Over-Analyzing Six the Musical: All You Wanna Do

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Over-Analyzing All the Historical References in Six: “Ex Wives,” “No Way,” “Don’t Lose Your Head” “Heart of Stone” “Haus of Holbein” “Get Down”The Tudor Crown Inspiration in Six’s Logo; The Tudor Fashion Elements of the Costumes in Six (with Painting References)
Six the Musical Wives 1-3: Historical and Modern Costume Inspirations; Six the Musical Wives 4-6: Historical and Modern Costume Inspirations
The Ladies in Waiting of Six: Historical Inspirations and Costumes; Details from Six Costumer Gabriella Slade’s Instagram Takeover
The Early Costumes of Six the Musical: From Edinburgh to Cambridge to London
Updated Six the Musical Costumes for Broadway!; The Shoes of Six the Musical
The Alternate Costumes of Six the Musical; How the Six Alternates Change Their Styling for Each Queen
Virtual Dance Workshops and Q&As with Different Six Cast Members!

I got to see Six on Broadway again last week! It was amazing! And it reminded me that it’s really high time for me to finish out this song series. So it’s K HOWARD TIMEEEE.

I used Gareth Russell’s “Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard” while writing this blog post! Highly recommend you read it, as it’s a wonderful book full of important societal and cultural context and compassion for Katheryn as a person.

Note: As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, spellings of names were not standardized in Tudor times, and people often spelled their own names in different ways. I’m generally using Katheryn in here (as that’s how she signed her letter), but other spellings of her name as valid as well.

The writers of Six have explicitly stated that their main pop inspirations for Katheryn Howard were Britney Spears and Ariana Grande. These influences come across in her outfit, styling, persona, and the sexy but young bubblegum pop sound of her song. Remember: Britney Spears was 12 when she was cast in the Mickey Mouse Club, 15 when she first signed with a record company, and 17 when she released her first album. Ariana Grande starred on Broadway at 15, next appeared on a Nickelodeon show, signed with a record company at 18, and released her first record at 20. Both stars were sexualized by society at a young age, and Britney in particular has struggled with others controlling and dictating her life, just like Katheryn Howard.

The great part about this song is how it repositions Katheryn as the focus of her own story, which historically, has often been positioned as much more of a battle for power between her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and the king’s advisor, Thomas Cromwell. Although her song talks much more about men than the other songs in Six, it’s ultimately about how /she/ feels about those relationships and her rise in the world and what effect it has on her life.

The original West End cast of Six performing “All you Want to Do,” with Aimie Atkinson at the center as Katherine Howard. Credit: Idil Sukan

A 1540 miniature by Hans Holbein. Although this painting has been identified as Katheryn Howard many times in the past, it’s more likely to actually show Anna of Cleves. Credit: Royal Collection Trust

All you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
I think we can all agree I'm a ten amongst these threes

“I'm a ten amongst these threes”: This line refers to the commonly used 1-10 scale of attractiveness, where 10 is apparently just the best and hottest. Obviously this scale is problematic, but this line simultaneously shows Katheryn reclaiming it for her own, and using her bravado to distance herself from the other 5 queens, as she has in multiple other lines by this point in the show. Over the course of the song, she’ll lose her attempts to control her narrative with flippant words when she becomes overwhelmed by all her trauma.

We don’t actually know what Katheryn looked like, as we have no portraits that are definitively identified as her. The portrait I’ve seen most commonly described as showing her is actually probably Anna of Cleves. However, contemporary descriptions do consistently refer to her as quite pretty, specifically referring to her “very delightful” appearance, and describing her as “flourishing in youth, with beauty fresh and pure.”

All you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
And ever since I was a child, I'd make the boys go wild
All you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby

“And ever since I was a child, I'd make the boys go wild”: This lyric can often slip past you quickly before you realize how creepy this line really is. And it’s supposed to be. This song is designed to sound chipper and positive but has a dark, disturbing background that only really comes towards the end.

Take my first music teacher, Henry Manox,
I was young it's true but even then I knew, The only thing you wanna do is... *kiss* ahh

Broad, dark, sexy Manox, Taught me all about dynamics
He was 23, And I was 13 going on 30

Dynamics refer to the relative loudness or softness of notes or phrases in a musical piece.

13 Going on 30 is a 2004 rom com that follows a 13 year old who wakes up one day in the future, at age 30. In this context, it refers to the way Katheryn was forced to behave as an adult at a very young age.

We don’t know for sure when Katheryn was born, but estimates of her age at the time of her marriage to the king have varied from 15-19 over the years. Tudor Historian Gareth Russell, who wrote “Young and Damned and Fair” about Katheryn Howard, places her most likely birth year as in 1521/1522. His full reasoning on this subject is explained fully in this Royal History Geeks article.

Gareth also estimates that at most, Manox was 5 years older than Katheryn . He began teaching her in 1536, and although we don’t know exactly when their “relationship” started, it ended in early 1538. Thus, Katheryn was 15-16 when their relationship began, and Manox was at most 21, although he was 23 by the time their relationship ended.

Obviously from a modern perspective, a relationship between a teenage girl and an adult man is problematic and criminal. It was also viewed as problematic in that time, although that was more due to Manox and Howard’s class differences, the risk to her reputation, and the religious concerns with “sinful” sexual activity than their actual age difference.

We'd spend hours strumming the lute, Striking the chords and blowing the flute
He plucked my strings all the way to G, Went from major to minor, C to D

lute, flute: I don’t believe we have any evidence indicating which instruments Katheryn learned to play, but both the lute and flute were very common instruments in Tudor times. We know that Henry VIII himself played the lute and the flute, along with the organ, other keyboard instruments, various recorders, and the harp. He also sang and wrote music.

“He plucked my strings all the way to G:This lyric puns on the fact that musical instruments (in western tradition) have notes corresponding to the letters A through G + the existence of string bikinis/underwear referred to as G Strings (or thongs).

“Major to Minor” refers to the musical scales. I’m not going to explain this in depth, but essentially a song written in a major scale generally sounds brighter and happier, while a song written in a minor scale is more likely to sound sad or ominous. “C to D” refers to musical keys, which is a group of pitches, named after the starting note.

Tell me what you need, What you want, you don't need to plead
'Cause I feel the chemistry, Like I get you and you get me

And maybe this is it, He just cares so much, it feels legit
We have a connection, I think this guy is different

There aren’t any historical or cultural references here in particular, but the lyrics in general refer to the character Katheryn’s desire to be loved and appreciated. “I think this guy is different” indicates that Katheryn already has reason to distrust men and relationships, even at such a young age.

Unknown woman, formerly known as Catherine Howard, after Hans Holbein the Younger, late 17th century

'Cause all you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
Is touch me, love me, can't get enough, see
All you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
Is please me, squeeze me, birds and the bees me
Run your fingers through my hair, Tell me, I'm the fairest of the fair
Playtime's over, The only thing you wanna do is...*kiss* ahh

“Birds and the bees” refers to stories parents tell to children when they’re explaining sexuality and how babies are made. This not only refers to actual sexy time activities, but continues to underline Katheryn'’s relative youth to the adult Manox. Evidence indicates that while Katheryn fooled around with Manox, she was reluctant to actually have sex with him and “lose her virginity” (note: virginity is an incredibly damaging social construct designed to control and shame women, and it’s not actually possible to lose it because it doesn’t actually exist. but! that’s a rant for another day).

I couldn’t find any actual evidence that anyone called Katheryn “the fairest of the fair” in Tudor times (“the fairest of the fair” is actually a march by John Philip Sousa!). However, “fair” was very commonly used to describe attractive women at the time, and several contemporary records described Katheryn with this word. This may have literally just meant “beautiful” then, or it may have referred to Katheryn having a light complexion or light hair, but since we don’t have a definitive Katheryn portrait, the exact meaning is unclear. For the record, Gareth Russell’s book describes Katheryn with blonde hair.

But then there was another guy, Francis Dereham
Serious, stern and slow, Gets what he wants, and he won't take no
Passion in all that he touches, The sexy secretary to the Dowager Duchess

Life at the Dowager Duchess’s: Katheryn’s parents died when she was fairly young. After that, she lived in the household of her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, and roomed with numerous other girls in the maiden’s chamber, in a dormitory type set up. Even if her parents hadn’t died, she likely would have been sent to her grandmother’s for a while; it was very common for noble children to live in a different family’s household for several years.

It was pretty common for men to sneak into the maidens’ chamber at night with wine and treats to speak and flirt with the various girls there. Apparently it was fairly easy for the men to hide behind a curtained area of the chamber if anyone came to check in on the girls in the night. Katheryn herself stole a key to the staircase up to the chamber and had it copied, to ensure that these visits could continue without issue.

Francis Dereham had been the Dowager Duchess’s secretary for about two years before his relationship with Katheryn started in 1538. According to Gareth Russell’s research, Dereham was very confident and had quite the temper. Dereham had already had a few flings with other servants at the Dowager Duchess’s home, including Joan Acworth, Katheryn’s roommate and secretary. Joan was clearly over Dereham by this time and apparently said very nice things about him to Katheryn .

Katheryn had likely only ended her relationship with Manox a few weeks before starting her relationship with Francis Dereham. She was apparently quite in love with Dereham and did indeed have sex with him, despite the lack of privacy in the maiden’s chamber. Witnesses attested to hearing both Dereham and Katheryn talk about how they knew how to have sexual relations without risking pregnancy.

Content Warning, Sexual assault: “He won’t take no”: Another ominous, creepy line delivered playfully enough that you can often miss it initially. Although some witnesses at the time said that Katheryn and Dereham seemed to have consensual relations, Katheryn herself said that Dereham coerced her and raped her. She said in a letter, “Francis Dereham by many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose, and obtained first to lie upon my bed with his doublet and hose, and after within the bed, and finally he lay with me naked, and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife, many and sundry times.” Although she might have saved her life if she testified that there was a precontract between her and Dereham, as this would have given the king a pretext for annulling the marriage (and potentially saving her life), she steadfastly denied this.
*Note: In the initial form of this post, I accidentally left out Katheryn’s own testimony as to the nature of her relationship with Dereham in this post. Katheryn always asserted that Francis Dereham coerced and raped her, and I erred in leaving that aspect out of this post. This was a huge oversight and I apologize for it.

