Anothermi

Just listened to the most recent "The Crown: The Official Podcast". It was on The Hereditary Principle but at the end it promo-ed the next one and called it "The African Queen". I found it interesting that the name was changed to "48:1" between the taping of that podcast and the airing of the show.

And it's not infrequent that they process it as something they caused and carry a sense of guilt, responsibility and failure because of it. It can also lead to responses that the adults just. don't. understand.

Agree with this 100%. Re: bolded part I don't think it was as much a breakthrough for the contemporaneous Royals of the time as for the Public, who learned that a "Royal" can actually show feelings as well as that AIDS wasn't a "Gay" disease and that you couldn't catch it by hugging. It seems to be the following generation of Royals who learned from her example. I believe that the NYC visit was just an event that Peter Morgan chose to hang a plot point on. Diana, as with all the Royals, chose charities to support and AIDS/HIV was one of hers. She'd gotten a lot of press in Britain for shaking hands (bare handed) with AIDS patients in a new ward just opened in London back in 1987. The NYC visit was 2 years later. I thought the show portrayed her as kind of clueless during the NYC visit, but this would have been planned in advance - with her input and awareness. Promoting their personal charities is a regular part of Royal duties. It was disingenuous to set up Charles as getting all pissy about Diana continuing to shock the public by physically interacting with AIDS patients as if they were normal people. Found another good article about the 1987 visit to the new AIDS ward in London and Diana's overall work for this issue. It was ground breaking! ETA: I spent so much time fact checking my post that @JennyMominFL covered them all! Thanks.

Very true over all. But in his defence, Charles' gift WAS about Diana. It was a first edition (valuable) of a book outlining HER Royal ancestry - which went back much farther in English history than his! But, of course, she really wasn't into that kind of thing and if they'd gotten to know each other at all he would have known that (get your equerry to write up crib notes on her interests, like your mum did for her children in Favourite)! What the show indicated (for what it is worth) was that Diana was more enthralled with her Phantom of the Opera Performance than in his reaction to it. They showed us several shots of her beaming while watching it as he side-eyed her. The whole thing just makes me sad because as individuals they each had redeeming qualities. Just not to each other. Bolded part. A lot of successful performers identify as introverts. Performing (including gracious acceptance of public adoration) allows them to get outside of themselves and be somebody different - at least for a while. A lot of them have also admitted that the external approval counter-balances their own inner self criticism. It just doesn't make it go away. Self acceptance does that and it's not an easy attitude switch.

Absolutely. This visit by the Prime Minister was a yearly requirement (my brief on-line search revealed) because the Royal Family moved camp to Balmoral for 8 weeks from Aug - Sept for a holiday. The Queen reduced her work time, but meeting with her Prime Ministers was a requirement of her job, hence the visit (although I don't think it was weekly like her normal work schedule). It WAS a working visit for both the Queen and the PMs. The expectation was that it would be in a more relaxed environment (for the Queen) and that the PMs had to adjust to that. Many knew it could be an opportunity... or an ordeal. Clearly it was an ordeal for Thatcher. She wasn't a true guest because her invitation stemmed from the need to carry out the work of governance, not a desire for her (or any PM's) company. The whole episode being set at Balmoral was a way to contrast Thatcher and the Queen as personalities, to give a glimpse of the deterioration of the Crown/PM relationship between these two women, and to show the difference between how Thatcher "handled" the visit with how Diana handled it. I have to assume that "liberties were taken" by the show to highlight this. ;-)

It's kind of doing both. The show and Peter Morgan are up front about what they make up and what is in the historical record IF you are the type of viewer who searches on line to fact check or listen to podcasts on "the making of..." So, NOT the vast majority of viewers. I don't doubt that Morgan is aware that people (practically all of us) accept historical drama as what happened. We certainly remember it better than info from books because it is designed to capture our attention and lead us to certain conclusions. All of this has "the bottom line" as a motivator. Not sure I'd watch it if they were scrupulous about not showing anything that is not know as a fact (most of the interesting parts). Sadly, the more you know about the subject matter, the less enjoyment you get from the fictionalized version. (Did you know that Charle's fly fishing form in this show was atrocious? Aficionados were appalled!) ;-)

True, and that would have been at Buckingham Palace. When Claire Foy was Elizabeth I think we even saw her looking out the window at those fun times. She was working. Those would also be the times when Charles didn't live up to his father's expectations and Anne would have won his heart by exceeding the expectations.

