’s depiction of the ironic nature of the relationship between the Queen’s younger sister, Margaret, and the Queen herself—Margaret was always better suited to being the centre of attention and telling people what to do—highlights the deeply human nature of a figure who’s profile all know best from coins, notes, and postage stamps.

Margaret craves, and indeed revels in, the spotlight, while Elizabeth never feels fully comfortable in it. For Elizabeth, the point of the Crown is not to entertain or even inspire, but to endure, to serve as a solid guiding post providing order and stability to a rapidly changing society. This provides a fascinating foreground to the new series’ exploration of a Britain in decline throughout the 1960s and 70s.

Ultimately, whatever one’s views on royalty and the notion of a monarchy, The Crown is really a dramatic portrayal of the human interior set against a backdrop of some of the highest possible stakes.