Helped him in his office, had a duty to fulfil, He even let me use his favorite quill
Spilled ink all over the parchment, my wrist was so tired
Still I came back the next day as he required

The innuendo in this section gets even more explicit. If you don’t understand it, I’m certainly not going to explain it. :)

The actual action (of Katheryn helping Francis in his office) described here likely didn’t happen, as Katheryn was a high ranking noble woman and would not have been helping a secretary with his work whatsoever. As I noted before, she actually had her own personal secretary (although she likely had very little correspondence, so that was really more an indication of her station than a necessity).

Quills and ink: In Tudor times and for many centuries after, feather quills were used to write. When properly cut, a feather’s ink can hold ink and slowly release it for the writer’s use. Quill feathers often came from geese or swans.

A 1793 copy of a 1513 depiction of Katheryn Howard’s step grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Katheryn lived in her household as a child in the 1530s.

You say I'm what you need, All you want, you don't need to plead
'Cause I feel the chemistry, Like I get you and you get me

And I know this is it, He just cares so much, this one's legit
We have a real connection, I'm sure this time is different

'Cause all you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
Is touch me, love me, can't get enough see
All you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
Is please me, squeeze me, birds and the bees me
You can't wait a second more to get, My corset on the floor
Playtime's over, The only thing you wanna do is...*kiss* ahh

The choruses of this song are very repetitive and often have only minor variations on the same theme, so I’m not going to analyze them all in depth. There isn’t really much historical content in here anyway, it’s all characterization of the character’s thoughts on her relationships.

In Katheryn Howard’s time, corsets were actually called bodies or stays.

Yeah, that didn't work out, So I decided to have a break from boys.
And you'll never guess who I met

This song, as long as it is, concentrates on Katheryn’s state of mind and really doesn’t get into a lot of the details about what actually happened in her relationships or at the end of her life. To elaborate a bit more, Katheryn’s step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, eventually walked in on Katheryn embracing Francis (in the company of her friend and secretary Joan) and apparently was QUITE angry; she punched all three people and raged for a while, but never actually fired Dereham (she wasn’t the greatest of guardians, tbh). Francis adored Katheryn and very much wanted to marry her, giving her several costly gifts. She seemed to indulge him for a while, and they called each other “husband” and “wife.”

Although Dereham seemed to think that they were pre-contacted to marry, Katheryn did not. A precontract was a commitment to marry in the future, which was often used so a couple could start sleeping together before the actual wedding. Precontracts were legally considered as good as marriage, and could be used to annul later marriages or disinherit children from now-invalid marriages (Henry VIII used a supposed precontract between Anna of Cleves and Francis of Lorraine to dissolve his marriage with her).

Katheryn Howard broke things off with Francis when her uncle the Duke of Norfolk arranged for her to join the new queen Anna of Cleves’ court as a maid of honor. Francis later claimed that Katheryn wept when they parted, saying she had to do as her family ordered, while Katheryn said that she lost her temper and told him to do what he liked. Whatever the actual truth was, Francis apparently still believed after the conversation that he had a chance with Katheryn in the future, and might still be her husband.

Katheryn joined the royal court in the late summer/early autumn of 1539, and was reportedly quite enthusiastic about her new position. We don’t know exactly when she met Henry VIII, but it was probably around this time.

Tall, large, Henry the Eighth, Supreme head of the Church of England
Globally revered, Although you wouldn't know it from the look of that beard

The lines here aren’t nearly as clever or as flirtatious as her previous compliments. This is a subtle way of indicating that Katheryn isn’t really interested in Henry at all, and is struggling to say anything sexy or good about him.

Tall, large, Henry the Eighth: We actually have a pretty good idea of Henry’s size in 1540 based on the dimensions of his suits of armour. He was 6’1” in height and the armour he had made a year before his marriage to Katheryn Howard had a 51 inch waist and a 54.5 inch chest circumference.

Supreme head of the Church of England: Henry established the Church of England with himself at the head in 1536, so he had only been in this role for a few years when he married Katheryn. It might be a bit of an exaggeration to call Henry “globally revered” though. Maybe more “globally notorious.”

Made me a lady in waiting, Hurled me and my family up in the world
Gave me duties in court and he swears it's true,
That without me, he doesn't know what he'd do

lady in waiting: As I noted earlier, Katheryn’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, actually arranged for her position as a maid of honor for Anna of Cleves before she even met Henry. The maids of honor were the lowest ranked noble ladies in the queen’s household. They were younger than the ladies in waiting and unmarried. They accompanied the queen and served as her companions, but also supervised various servants and performed various tasks, such as dressing the queen or fetching items for her. This usage of “lady in waiting” as a substitute for “maid of honor'“ is consistent throughout Six, as presumably, the writers were concerned people would get confused by the nomenclature, given its modern meaning in a wedding party sense.

Hurled me and my family up in the world: It’s interesting that anyone would say Katheryn or her family were hurled up in the world, as she was actually very well placed already as a Howard. Although her parents died when she was young and she was relatively penniless before she came to court, as a maid of honor, she received lodgings and a decent salary, and she had numerous family members in prominent places at court. She would have been fine money and status-wise even if Henry had never noticed her, perhaps not wealthy or well known, but still comfortable and happy.

However, the king did give her many presents, starting in April 1540 (when he was still married to Anna of Cleves), so the relationship did materially benefit her. In April, she was given the property of two condemned criminals, and in May, Henry bought her 23 light silk quilts.

Although many tellings of the story of Henry annulling his marriage to Anna of Cleves and then marrying Katheryn Howard position her as the victim of her uncle’s machinations, the evidence seems to indicate that their relationship was a bit more spontaneous than that. Katheryn’s youthful misadventures at the Dowager Duchess’s home were widely known enough that if anyone had dug much into her background, they would have found evidence of them pretty quickly (as later became clear). It seems unlikely that the Howards would have deliberately put her forward to distract the king without vetting her, and she honestly wouldn’t have made it past such a vetting. The Howards did use the king’s attraction to Katheryn to their own advantage later, but there’s really no indication that they set it up themselves.

You say I'm what you need, All you want, we both agree
This is the place for me, I'm finally where I'm meant to be

Then he starts saying all this stuff, He cares so much, he calls me love
He says we have this connection, I guess it's not so different

He cares so much, he calls me love: Henry VIII considered himself a romantic at heart and really wanted to be in love with his wives. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer (who I honestly think was one of the most emotionally intelligent members of Henry’s court), even said to Thomas Cromwell pre-Anna of Cleves’ arrival in England that it would be “most expedient the King to marry where that he had his fantasy and love, for that would be most comfort to his Grace.”

The Dowager Duchess later testified that the king liked Katheryn the moment he met her. This instant attraction to a woman really fit into Henry’s own romantic ideals of love, and even if this interest didn’t result in him pursuing a relationship with her for a few more months (there’s no evidence that Henry pursued her until early 1540 sometime), this connection was probably revived anew the moment he realized he didn’t want to marry/stay married to Anna of Cleves.

The Howards moved Katheryn back to Lambeth at some point during Henry’s courtship of her for the sake of her reputation. However, Henry visited her multiple times there in his royal barge, which probably only increased the level of gossip about their relationship.

'Cause all you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
Is touch me, love me, can't get enough, see
All you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
Is seize me, squeeze me, birds and the bees me
There's no time for when or how 'cause you
Just got to have me now, Playtime's over
The only thing you wanna do is...*kiss* ahh

All you wanna do: We have no idea when Henry began a physical relationship with Katheryn. However, as Gareth Russell noted in his book, Henry was impressed by his past wives’ abstaining from sex until marriage (Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour), so it’s possible that they waited until after his fourth marriage was annulled and his fifth marriage was performed.

So we got married, Woo

The annulment of Henry’s marriage to Anna of Cleves was motivated by many things (which I addressed more in depth in my post on her song “Get Down”), and was made official in early July 1540. Anna was given numerous properties and a very high rank in return for her acquiescence during the process.

Henry and Katheryn married in a small ceremony on July 28, 1540. At the time, Henry was 49 and Katheryn was probably 19. For comparison’s sake, Henry’s daughter Mary was 24 at this time (Elizabeth was almost 7 and Edward was nearing 3).

With Henry, it isn't easy, His temper's short, and his mates are sleazy
Except for this one courtier, He's a really nice guy, just so sincere
The royal life isn't what I planned, But Thomas is there to lend a helping hand
So sweet, makes sure that I'm okay, And we hang out loads when the King's away

Henry really did have a terrible temper. There are countless examples of this from throughout his life, but one of the most relevant for Katheryn’s story is the downfall of Thomas Cromwell. Although Cromwell had served on the king’s privy council since 1530 and as his chief minister since 1534, Henry was so displeased with his fourth marriage and the breakdown of the alliance secured by that marriage that he ordered Cromwell arrested in June 1540, and executed on July 28, 1540. Henry came to regret executing Cromwell and later blamed the decision on his privy council, reportedly stating: “on the pretext of several trivial faults [Cromwell] had committed, they had made several false accusations which had resulted in him killing the most faithful servant he had ever had” (this was reported in a letter by a French ambassador in March 1541).

Despite the lyrics in this song implying “Thomas” was different than Henry’s usual friends, Thomas Culpepper was very much sleezy himself. He was a gentleman of the King’s privy chamber and a close friend to the King, who gave him numerous properties. He was apparently quite handsome, flirtatious, and, as Gareth Russell described him, “unashamedly promiscuous with consensual partners.”

Content Warning, Sexual assault: We also have records indicating that sometime in 1540, Culpepper may have raped the wife of a park-keeper and killed a man when the villagers tried to apprehend him for the crime. I say “may have” because we only have one report of the case, and it is possible that the letter writer mixed up Thomas with his older brother. Regardless, whoever committed the crime, the king pardoned him for the rape and murder.