Yeah. That's the thing. Charles was born in '48 and Anne in "50. Elizabeth became Queen in '52. Charles would have been 4 and Anne 2. Charles may have had memories from then, but it's unlikely Anne would - whether they happened or not. Anne and Charles turned out quite differently in regards to their sense of self. Perhaps it really was the difference in expectations placed on them I find it interesting that fathers were given leeway to claim lack of experience in handling babies and not pushed to give it a try, but not mothers. It's not like she'd have learned watching her mother - the way I did. Her mother relied on nannies too. Yet she's the one feeling guilty. The gendered expectations have changed for most of us, thankfully.

There is a long and inglorious history of conflict and even animosity between Kings (monarchs) and their heirs. I'm beginning to think it's built into the system! Anne has never had much time for the press but during this time it seems they were happily getting back at her via the still-used tradition of pitting one group member against another. I know I would find it hard to bear if I was publicly and negatively compared to someone else. Especially if it continued over a long period of time. I'd think it wears you out (not that it has happened to me). Her mom wasn't likely going to let the press know how much they had managed to upset her and she appeared to want to know what Anne felt. I thought this scene humanized Anne. Feeling petty emotions is human (they pass after all). Acting them out is another thing. Regarding the elusive Prince Edward. I recognized the actor but couldn't place him. Look him up on IMDB and realized I'd seen him a while ago in The Red Queen as the also-forgotten Prince Arthur, know mostly as the dead brother of Henry VIII. Subtle casting?

Part of ballet includes something called "deportment". It teaches you how to walk and move your arms (and legs) gracefully. In the ballet classes I took (back in the last century) we were taught how to perform a graceful curtsy as one of our Deportment lessons. I don't think ballet has eliminated deportment from its curriculum and it still is a good posture tool. It was clear that Margaret Thatcher had never taken deportment classes if we take her curtsies on the show as accurate.

While I can see your point about it being how she showed her love, I did think he'd wistfully hoped he might be able to get a good, undisturbed sleep that night. But he seemed to be a man who felt comfortable following her rules and letting her make the decisions. They may have lucked into a marriage where each knew themselves and each accepted who each other was. That's about as kind as I can be towards her. I didn't know him, so I might be able to be kinder to him if the opportunity arose.

Ha Ha. Seems that great minds think alike. Glad you caught that too.

I saw that as the show having a bit of fun at the "Iron Lady's" expense. Here she's the Iron(ing) Lady. Great pun. At least I got a chuckle out of it. I know very little about Anne's personal life and probably because of that I took it to mean the same thing you did. That's what I got from how the show presented it and if that's not what they meant to imply then it was a bad piece of writing. Seems to me the overall point of the scene was to play up the closeness of Anne and Phillip so as to juxtapose it with his relationship with Charles later on. Theme of this scene is "It's complicated". It was time, however, for this actor to portray the snivelling whiner that Matt Smith had to portray in seasons one and two. I was worried the show had forgotten that (/sarcasm). I'm not even going to try to analyze that relationship. Getting a grip on my own family dynamics is difficult enough for me - and I think of my family as a happy one! I think they laid out quite a "story" for us regarding Charles and Diana getting together. Again, I'm sure there is more than we'll ever know but the Show bundled Charle's feelings toward Uncle Dickie (and his last words to him being spoken in anger and resentment) with the letter Uncle Dickie wrote him right after that. Charles was shown receiving that letter soon after he was told of the death. In the letter Dickie exhorted him to work harder to become that man he will have to be and to find a sweet, young, innocent girl to marry and become his queen - one who knows the rules and follows them and does what is expected of her. The sweet, caring, thoughtful, innocent who conveyed her condolences after Dickie's death was set up to suggest Charles was going after Diana to atone for those last harsh words to the only father figure he had in his life and to try to live up to the expectations Dickie laid out to him. It's a lovely and safe story. Not the "forcing Charles to marry" tale nor the enchanted with a "manic pixie dream girl" one. But they also underlaid a "manipulative" subplot (for future episodes IMHO) via the phone call to the older sister who told Charles point blank that Diana planned the "chance" meeting he was enchanted with. Given the tight rope you have to walk when writing the history of living people I'm happy enough with that "story" and with the show so far. I don't expect to be told the truth. I'm happy with a plausible - if fictional - explanation. This is TV after all.