Gareth Russell’s book notes that Culpepper noticed Katheryn pretty quickly after she arrived at court and pursued her, but after she played hard to get, he moved on to someone else. This upset Katheryn more than she may have expected, as it apparently caused her to weep in front of several of her fellow maids of honor. Rumors of this did get back to Francis Dereham, who came up to court and confronted Katheryn about it. Katheryn apparently rather brutally put him down and said she would not have Francis and if he had heard anything about Thomas, he knew more than she did.

This guy finally Is what I want, the friend I need
Just mates, no chemistry, I get him and he gets me

And there's nothing more to it, He just cares so much, he's devoted
He says we have a connection, I thought this time was different
Why did I think he'd be different?, But it's never, ever different

We know that there was a LOT of evidence gathered in the case against Katheryn Howard and that many many interviews were conducted. However, a lot of these documents were lost or destroyed over the years, so we don’t quite have the full story.

Although courtly love and flirtation games were de rigeur in royal courts of the time, Katheryn’s relationship with Culpepper appeared to have crossed that line into a much more emotional entanglement than was generally accepted.

A drawing believed to be of Jane Boleyn (formerly Jane Parker), by Hans Holbein

Reports indicate that Katheryn met with Culpepper and secretly gave him a cap in March 1541, specifically asking him to keep the cap hidden until he was back in his rooms. at which point he teased her a bit about their previous relationship. A few months later, she sent food to him several times while he was sick.

When the court was on progress, Culpepper met with Katheryn and Jane Boleyn, Dowager Viscountess Rochford (wife to George Boleyn, executed years earlier) late one night in a large lavatory; Lady Rochford apparently dozed in the corner while the couple spoke for several hours, until 2 or 3 a.m. They met up in the lavatory again the second night and reportedly, this was when the two confessed their love for each other (Katheryn spoke first). When Culpepper left her, he kissed her hand and told her it was the only physical intimacy allowed.

After this, the couple was less discreet with their feelings. One witness noted that she saw Katheryn gazing dreamily out the window at Culpepper; conveniently, that same night, Katheryn told her ladies that no one was allowed in her bedchamber that night except for Lady Rochford. This was highly unusual for the time. Evidence indicates that Culpepper came to Katheryn’s rooms on many nights. We don’t know exactly what happened when they met up, but the two clearly joked with each other and enjoyed each other’s company; Katheryn sent him several gifts that referred to their inside jokes.

Katheryn Howard’s supposed love letter to Thomas Culpepper.

Katheryn also sent him a letter when he was sick that has often been described as a love letter, but could also be interpreted as a letter between friends, as passionate language was commonly used in friendly letters of the time. This is also the only example we have her handwriting, so it has to be viewed with a bit of suspicion. The letter also may contain writing from two different people, as there are several words at the beginning of the letter which look quite different from the rest of the writing. I’m really not pulling these doubts out of thin air, by the way; Conor Byrne’s “Katherine Howard: Henry VIII’s Slandered Queen” argues that Katherine neither had romantic feelings nor sexual relations with Culpepper. I haven’t read his book in depth, but will need to do so in the future to really explore this argument, which he laid out a bit in a blog post.

Later when he was interrogated, Thomas said that he had not actually had sex with Katheryn, but that “he intended and meant to do ill with the Queen and that likewise the Queen so minded with him.” Thomas was not tortured, but apparently was quite frank and open in his discussion of his relationship with Katheryn, so he really might have been speaking the truth here.

'Cause all you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
Is touch me, when will enough be enough?
See, All you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby
Squeeze me, don't care if you don't please me
Bite my lip and pull my hair, As you tell me, I'm the fairest of the fair
Playtime's over, Playtime's over, Playtime's over
The only thing, The only thing, The only thing you wanna do is...*kiss* ahh

The formerly playful and sexy lyrics are now angry and desperate and are performed with much more intensity and disgust as the character loses her equilibrium. It’s honestly a really powerful moment of the show and leaves me breathless every time.

Because this song and the show doesn’t address Katheryn’s ultimate downfall and execution beyond noting that she was beheaded, I won’t get too much into those details. However, in short, reports of Katheryn’s pre-marital relationships ended up reaching the privy council and the king and a thorough investigation launched into the reports also uncovered her relationship with Culpepper (whether it was friendly or romantic in nature, she undoubtedly met with him in secret, which looked…bad, to say the least).

Three confessions were taken from Katheryn in the course of the investigation, which related to her pre-marital relationships. You can read those letters, along with Katheryn’s letter to Culpepper over at The History of England website.

What led to Katheryn’s ultimate fate was summarized very well by Gareth Russell in his book, who said “What happened to Catherine Howard was monstrous and it struck many of her contemporaries as unnecessary, but it was not a lynching. The Queen was toppled by a combination of bad luck, poor decisions, and the Henrican state’s determination to punish those who failed its king.” She was ultimately executed on February 13, 1542. The night before, she asked for the execution block to be brought to her so she could practice placing her head on it.

Although there’s a legend that Katheryn said “I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpeper,” she really did not. We have witness accounts of what she actually said, and it’s not that. In addition, saying something like this would have been incredibly foolish , as if the king disliked something she said from the block, he could very well go punish her entire family after her death.

Katheryn was not the only victim of her downfall. Lady Rochford was executed right after her.

From necessity, this post can’t even slightly cover all the events of Katheryn Howard’s life. I highly recommend reading Gareth Russell’s “Young, Damned, and Fair” for more info."

Historical References in Secret London Runs' Six Queens Run Series Medals

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If you’re active in Tudor History groups or follow Tudor historians online, you may have seen a lot of us posting about Secret London Runs’ Henry VIII’s Wives virtual mileage challenges! These virtual “races,” which track your progress via fitness tracker and an app on your phone, send you on a historical journey between places that played important roles in each woman’s life. Throughout the journey, as you hit milestones, you get digital postcards from the queen telling you what they did there and what was going on in their life then (you also get a few podcast episodes, but I’ll admit that I haven’t listened to any of those, as I’ve been burned out on podcasts most of this year. Someday I’ll listen to them!). It’s a pretty brilliant concept, and I signed up for the full Six Wives challenge ages ago, back in March I think.

If you live outside the UK and sign up for all six races, the company sends you all six race medals at once. These are individually wrapped and labeled so you know exactly which one to open as you complete each race. The medals are designed to fit together in a circle, and once you’re done with them all, you get a finisher badge that fills in the center.

The medals you get as a reward for finishing up each race are packed full of historical meaning and references, and I thought I’d take a look at the ones I have so far. I’ll add these in as I go; the Anna of Cleves race is VERY LONG and is taking me quite a while to go through.

Catherine of Aragon: 99 Miles of Dismissal

Catherine of Aragon’s race follows her historical journey from The More to Kimbolton Castle, as Henry VIII banished her further and further away from the royal court, placing her into shabbier and shabbier living conditions. This covers events that took place from late 1532 (when Henry moved Catherine to The More) to Jan. 7, 1536, when Catherine died at Kimbolton Castle at the age of 50.

Outfit: The medal features Catherine wearing the dress and jewelry from her most famous portrait. We don’t know exactly which year this portrait was painted, or who the artist was, but it’s clearly of Katherine in her later years, particularly when compared to earlier portraits of her as a teenager or a child.
The undergarments, running tights, and shoes are all obviously anachronistic. I’m not an underwear expert, but my understanding is that Tudor women’s underwear consisted primarily of a smock, and perhaps split drawers or long hose in winter. Fabrics of the time just would not have given you a close enough fit for these sorts of running tights. The lacy cuff on the bloomers also looks wrong for the era. And sneakers like that weren’t invented until 1830s! I do enjoy the rose on the sneakers though!

Badge: The medal includes a small recreation of Catherine’s famous pomegranate badge, along with her motto, “Humble & Loyal.” The pomegranate was a powerful symbol of regeneration and fertility dating back to the Greek myth of Persephone, the Goddess of Spring. Catherine’s particular use of it dated back to her parents Ferdinand and Isabella’s conquest of Granada in 1492 (“granada” is Spanish for pomegranate). This victory by the Catholic monarchs of Spain over the Moors was so celebrated that the pomegranate was added into the royal arms of Spain.
Pictures of the pomegranate can be found alongside the Tudor Rose in numerous documents issued under Henry VIII’s authority during his marriage to Catherine and in works dedicated to the couple.
The medal also hangs on a burgundy ribbon which matches the pomegranate motif.

Buildings: The buildings at the start (Kimbolton Castle) and the end of the race (Manor of the More) are both reproduced on the medal. Kimbolton Castle was rebuilt in the 1600s-1700s so this isn’t actually what it looked like when Catherine lived there; only a few sections of the Tudor era building remain.
The More was abandoned after 1556 and demolished later in the 1500s and nothing remains of it now, so it looks like the designers based their drawing on a recreation by Michael Athanson, which was originally published on the Three Rivers Museum Trust Blog.

Anne Boleyn: 45 Miles of Forbidden Love

Anne Boleyn’s 45 Miles of Forbidden Love follows her historical journey from Palace of Placentia to Hever Castle. I love this one as, as it follows a time in Anne’s life that isn’t usually featured in pop culture or books. In 1523, Anne entered into a secret relationship with Henry Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland, against his father’s wishes. It’s possible that they exchanged vows to marry in the future in a pre-contract, as this came up several times later (Henry Percy’s wife Mary Talbot brought up the pre-contract in an attempt to annul their marriage in 1532 and Thomas Cromwell brought it up again in May 1536 as a possible reason for annulling the king’s marriage to Anne). When their relationship was discovered, the powerful Cardinal Wolsey intervened and Anne’s family sent her home to Hever Castle, away from the royal court. Anne eventually came back to court, but we aren’t sure when; probably at least by Spring 1526, as this is when Henry VIII’s traditional interest in Anne began.

Clothing: The neckline and basic design of Medal Anne’s dress, hood, hair, and jewelry are the same as two of her most popular historical portraits (seen in paintings held at Hever Castle and at the National Portrait Gallery). However, since Henry VIII had the portraits and memorabilia of Anne destroyed after her execution, this portrait may actually have been painted long after her death, during her daughter Elizabeth’s death, and we really don’t know how much it actually resembled the real life Anne.
Her dress on the medal is green, probably in tribute to the common myth that Henry VIII wrote Greensleeves about Anne. For the record, he didn’t. Greensleeves is based off of a romanesca, an Italian style of musical composition that did not reach England until after Henry VIII's death. But it’s a fun story and people like referencing it even if it isn’t true. Plus it probably added some variety to the overall look of the 6 medals all together.
The medal hangs on a green ribbon that matches Anne’s dress.

Badge: Anne’s falcon badge is recreated on her medal, along with her motto, “The Most Happy.” The falcon symbol originally came from the crests of the Butlers, the earls of Olmonde. Anne was actually originally brought back from her time at the court in France to marry a cousin and resolve a dispute over the Ormond inheritance; that marriage obviously didn’t go through, but Henry VIII eventually forced the other claimant to give up the earldom of Ormond and give it to Anne’s father Thomas. The falcon was officially made Anne’s badge when she married Henry in 1533.

Fun fact: There’s a delightful surviving bit of embroidery from Anne Boleyn’s mother Elizabeth dating from ~1530 that features Anne’s falcon badge attacking Catherine of Aragon’s pomegranate badge. This is a pretty amazing discovery, since so much of Anne’s legacy was destroyed after her execution. It also features the Latin motto “Ainsi sera, groinge qui groinge,” which Anne used for a short time in 1530; this translates to "that’s the way its going to be, however much people grumble” (essentially the Tudor way of saying “haters gonna hate”).

Buildings: The palace of Placentia was originally built in 1443 and rebuilt by Henry VII in 1500. It was demolished in 1660, but it appears that this rendition of it was based on drawings of the palace from the Tudor era.

Hever Castle was the Boleyn family’s seat of power dating back to the 1400s, with parts of the castle dating back to 1270. Anne lived at Hever until she joined the court of Archduchess Margaret of Austria in 1513. After the execution of Anne and George Boleyn in 1536, their father Thomas Boleyn somehow kept a hold of his life and his castle for several more years; after he died in 1539, Hever became Henry VIII’s property. It later was given to Anne of Cleves as part of her settlement in 1540.

Jane Seymour: 167 Miles of Bitter Rivalry

This race follows Jane Seymour from her family’s home in Wulfhallon the Royal Progress of 1535 to Windsor and then back to Greenwich. We don’t know for sure that Jane was on this trip, but since she served Anne Boleyn as a maid of honor, it’s pretty likely. We don’t actually know when Henry VIII started courting Jane. We know that she had already been at court for years, arriving sometime in the late 1520s/early 1530s and serving both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. The first reported instance of Henry and Jane’s relationship dates back to February 1536, when Imperial Ambassador and professional gossip Eustace Chapuys reported that Henry sent presents to Jane. In April of that year, he sent Jane a purse of money and a letter; she rather famously refused both and instead begged the messenger to tell the King that she valued her honor more than any treasure and if the king wanted to give her money, she asked him to do so when she was married. While Anne was imprisoned in the Tower of London, Henry put Jane up in a house close to his own lodgings at the time, where she was treated like a very grand lady. Henry and Jane were betrothed on May 20, 1535 (the day after Anne Boleyn’s execution) and were married on May 30.

Clothing: In the medal, Jane is wearing the exact outfit and jewelry she wore in her historical portrait. We actually know when this painting was painted and who painted it! It’s by Hans Holbein the Younger and was painted in 1536, the year of Jane’s marriage to Henry. Her outfit, hood, and jewelry are faithfully recreated in the medal, down to the positioning of her arms. In the medal, however, she is holding a green handkerchief which isn’t present in any of her portraits. It’s interestingly of the same color as Anne Boleyn’s dress, and may possibly be a link between the two queens.

Badge: A crowned phoenix rising from the fire on top of a castle, with red and white roses surrounding it. Her Motto is also featured on the medal, “Bound to Obey and Serve.”

I couldn’t find any information on the origin of the phoenix and other symbolism in Jane’s badge, but we can guess at a few things. Since Jane rose to her position as queen in the wake of Anne Boleyn’s fall and destruction, she and/or Henry may have seen a parallel in the story of the phoenix, which is famously reborn from the ashes. This also may allude to the Tudor legacy being reborn from the ashes of the Wars of the Roses, since the red rose of Lancaster and white rose of York are both prominently featured in the badge as well; Henry VIII was keenly aware of his legacy and need to have a Tudor heir, and probably saw Jane as his second or third chance at continuing the dynasty.

Buildings: As I noted in Anne Boleyn’s entry, the palace of Placentia was originally built in 1443 and rebuilt by Henry VII in 1500. It was demolished in 1660, but it appears that this rendition of it was based on drawings of the palace from the Tudor era.

The Wulfhall Jane Seymour knew dated back to 1491 (when her father became Lord of the Manor), but was extensively remodeled and upgraded in the early 1530s by the Seymour family. Henry VIII stayed there for a week during the royal progress of 1535. Alas, when Jane’s brother Edward Seymour fell from power and was executed in 1552, his son was unable to keep up the place, and it fell apart over the years. As of 1571, it was derelict. Although there are some remaining bits of the building that date back the 1550s, they’re really only fragments. An expert on the house (archival historian Graham Bathe) estimates that the surviving building today probably only occupies about 5-10% of the footprint of the original manor house. (More info over at The Tudor Travel Guide). It appears that the medal’s rendition of wulfhall is based on current pictures of the house, which date only to the 1700s or so. Given that we don’t have any contemporary descriptions, drawings, or plans, of what Wulfhall looked like then, this seems like a pretty good compromise.

I’ll be back when I’m finished with Anne of Cleves’ race (363 miles to wedded bliss) to add her info in! I’ve been working on this since…July, and am finally over the 300 mile mark, so i only have about 40 miles left to go. Did I mention that you have the option of doing this race with a friend because it’s so long?

After that, of course, I’ll come back and add in Katherine Howard’s and Catherine Parr’s races as well. :)

Other English History Posts:
An Abundance of Tudor Katherines/Catherines/Kateryns
My Favorite Thomases: A Review of and Often Arbitrary Ranking of Tudor Thomases
Six the Musical Historical Costume References: Queens 1-3 ; Queens 4-6 (I have like 20 posts about Six alone, y’all)
Henry VIII’s Jousting Accident Probably Didn’t Change his Personality
Shakespeare English History Plays Family Tree
Historical Inspirations in Game of Thrones

Royally Lit: "Red, White, and Royal Blue"

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A lot of novels featuring royals have come out in the past few years, with some of them becoming huge bestsellers. Every time I read one of these books, I end up nerding out over all the English royal references and combing through how much these fictional royal families and systems resemble reality. I figured I might as well actually write these musings down for your entertainment.

I had kind of a rough week and really needed some escapist fiction, so I finally picked up “Red, White & Royal Blue.” This best-selling 2019 romance novel features the first son of the United States falling in love with a British prince. It’s super sweet and funny, so if you like romances and/or just need something fun to read, I highly suggest it.

Note: Because I’m talking about a lot of fictional AND real people and it could get a bit complicated if you don’t know them all really well, I’m going to italicize the names of fictional characters to make things easier.

Summary: As the story begins, it’s Fall 2019, Alex is 21, in his final year of college at Georgetown, and has an long-lasting grudge against Prince Henry of England. After Alex and Henry manage to knock over the wedding cake at the royal wedding, they’re forced to pretend to be best friends for a while to avoid causing an international incident. The charade turns into actual friendship and later, love.

The First Family of the United States: This book is an alternate history, but only slightly. On the US side, everything /seems/ to line up with actual reality up through the Obama period (Alex mentions at one point that his bedroom used to belong to one of the Obama daughters). However, in this world, the 2016 election was won by Texan Ellen Claremont. Ellen’s a Democrat and the first female president. She has two children with her ex-husband Oscar Diaz (a senator from California and the son of Mexican immigrants) - June and Alex Claremont-Diaz. Ellen’s second husband is Leo, who is briefly described as an eccentric and ultra-supportive millionaire inventor.

The Royal Family of the United Kingdom: Prince Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor of Wales is 22 and on a gap year (post college) when the book begins. He’s the youngest child of Princess Catherine and Arthur Fox, a former James Bond actor, and a grandson of the current Queen. Henry has an older brother Philip, whose marriage kicks off the book, and an older sister named Beatrice, who is sober after previously struggling with cocaine addiction after their father’s death.

Queen Elizabeth Parallels: In the world of the book, Queen Mary is described as in her early 80s (in 2020) and has been on the throne for 47 years. This places her as ascending to the throne in 1973, sometime in her 30s. In real life, the current queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926, was 94 in 2020, and ascended to the throne in 1952 at the age of 26.

Succession: During an argument with his brother, Philip snarls that if Henry married Alex, the first son of the US would be fourth in line to the Queen of England. This indicates that Henry is, himself, fourth in line to the throne. His mother Catherine is first in line, his brother Philip is second in line, and his sister Beatrice is third in line.

Names: Every royal’s name seems to relate somewhat to real life royal’s names.

  • Queen Mary is likely a reference to Queen Mary of Teck, who was queen of consort from 1910-1936 as the wife of King George V and the grandmother of the current Queen.

  • Princess Catherine may refer to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, who has been married to Prince William since [2010].

  • Prince Philip refers to Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the late prince consort of Queen Elizabeth II.

  • Princess Beatrice refers to Princess Beatrice of York, Prince Andrew (Duke of York)’s daughter and a granddaughter of the Queen.

  • Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor of Wales. It’s totally realistic for him to have this many names, actually. Prince Charles’s name is Charles Philip Arthur George; Prince William is William Arthur Philip Louis; Harry is Henry Charles Albert David.