My memory of what opinion I had of Edward and Wallis back in the '70s was that they embodied an epic love story. Clearly the propaganda effort worked. I wasn't really aware of the Nazi connection until this show. Although I was NOT deeply concerned about the Royals (except that The Queen reminded me positively of my own mom) the abdication-love-story was one of the few things I thought I'd learned back then. Time reveals.

I'm only catching up with Season 3 now. Have read the posts and I guess so much else bugged that no one caught the one moment that made me laugh out loud: The Astronauts are being led out of the social gathering room and the camera moves into the space they vacated where Princess Margaret is having a drag on her cigarette (or a quaff of her drink- which ever it was) and blocks one of the Astronaut's wives approaching her with "You're not going to talk about children are you?" (paraphrasing) Ahh, Margaret. I'm enjoying this season. It has been difficult adjusting to the new cast, but I find I do prefer Menzies to Smith as Phillip. I like both versions of Elizabeth (though I agree Colman looks a bit too old for the current time frame - perhaps that will suit better next Season) and am enjoying both Charles' and Anne's actors. I appreciate the posters who've pointed out that the depiction of the Astronauts would be (for the show purposes) from Phillip and his life crisis perspective. I found his ability to formulate what he wanted from them ... lacking... and probably obtuse, so they really wouldn't know how to respond. There is a page on Wikipedia about something called the "overview effect" that a number of Astronauts have experienced and described of their space trips. Michael Collins among them. The thing that really surprised me was that it [Earth] projected an air of fragility. And why, I don’t know. I don’t know to this day. I had a feeling it’s tiny, it’s shiny, it’s beautiful, it’s home, and it’s fragile. — Michael Collins, Apollo 11[7] That may have been along the lines of what Phillip was looking for, but the context they were all in was not conducive to that kind of conversation. (link is to the article the quote was in from 2019 on the 50th anniversary of the event. Quote is at the bottom of the article, so scroll, scroll, scroll your boat to see it.)

I fully expect this to be a season 2 episode sub-plot. And I'm good with that.

Centipedes. Giant mechanical centipedes. (I didn't watch it all.)

Awe. I’m really loving this Roger.

I just remembered another random fun thing (in the background). Bernie Caulfield - the woman who kept the schedules, and a whole lotta other things, working - (I'm pretty sure it was her) had a snow globe with a weirwood tree inside it. I loved those little things.