    • Henry - Eight English monarchs have gone by Henry. The most recent Henry is of course, Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex, who has gone by Harry pretty much his entire life.

    • George - Six English monarchs have gone by George and Prince William’s eldest son is named George.

    • Edward - Eight English monarchs have gone by Edward, and Elizabeth II’s youngest son is named Edward.

    • James - Two English monarchs have gone by James, and Prince Edward’s son is also named James.

    • Mountchristen-Windsor - The name of the real life Royal House is Windsor, but the surname Mountbatten-Windsor belongs to all the children and male-line descendants of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The name Mountbatten is an anglicisation of the German “Battenberg” (which literally means Batten Mountain and refers to a small town in Hesse, Germany) and was adopted in 1917 due to anti-German sentiment during World War I. “Mountchristen” is actually a pretty brilliant reference to this, as there is also a hill in Hesse, Germany known as Christenberg - so in the book’s universe, this was anglicized to Mountchristen, presumably also during WWII.

      When Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark married then-Princess Elizabeth, he gave up his titles and took the surname Mountbatten from his mother’s family when he became a naturalized British subject.
      It’s used by those who do not have the style of Royal Highness. Prince Edward’s children technically have the surname Mountbatten-Windsor, although they tend to go by the title “Windsor.” Most recently, Prince Harry’s two children with Meghan Markle have had Mountbatten-Windsor as their surnames.
      The name is also used by Royal families without a surname, when a surname is required. For example, when Prince William filed a lawsuit in France, he used the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.

    • “of Wales” - This is pretty true to life. Although no one in the book is technically ever referred to as The Prince of Wales, it’s implied that Princess Catherine, as first in line to the throne, has the title. In that case, all her children would go by “of Wales” as well. Both of Charles, Prince of Wales’ sons were styled “His Royal Highness ____ of Wales” from birth until they were given their own titles at the time of their weddings (William was made Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, and Baron Carrickfergus in 2011. Harry was made Duke of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton, and Baron Kilkeel in 2018).

      Prince Henry also states at one point that his brother used “Wales” as his last name while he was in the military. This is pretty close to how things are done in real life. Prince Harry was known as Officer Cadet Wales and Prince William was Lieutenant Wales while in the military.

Miscellaneous Historical References:

  • A Relative’s Abdication: Henry yells at one point that they have a great uncle who abdicated because he was a Nazi. This is an obvious reference to Edward VIII, who abdicated in January 1936 so he could marry Wallis Simpson. Simpson had already been married twice, was pursuing a divorce from her second husband. The government completely opposed the King’s plan to marry her.
    Edward and Wallis Simpson visited Nazi Germany in October 1937 against the advice of the British government and met Adolf Hitler.

    The book’s family lines here don’t quite line up with real life. Edward VIII was the uncle of Queen Elizabeth II, and thus would be the great-great uncle of her grandchildren, not a great-uncle.

  • A Royal marrying someone the Crown disapproves of: Princess Catherine married Arthur Fox, who played James Bond in the 80s, against the will of her family. Arthur apparently continued to act after his marriage (as Philip says angrily that their father spent half their childhoods making films) and died of cancer when Henry was 14.
    This could refer to Princess Elizabeth being determined to marry Philip against her family’s advice (and eventually gaining their acceptance of him) and Princess Margaret wanting to marry the divorced Peter Townsend against the will of many in the government and the Church of England (and ultimately not being able to gain acceptance).
    However, this reads most like an homage to the real life marriage of Hollywood actress Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956. Prince Harry also married a Hollywood actress, Meghan Markle, in 2018, but the author has noted that this book was written before that happened.

    • In case you didn’t want to look it up, the James Bond actors in the 1980s were Roger Moore, Sean Connery, and Timothy Dalton.

  • First Royal with a doctorate: Catherine is described as the first princess with a doctorate (in English literature). Charles, Prince of Wales is the first heir of the British throne to receive a university degree. A few royals have been given honorary doctorates, but none of earned them through a program of study.

    I’m not terribly well versed in other royal families but there are a few royals out there with doctorates. King Mohammed VI of Morocco has a PhD in law. Queen Letizia of Spain (married to Fleipe VI of Spain) began to work toward a Phd but did not finish her thesis.
    Fun fact: Emperor Emeritus Akihito doesn’t have a degree, but actually has done ichthyological research and had several scholarly papers published. A genus of goby has been named Akihito in his owner.

  • The death of a royal’s spouse/parent: Arthur Fox died when Prince Henry was 14. Eight years on, Henry still mourns his father and has difficulty with his absence.
    In real life, Diana, Princess of Wales, died when her sons were 15 (William) and 12 (Harry). They have both openly talked about how much they have missed their mother in the years since and how much her loss affected their lives.

  • A royal grieving the death of a spouse to the detriment of their duties: Catherine is described as having mourned so much over the death of her husband that she basically was checked out of her children’s life for ~5-6 years. This may refer to Queen Victoria’s famous mourning over her husband Albert. After he died in 1861, Victoria did not appear in public for two years. She didn’t appear again to open Parliament again until 1866. Victoria wore black after his death for the final forty years of her life.

Quick, Non-Researched Historical Thoughts on "Anne Boleyn" Episode 2

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Quick Thoughts on Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3

Alright, onto historical elements in episode 2 of Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn. As previously noted, these are quick, non-researched notes based almost entirely on my own prior knowledge as a giant Tudor history fanatic. If you see anything inaccurate, let me know! I'm human, after all. I may go back and add sources to this later if there’s enough interest.

Quick Opinion Note: I haven’t actually gotten to watch Episode 3 yet, but …/sigh/ I wanted this show to be so much better than it actually is. Jodie Turner-Smith remains a powerful force of nature, but there are other elements of the show that I really…just don’t like. A lot of the dialogue is clumsy and realistic. I don’t actually hate some of the more “WTF” moments that others have pointed out as being there just for shock value (e.g., Anne and Henry being into autoerotic asphyxiation - it actually presents an interesting power dynamic! or Anne kissing Jane Seymour - people were much more comfortable with kissing others on the mouth back then so this isn’t as weird as it comes off at first), but the costumes and scenes look pretty low budget. And if you’re going to advertise your show as a psychological thriller…I expect a bit more of that to come across than just Anne sitting surrounded by creepy whispers every once in a while. It just seems like there were a lot of missed opportunities here.

anne boleyn and henry jodie turner smith.jpg

Credit: Anne Boleyn, Channel 5

  1. In an early scene, some of the whispers Anne hears talk about witchcraft. I don’t believe anyone would have actually said that around Anne at that point, as she was still the queen and still very powerful. And despite what people seem to think, she wasn’t actually charged with witchcraft at all. If I recall, no big rumors of witchcraft spread about Anne until decades later. (Sidenote: Anne’s story has been changed and distorted by so many historians with their own agendas over time! Highly suggest you read “The Creation of Anne Boleyn” by Susan Bordo for a really great overview of this.).
    Think of it this way – Cromwell really wanted to take Anne down and was willing to send several men to their deaths to do it. If the witchcraft rumors were actually around, or there was any evidence for it at all, wouldn’t he have used it?
    The whispering voice about her baby being deformed also is a rumor – there’s no evidence that she gave birth to a deformed baby at the time.

2. Anne talks to her Uncle, the Duke of Norfolk Thomas Howard, and refers to his daughter’s married life with the king’s son. She’s talking about Mary Howard and Henry Fitzroy, Henry’s illegitimate son with Bessie Blount. They would have been married a few years at this point, but as they were still pretty young teenagers, they hadn’t consummated their marriage (we know because Henry VIII would later use this non-consummation as an excuse to deny Mary her dower lands). Henry Fitzroy wouldn’t outlast Anne by very much and died later that year.

3. Symbol Watch: Good Lord, there are so many dead animals throughout this episode. Look for any scene transitions – dead animals everywhere.

4. Anne goes to wash the feet of the poor, as Jesus did for the disciples at the Last Supper before his crucifixion. This was a traditional ceremony in renaissance England performed by the Queen. Catherine of Aragon did it, and Anne did as well (other Queens of Henry VIII probably did too, but these are the ones I know of off the top of my head). The Queen would also give out money to the poor at the same time.

5. In the show, this scene is disturbed by a woman coming in and yelling, calling Anne a whore and claiming “she killed our true queen.” While people were very angry at Anne and really did dislike her quite a lot (there was one famous incident before Henry and Anne married in which a mob of women apparently went to attack her), I don’t think individual people would have run up and shouted at her at this point. Remember - she was the Queen. She had a lot of power over the King and people knew it.
The scene ends with Anne telling a guard, about the woman, “Make sure her body is strapped up on the Tower for all to see.” /sigh/ No. Although there were a few people (even women) executed for criticism and spreading rumors about Anne, there are a couple things wrong with this statement. Although it was common to put the heads of those executed for treason up on spikes by London Bridge, it wasn’t the WHOLE body put up there. And the only woman who ever had her head up on a spike there was Elizabeth Barton, the maid of Kent (who spoke out against Anne but also prophesied the king’s death, so it wasn’t JUST for that). Also, there’s no indication that Anne was ever this vindictive against those who criticized her. She spoke rashly a few times about wishing for the death of Catherine of Aragon and Princess Mary (while under extreme pressure after years and years of waiting for the king to marry her), but I haven’t heard of any evidence that she would actually order a guard to kill someone who criticized her. I don’t think she even had the power to do that.

6. Anne goes immediately to Hatfield to check on her daughter Elizabeth and make sure she’s safe. Anne was known to be a very doting mother, and I’m glad they showed this! It was common practice among all the higher classes at this point, and particularly royalty, for the children to be raised far away from court, so of course Elizabeth wasn’t at Anne’s side all the time. However, there are records indicating that Anne really purchased just a ton of gifts for Elizabeth. I believe there’s a story that she even wanted to breastfeed her, but pretty sure that one was invented by a later historian and not supported by contemporary evidence.

7. While talking with Lady Anne Shelton about her daughter, Madge (who, remember, is the queen’s mistress, with Anne Boleyn’s knowledge and tacit acceptance), Queen Anne loses her temper at one point and says “I wasn’t aware that fucking a king was such a chore.” I’m not sure Anne would have actually said “fuck,” but the word did exist at that point (historical evidence dates forms of the word back to at least 1503) and we do know that Anne spoke rashly and lost her temper at times, particularly towards the end of her life. She’d been under extreme pressure for several years (which is what happens when like, most of Europe despises you and all your power derives from your inconstant husband) so honestly…it makes sense.

8. We got a short scene with Anne talking to Mary in which Anne actually managed to be decently polite to her stepdaughter. Mary really was rude to Anne pretty much every time she interacted with her, from the reports I’ve read, although I don’t know if she would have straight up antagonized Anne about her fertility troubles like she does here.

9. We see ferrets and such in various scenes. I love seeing this actually, as people took their pets with them everywhere then! Like, there’s even a story that Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s dog bit the Pope during a meeting. I’m not sure how substantiated that story is, but even if it was just a legend, it was considered normal enough for someone to take their pet dog to meet the POPE that people certainly believed it.

10. Later, Anne invites one of her ladies (Elizabeth Browne), who’s falling asleep in her chair while keeping Anne company, to share her bed. This is presented as an unusual thing, but realistically, Anne would have either had a bedmate or someone sleeping in the same room with her pretty much all the time. Everyone did. That was just how things worked then.
There’s a whole subplot of this lady being pregnant with George Boleyn’s child and how the child can’t be recognized as George’s because of scandal. This…has zero basis in history. George is commonly portrayed as a bit of a ladies’ man and/or a closeted homosexual, but I don’t believe there’s actually any proof of any of this.

11. Anne confronts Henry for ignoring her later and they end up reuniting a bit. Here, we actually get a glimpse of their relationship at its healthiest. She helps him, he listens to her advice, and they genuinely seem like they care and love each other. Historically, it sounds like they really were a very well matched couple – both intelligent, well-read, and religious, with strong personalities and opinions.

12.   I haven’t gotten too much into the Spain treaty discussions back and forth because I don’t remember too much about it historically and the whole idea of this blog post is to put it out quickly without research. However, I do know that once Catherine of Aragon died, Spain was much more willing to make peace and treaties with Henry than they had beforehand. Spain was probably never quite as willing to make war on Henry and England over Catherine’s cause as Chapuys seemed to imply to her and her daughter; politically, it just doesn’t make sense to start a war over this sort of thing.

13. Mere weeks before she was arrested, Henry did in fact trick Ambassador Eustace Chapuys into finally acknowledging Anne as Queen and bowing to her. He had successfully just…avoided interacting with her that entire time, but Cromwell, and George Boleyn (lord Rochford) maneuvered him into being exactly the right place where he had no choice but to recognize her.
This was actually kind of a trend with Henry, where he’d bestow some honor on someone close to him very soon before having them arrested and executed them. This happened with Anne Boleyn and would later happen with Thomas Cromwell, who was given a noble title very soon before his downfall.
WEIRD THING I JUST NOTICED: I’m not really researching but I did a quick google just to confirm my facts here, and uh, Chapuys was tricked into acknowledging Anne Boleyn on April 18, 1536, and Thomas Cromwell was made the Earl of Essex on April 18, 1540. Both Anne and Thomas would be dead mere months after their brief triumphs.

14. Later at a party, Anne seems to be super happy due to making up with her husband, but later sees Jane Seymour politely denying a gift (clearly from the King) by kissing it and returning it, saying all she wanted was a respectable and advantageous marriage. Jane did pretty much exactly this in real life, although I sincerely doubt Anne was anywhere near by when it happened.

15. Anne’s upset about what she saw and, after drinking, makes a foolish comment to noble Henry Norris saying that “you look for dead man’s shoes.” In real life, Norris had been courting Madge Shelton for a while but hadn’t proposed yet; this was Anne’s way of saying “you’re not really here for Madge, you’re in love with me and you’re waiting for the king to die so you can try to marry me instead.” This was incredibly foolish of her, as at this point, it was illegal to even speak of the king’s death. In real life, I believe she sent Henry to go assure one of the court officers (I don’t remember who right now) that Anne was a good, respectable woman who would never cheat on the King, but this was overkill and actually made the court officer report the comment to others, which…cascaded and probably helped fuel the king’s paranoia and suspicions.

16. Anne and Henry have a drag out violent fight in which she fiercely insults him and he actually almost chokes her. They definitely did have very loud arguments at times, but I don’t know if there’s any evidence that Henry laid hands on her violently.

17. Since this is apparently a low budget series that can’t afford to put on a proper joust, we don’t actually get to see the joust where Henry leaves Anne for the last time. Lady Rochford, Jane Parker, instead tells Anne that the King abruptly left and the joust was cancelled.

18. The episode closes out with Lady Anne Shelton tricking Anne into going with her to see her Uncle, who promptly presents her with an order for her arrest.
In real life, she was summoned to appear to the privy council. One of the members there was indeed her Uncle. When she showed up, she was informed of her arrest.
In the scene, Anne tried to bring some of her closest ladies with her to go see her uncle, but was only allowed to have Lady Shelton. We know she had a few ladies in the tower with her, but we don’t know exactly who they are. They likely were not her favorite ladies and were there more to keep an eye on her than keep her company, but as the Queen, it wouldn’t have been proper for her to go even to prison without being properly attended.

Season 3 Tiaras of The Crown

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All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche” 10: “War”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

Other Posts about Crowns and Tiaras:
Diadems, Tiaras, and Crowns, Oh My! - an overview of types, definitions, and purposes
Disney Crowns and Tiaras: Historical and Modern Inspirations (Part I) - Snow White, Alice in Wonderland (cartoon and live), Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent, Robin Hood, and the Great Mouse Detective
Disney Crowns and Tiaras: Historical and Modern Inspirations (Part II): Cinderella, Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog, and The Sword in the Stone!

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Elizabeth in The Crown (Olivia Colman) in the opening scene of S3, looking at stamps based off of S1-S2 actress Claire Foy and S3-S4 actress Olivia Colman. Both stamp portraits are wearing replicas of the George IV diadem.

S3E1 Olding: Season 3 opens with the meta acknowledgement of the actress change from Claire Foy to Olivia Colman as portrayed in the new stamp portraits. Both portraits feature the George IV diadem. (Of interest: The Court Jeweller pointed out that the stamps actually changed out in 1967, when this scene is set in 1964).

In real life, the stamp design was changed for practical reasons having nothing to do with the Queen’s age. The first stamp design featuring Queen Elizabeth II in 1952 was based on a photo by Dorothy Wilding which featured the Queen in three-quarter shoulder length profile. Stamp designers apparently found it difficult to incorporate the Queen’s profile into new stamps, resulting in some murmurs of removing the Queen from the stamps altogether. Instead, they switched to a more direct profile that worked better for design purposes. This version, which debuted in June 1967, uses of a plaster bust design made by Arnold Machin based off of photos by John Hedgecoe. This is still the profile of the queen used on stamps today. (Source: Postal Museum)

L to R: the original Dorothy Wilding photograph stamp, the new Andrew Machin design stamp, and a modern stamp with the queen’s profile on it.

Later in the episode, the Queen wears an odd made-up tiara at the art exhibition. It’s like, very Disney princess and doesn’t actually resemble any of the queen’s real tiaras.

L to R: Elizabeth in The Crown, wearing an invented tiara; Margaret in The Crown wearing a replica of the Poltimore tiara; the real Princess Margaret wearing the Poltimore tiara in a bathtub taken by her then husband Lord Snowden in 1962 and at an event (Credit: Reginald Davis / Shutterstock).

S3E2 Margaretology: During Margaret’s fabulous 1965 American tour montage, she wears a replica of the Poltimore tiara for a photo shoot with her in the bathtub. This refers to a very famous photo of Margaret that was actually taken by her photographer husband Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1962. In the full shot, you can actually see Antony in the mirror behind Margaret right in the corner of the photograph. The actual photo didn’t come out until 2006, four years after Margaret’s death. (Source: Town and Country)

Margaret also wore the Poltimore tiara at her wedding and at several other events.

L to R: Elizabeth in The Crown; Queen Elizabeth II; The Queen Mother; Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen)(Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty); Princess Anne (Credit: PA Images / Getty); Princess Beatrice (Credit: Getty)


S3E3 Bubbikins: On a state visit, the queen wears a replica of Queen Mary’s fringe tiara. This is a real tiara, but as the Court Jeweller points out, the Queen didn’t own this tiara in the 1960s. The Queen Mother owned it at the time, but eventually bequeathed it to her daughter Elizabeth in 2002. Fun fact: Then-Princess Elizabeth wore it for her wedding in 1947, her daughter Princess Anne borrowed it for her wedding in 1973, and Elizabeth’s granddaughter Princess Beatrice (Prince Andrew’s daughter with Sarah Ferguson) wore it for hers in 2020.

L to R: Prince Charles at his investment as Prince of Wales in The Crown; the real life Charles in his investment portrait (Credit: Bettmann / Getty); the investment coronet (Credit: Royal Collection Trust).

Episode 6 Tywysog Cymru: Charles is invested as Prince of Wales at Cardiff Castle in this episode and sports a jaunty new coronet as part of that. Although a Prince of Wales coronet had been made for Prince Edward in 1911, along with various other ceremonial accoutrements (rod, ring, sword, and a robe with doublet and sash), a new coronet had to be made for Charles, as Edward (also known as David) had taken his coronet with him when he went into exile post-abdication in 1936. Apparently, the royal family was much more willing to make a new coronet than talk to Edward to get the old one back. (Source: Town and Country)

The new coronet design was deliberately modern and simple. A more extravagant design was previously rejected as out of touch with a lot of the economic struggles happening in the country at the time.