I liked it, too. It's one thing to know how many people had to have been involved to create this show, but it's another entirely to get to know some of them. I found it both interesting and smart that they chose only one director to follow and tied the whole thing together via that one enthusiastic extra from Belfast (Team STARK), weaving his experience around all the other stories. I also loved learning that they chose the Stunt-coordinator/trainer to be the Night King. He was so funny getting his taste of being famous in Spain (and then deciding he preferred being the anonymous expert he'd been before that). But he got the whole excited crowd to do the raise-the-dead move. I caught a few fun bits but now I can only remember one - a picture on the wall of the scheduler's room that showed a huge foot (labeled "script") trying to get into a much smaller glass slipper (labeled "schedule") What a thankless job! (but such good humour) I also felt so sorry for the guy in charge of the fake snow. Especially the part where his team had to shovel up fake snow they couldn't use and put it back in bags to use somewhere else. The behind the scenes people were living "behind the looking glass" and running as fast as they could just to be at the next step on time; while the actors were living the hurry-up-and-wait existence. I'm wondering if having to make each battle bigger than the last may have been the reason we were shorted some episodes. The big battle between the living and the dead would have been the biggest budget eater. And the destruction of King's Landing would have been the other. I can't remember if we've had two huge battles in one season before. Last season? I guess the battle where Viserion was lost would have been the second one. Can't decide whether I think it was worth it. (the battle with Jaime & Bronn et al vs Dany and Drogon was worth it, but that's just one battle. )

Do you fellow (former) Unsullied think we need to send out a search party for @WhiteStumbler ? Missing in the wind-up action. I know we were warned to expect a late arrival, but now I fear our friend and comrade was taken down by a spoiler sword just before the finish line and is languishing between pre and post final - unable to communicate!

Thanks for sharing the out-take info. I, too, remember being annoyed by the feeling of being played just for shock value. Deliberately kept in the dark. Before that, those kind of twists came because of the vast number of forces at play and didn't need manipulation. Clearly a production decision to keep viewers attention (a main goal for show runners) but we'd become used to being treated more respectfully while our attention was engaged. ETA: "The deleted scene you describe would have been a nice bit of development for Bran, as well, showing him and Sansa working together. For the eventual king, he got shockingly little screentime or development!" Absolutely, Llywela, and thank you for your well argued post (above) regarding the diminished impact of Bran becoming the King. Once again, losing those hours from last season and this have not served the show or the viewers well. (can't find the button that would allow me to put your point in quotes!!)

That would be the 50 second sequence of jumbled visions Bran had in S06E06 Blood of my Blood. Meera is pulling Bran who is still in vision-mode. Perhaps the Max Von Sydow TER had managed to download a memory data dump before he was terminated and Bran had to spend all that time "plugged-in" to receive it all (to process later). After that episode I carefully freeze-framed that sequence (a lot harder to do than to say) A number of times the image came up of the wildfire spreading from Lancel's too-late attempt at snuffing the candle sitting in a pool of it (below the Sept) along the tunnel containing barrels of it. I posted what I found in the Completely Unspoiled thread. It was quite long so I'll quote just a section that mentions that "vision". That wildfire image appeared more than once, but you can see from that snippet that there were so many images Bran was supposed to be seeing that understanding it all immediately would be impossible. However, that one image that we did see when Lancel failed to snuff out the candle would indicate the ability to see the future. (Note: Lancel was NOT shown in that vision, just the same tunnel.) However, even if Bran could see what was to come, there has been much debate - often around time travel - that suggests messing with "what is Known" can lead to disastrous outcomes. So calling Bran evil or devious for not doing so is definitely debatable.

Thanks Ging. I kinda missed seeing Alfie Allen interviewed and his thoughts on Theon.

I agree, that time period is still incredibly vague for me. After inspecting the Westeros map that @gingerella provided, I noticed that the Trident (famous battle from Robert's Rebellion - that was referred to by Ned, taunting the 2 sworded Knight in Bran's vision) was just north of Harrenhal (perhaps not far from the Inn at the Crossroads?). I looked that battle up to refresh my memory and was told that was where Robert killed Rheagar. But the Maester's book indicated that he annulled Rhaegar's marriage to Elia, and married Lyanna to Rhaegar in Dorne! So, how long ago was that? Where did Lyanna stay after that? Where was that tower where Ned found Lyanna giving birth? Sure didn't look like it was anywhere near Dorne but what do I know. Jaime and Bronn passed through some very desert-looking territory when they went there. BUT I wouldn't think Dorne would be a safe place for Lyanna given that she "usurped" Elia's position. Arggggg.