Charles also wore a crown while playing Richard II in the episode. Although this was obviously just a theater prop, it actually does have some real similarities to the original crown worn by Richard II. Both are gold, open crowns topped with fleurons. (Source: Richard II’s Treasure)

L to R: Prince Charles playing Richard II in The Crown; Charles’s play crown in The Crown; Richard II’s portrait

Episode 9 Imbroglio:

The Queen, Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret all wear invented tiaras at Elizabeth and Philips’s 25th anniversary celebration. In real life, this was celebrated with a luncheon in November 1972, not a fancy formal dinner like that shown in The Crown.

The Court Jeweller referred to the Queen Mother’s made up tiara as an “invented diamond scroll tiara.” It really doesn’t look like any other crowns I’ve seen.

Princess Margaret is wearing a made up ruby tiara. The Court Jeweller points out that Margaret had plenty of tiaras, but no ruby tiaras (however, her engagement ring was famously a ruby).

L to R: Elizabeth wearing an invented tiara in The Crown; the Queen Mother wearing an invented tiara in The Crown; Margaret wearing the same invented tiara on a promotional poster for The Crown that she wore in the anniversary dinner scene.

Episode 10 Cri de Coeur: Although none of the characters wear tiaras or crowns in this episode, we do get a quick look at a commemorative Silver Jubilee tea towel which shows the Queen wearing the George IV diadem. It’s a slightly odd design, as the Queen appears to be wearing a more casual outfit with her diadem, which is really not a thing that would happen in real life.

I couldn’t find a real tea towel from the Silver Jubilee that actually looks like the one in the show, but it may be a combination of a few different designs and ideas.

The Queen wore several different crowns and tiaras to various events during her Silver Jubilee, including the Vladimir tiara with emerald drops and the Imperial State Crown.

L to R: Antony Armstrong-Jones in The Crown holding up a tea towel with the Queen on it; two real tea towels from the Silver Jubilee; the Queen at a Silver Jubilee event wearing the Vladimir Tiara with emerald drops; the Queen at a Silver Jubilee event wearing the Imperial State Crown (Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty).

Initial Quick, Non-Researched Thoughts on "Anne Boleyn" Episode 1

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Quick Thoughts on Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3

I just watched episode 1 of Anne Boleyn, the new psychological thriller series from Channel 5 in the UK.* Thoughts so far: It's really well done (apart from the costumes, which lack historically accurate detailing, but they're not so bad that they're distracting). Jodie Turner-Smith is mesmerizing as Anne. She plays every facet of love, intelligence, humor, fear, anxiety, defensiveness, faith, joy, and devastation with subtle art. She also has that Anne charisma and power, taking your breath away just with her presence.

*The UK’s Channel 5 mini series “Anne Boleyn” has been causing a bit of uproar around Tudor communities for a while now because of the casting of a black woman in the lead role. I am incredibly over people being such asses about this (these comments range from repetitively close-minded and boring to HOLY SHIT THAT IS REALLY RACIST DUDE and they all piss me off), so I’m really just not going to get into it now. I would really rather just talk about content of the show itself.

(As an American, I watched this show via TV Mucho - apparently this only works if you set it to record in advance or watch it simultaneously with the UK broadcast. Also - you only get one free hour a day, which because of the 10 minute early start with the show, isn't actually enough, so I just broke down and bought one month's subscription. I have no idea how to access the show if you are out of the UK and didn’t already record it using TV Mucho, sorry.)

I COULD write thousands of words about this one episode, and I may later, but I'll just hit a few points briefly. I'm not doing in depth research on this but am only talking about a few items using my prior knowledge as a giant Tudor history fanatic. If you see anything inaccurate, let me know! I'm human, after all. I may go back and add sources to this later if there’s enough interest.

Credit: Anne Boleyn, Channel 5

1. The episode opens with a flash forward to Anne’s trial. This scene closes out with an axe being turned around and Anne taking a sharp intake of breath. The turning of the axe actually was totally a thing at Tudor trials! When the accused walked into court, the accompanying axeman’s blade was faced away from them. Once they were declared guilty and sentenced though, the blade was turned to face toward them. 

2. After the credits, a very pregnant Anne is shown wearing yellow at a formal event, which is held after the death of Catherine of Aragon. Henry is not wearing yellow. If I recall, one contemporary account from the time specified only that Henry wore yellow after COA’s death, and another only specified that Anne wore yellow. In addition, it’s up for debate whether this was meant for mourning (as some claim it was the Spanish color of mourning) or celebration.

 3. While playing cards (using cards that are larger than modern ones and really do look like those used in Tudor times!), Anne casually asks Madge Shelton (who in real life was her cousin) whether the king had called for her lately. This refers to the fact that during his queens’ pregnancies, Henry would regularly sleep with other women, as sex with a pregnant woman was considered dangerous to the baby.
Anne also disses Jane Parker, Lady Rochford and her brother George’s wife, and implies that she’s just…a very nasty woman. This is a very common characterization of Jane for some reason, but we don’t really have any evidence to support it beyond the simple fact that Jane survived the Boleyns’ fall.

4. Symbol Count 1: The French king sends some tiny French children (?) to present a clock to Anne for her future child. This will become more important later.

5. Symbol count 2: Jane Seymour wins at cards. Anne: “You had the winning hand all along.” Jane: “I didn’t understand the game.” Anne: “You really mustn’t play.” This indicates that Anne is already aware of her husband’s attraction to Jane and is warning her away from him. 

6. Later in bed, Anne and Henry talk about Cromwell’s plans for the monasteries. Anne says she has her own thoughts about what to do with the money from the monasteries, while Cromwell has other ideas. This disagreement really did happen. Anne wanted the money to go to charity and education. Cromwell wanted the money to go into the king’s treasury. It’s likely that this significant disagreement between Anne and Cromwell (who were formerly allied due to their common beliefs in reforming the church) may have contributed to Anne’s downfall.

 7. Symbol count 3: The court is looking at some new horses outside while Anne and Cromwell talk, clearly still disagreeing. Anne is in a peacock blue and there are several peacocks wandering around and making loud noises. Anne complains about the peacocks and tells Henry she wants them removed or she’ll hunt them down herself. These peacocks will come back several more times. 

8. Anne next talks to an older woman who appears to be Elizabeth’s governess (if this is the case, likely Lady Margaret Bryan) and specifically sends her sympathies to Mary (who at this point, is actually serving her younger sister, as a bit of a punishment for her obstinacy in refusing to accept the annulment of her parents’ marriage) on the death of her mother. Anne really did reach out to Mary after Catherine’s death, I believe she even encouraged Mary to reunite with her father.
Anne was not always kind to Mary honestly, but I believe at this point she wasn’t actually being a jerk. 

9. George brings Anne the first full English bible, fresh from Antwerp. Antwerp was a hotbed of Protestant thinking. Anne is delighted and puts the bible on a pedestal in her room. This really did happen – Anne put it there for any of her ladies to read regularly. At this point though, she takes the opportunity to encourage Jane Seymour to read Psalm 55 (ESV) – which includes a subtle reference to Jane betraying her with Henry: “for it is not an enemy who taunts me—then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me—then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.” 

11. Henry has a jousting accident that leaves him unconscious and makes everyone freak out.
EVERYONE CITES THIS DAMN JOUSTING ACCIDENT but y’all, all the contemporary English sources indicate that he wasn’t even hurt and there are NO English reports about the king being unconscious. If it had actually happened that way, it would be in every person’s letters and diaries. The guy who started the thing about Henry being unconscious wasn’t in the country at the time and wrote about it several months later. UGH.
Anne panics as she overhears people talking about how she could never be regent because people hate her. She also overhears Ambassador Eustace Chapuys talking about sending for Mary, noting that she’d have Spanish backing. Chapuys was a big letter writer and is a source of information for a lot of what we know about Anne’s downfall. he was highly biased against her though so, so we have to take what he says with a grain of salt.
Anne asks her Uncle, who’s the Duke of Norfolk Thomas Howard (one of the most powerful men in the kingdom) to get rid of Chapuys.

Despite their spat over the monasteries, Cromwell is hanging with Anne and her family still and is part of their conversation. Anne says that all mail to Hatfield (where mary lives with princess Elizabeth) should be stopped and they shouldn’t let Mary see the king. She clearly is afraid that Mary will be captured and made the center of an uprising. This was wise, as this sort of thing actually did happen every time a Tudor monarch died.

 12. Symbol Count 4: Anne sees the feisty horse that threw the king in the accident taken away and decapitated. When she asks the king about it later, he says “I have no use for an animal that won’t obey me.”
The king also says, “my leg will never be the same.” This is actually true, as he did get a leg injury in a jousting accident that would become ulcerous and infected and would basically weep pus, smell terrible, and cause him tremendous pain for the rest of his life. 

 13. A couple scenes go by without much for me to talk about historically until Anne confronts her uncle about his conversations with the king and yells at him. We do know that Anne and her uncle had a falling out in the months before her death. He later would be on the jury that sentenced her to death.
After getting past her uncle, Anne finds Jane Seymour sitting on Henry’s knee. There are accounts of this really happening. Anne tears a necklace from her throat and slaps her. Historically, Anne did pull the necklace away (the necklace was a portrait of Henry), but it was at a different time, when the king wasn’t there).

 14. The incident leads to Anne miscarrying her child. This did happen pretty soon after CoA’s death and also was caused by the Jane Seymour knee-sitting incident.
Also HOLY TOKOPHOBIA BATMAN, if you are freaked out by pregnancy and childbirth, I would suggest skipping over this scene. It doesn’t show a lot but there are A LOT OF SOUNDS AND IT IS VERY DISTURBING. (yes, I probably have mild tokophobia).

 15. Symbol returns: The clock has wound down and is stopped, probably referring to Anne running out of time. Anne looks out the window and sees Henry petting the peacocks she asked him to kill with Jane Seymour, indicating her loss of power and status with her husband.

 16. I love that the show has Anne running to try to catch her husband to advocate for her plan with the monasteries, even though she’s just lost a baby, is very injured from childbirth, and she’s upset about the Jane situation. Anne really was very passionate about religious reform and charity and although this almost certainly didn’t happen, it’s a good way to show it.

 17. Anne appears alone in several scenes in this episode. Realistically, she would not have been alone, pretty much ever, as the Queen would always be accompanied by several ladies. Honestly, she probably didn’t even use the bathroom alone. But it works for showing Anne’s isolation and growing paranoia about her role at court.

I hope you enjoyed that quick rundown! It ended up over 1,500 words, which was approximately 1,000 more words than I planned, but - whatever. I’ll probably do the same thing for the next two episodes as well!

Funko Pop! Figurines of the Royals and the Photos that Inspired them

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Other Posts Relating to English Royal portrayals in The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

Funko Pop! releases the most amazingly specific and niche figurines of various fictional characters from basically every franchise and popular commercial you can even comprehend, historical figures, and select modern celebrities. They’ve produced a few figurines of the English royal family over the years, although it looks like only the pink Queen Elizabeth figurine is currently available on their website. Most of these came out in December 2017, while the wedding Harry and Meghan and green/purple Queen figurines came out in December 2018.

As Funko Pop! noted in their December 2017 press release announcing the collection, “These products are our fun characterisation of the icons they represent, but they have not been endorsed or approved by any member of the Royal Family. They do not have any connection with and are not of a type supplied to any member of the Royal Family.”

I own most of these figurines and took detailed pictures of all the ones I had access to. I don’t have Prince Harry’s bachelor figurine, the red dress version of Princess Diana’s figurine, or the green and purple figurine of Queen Elizabeth.

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Credit: Chris Jackson

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Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom

The pink Funko Pop! figure of Queen Elizabeth II shows her in a pink coat, dress, and hat with red feather ensemble that she’s worn on numerous occasions.

The Queen’s coats are commonly designed by her dresser Angela Kelly at this point, and I would guess this one is as well (I haven't been able to find the designer/maker's name anywhere). Her pink hat with red feather trim is by milliner Rachel Trevor Morgan. The dress peeking out from under the coat actually has red and pink color blocking, which you only really notice if you’re looking at it really carefully. I was delighted to see that the Funko Pop! figurine does actually include this element, as the little sliver of dress on the figurine is clearly red, not pink.

I tried to get close up photos of the brooch on the figurine, as the Queen really loves brooches and was hoping it would clearly match one of hers, but even with my macro lens, only managed to grasp a vague oval shape with some slight detailing, but not enough to really get a clear idea of the shape. After looking through every photo I could find of the Queen wearing this outfit (thanks to Royal Hats for keeping such brilliant track of her hats and outfits), my guess is that it’s likely meant to evoke the Tudor Rose Brooch that she wore for Christmas at Sandringham in 2014. From her Majesty’s Jewel Vault discusses this brooch more over here.

The figurine also sports a tiny white line around the neck which is barely visible under the head. This is likely meant to evoke the Queen’s string of pearls.

The Queen’s ever present Launer handbag is lovingly recreated in the figurine. She’s carried similar black bags from Launer throughout her entire reign. I’m not a handbag aficionado or expert, but by my untrained eye, it resembles the Launer Traviata. The Queen’s most commonly used Launer bags are discussed in depth in this article from Town & Country.

The figurine also sports the Queen’s ever-present Cornelia James gloves, which she wears at most public appearances (she shakes so many hands that it’s just a sensible precaution, even pre-COVID).

The matching brightly colored coat and hat look has basically served as a uniform for the Queen for the past few decades at royal events, and there are many memes dedicated to how consistent her look is. she said before that she specifically wears bright colors so that everyone can see her.

The pink edition also came with a corgi figurine, which appears to most closely match the lower left corgi in this 2016 Vanity Fair cover photo and farthest to the left in the Queen’s portrait with her corgis on the steps (both by Annie Leibovitz). This corgi is referred to as Willow in the Vanity Fair article. If so, this is a very poignant tribute, as Willow was the very last of the Queen’s corgis. She died in 2018.

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Credit: WPA Pool

The green and purple Funko Pop! figurine of the Queen, which released December 3, 2018, is the same shape and set up of her pink one, but matches the color scheme of the light green and purple ensemble she wore to her grandchild Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle in May 2018. This is a little odd as that outfit had numerous different details, including a different hat shape and trimming, a different fastening on the coat, a different brooch, and a multicolored dress underneath. The color scheme is quite distinctive though, and I don’t think she’s been seen wearing those colors on any other occasion. I’m guessing that while they were putting out a Duke and Duchess of Sussex set, they decided they might as well crank out a “royal wedding themed” version of the Queen using the same mold they already had used for the pink outfit. It’s a little sad actually; I would have love to see the actual trimming of that hat in plastic miniature form.

As for the Queen’s actual outfit at Prince Harry’s wedding: The hat was designed by the Queen’s dresser Angela Kelly and made by Stella McLaren. The Queen’s pale green dress and coat were made by Stewart Parvin. She carried another Launer handbag, although I haven’t been able to pin down the exact style.

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Credit: Shutterstock

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Credit: Jeff Spicer

Charles, Prince of Wales

Charles’s Funko Pop! figurine features him in an style he’s favored for decades - a double breasted suit with a floral buttonhole and a pocket square. This exact color combination seems to combine a few photos though, as I couldn’t find any that showed Charles in this exact outfit. This is a bit odd, as every other royal Funko Pop! figurine appears to be based on an exact outfit and often even an exact photograph, as the poses are usually emulated as well. (If anyone does manage to find a picture of Prince Charles that matches this figurine, please let me know!)

Charles is really consistent in his clothing brands, so if this is based off one or more photos of Charles, the figurine clothes likely are based off of a suit made by either Gieves & Hawkes or Anderson & Sheppard, shoes from Crockett & Jones, and a shirt from Turnbull & Asser.

The flower, interestingly enough, seems to resemble a remembrance day poppy.

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Credit: Tim Graham

Credit: Everett/Shutterstock

Diana, Princess of Wales

Diana’s Funko Pop! sports a black off-the-shoulder gown by Victor Edelston that she wore on several occasions, including when she famously danced with John Travolta at the White House in 1985. The ensemble recreated in this figurine, however, echoes the specific outfit she wore on November 2, 1987 at a banquet in Bonn, Germany. She accessorized with the Spencer tiara, a sapphire and diamond jewelry suite which featured a necklace, bracelet, and earrings, and a black clutch.

The Spencer Tiara, as its name suggests, is owned by Diana’s family and parts of it date back to 1919. Diana and both her sisters wore the Spencer Tiara at their respective weddings. The Court Jeweller has more details and pictures of the tiara over here.

This dress is actually so famous that it has its own Wikipedia entry! Wikipedia says that the dress is actually midnight blue, not black, but it reads as black in all the pictures and is commonly described as black. When Diana sold her collection of gowns at Christie’s in New York in 1997 after her divorce from Prince Charles, the “Travolta dress” went for £100,000. All proceeds of the auction went to the Royal Marsden Hospital Cancer Fund and AIDS Crisis Trust.

The suite of jewelry was given to Diana by the Sultan of Oman in 1986.

There is also an alternate version of this figurine which appears to be identical in the black dress one except that the dress and clutch are both red. I could not find any photos of Diana having this exact same dress in red, but she did have some vaguely similar dresses. Apparently her midnight blue gown was specially made for her after she saw the dress in burgundy in Edelstein’s studio, so this figurine may be a tribute to that story.

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Credit: Chris Jackson

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Credit: Getty

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Prince William, Duke of Cambridge

William’s Funko Pop! Figurine looks to match an outfit he wore on a three-weak tour of New Zealand and Australia in April 2014. His figurine sports a single-breasted navy suit, blue and maroon tie, white shirt, and medals, although he isn’t wearing a red flower like he did in real life.

He’s worn this outfit again since, in November 2018 at a remembrance festival. Apparently he’s worn that tie on and off since 2006; it’s actually in the colors of his old regiment, the Blues And Royals.

William’s watch is also quite visible in his figurine - this may be his Omega Seamaster Professional. It’s rumored that it was a gift from his mother, but I haven’t seen this confirmed anywhere.

William’s medals commemorate his military service (in addition to the Blues and Royals, he also served in the RAF Search and Rescue). These medals specifically are the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.

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Credit: WPA Pool

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Credit: WPA Pool

Credit: Max Mumby

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge
Kate Middleton’s Funko Pop! recreates a Roland Mouret gown in royal blue that she wore on June 9, 2016 at a SportsAid event. She wore it with gold hoops and a clutch, which she carried in front of her much like is shown in the figurine. Her sapphire and diamond engagement ring, originally Princess Diana’s, is also visible on the figurine.

Kate often wears Roland Mouret dresses and has gravitated to sapphire blue outfits on multiple occasions. Kate is known for driving major sales to brands she wears in a phenomenon often called “The Kate Middleton Effect.” This effect has been seen in outfits worn by her sister-in-law Meghan Markle as well.

Her trademark voluminous brown waves are on display here as well, and are somewhat emulated in her Funko Pop! figurine.

Credit: Dave J Hogan

Credit: Samir Hussein

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Credit: Anthony Devlin

Prince Harry (He was not given the title Duke of Sussex until he got married)

Prince Harry has the distinction of being the only royal with two entirely different Funko Pop! figurine looks. His December 2017 Funko Pop! figurine wore an outfit almost exactly similar to Prince William’s, except that he sports one more medal. This matches the outfit that he wore at the Dunkirk world premiere on July 13, 2017. In it, he’s wearing a blue and maroon striped Blues and Royals tie just like his brother’s. It appears that he’s worn it on many other occasions as well.

His medals specifically are: the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, and the Afghanistan Operational Service Medal.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

A double portrait of Prince Harry and Prince William, 2009, Nikki Philipps

A double portrait of Prince Harry and Prince William, 2009, Nikki Philipps

For his wedding on May 19, 2018, Prince Harry wore a frockcoat uniform of the Blues and Royals, which notably feature fabric braids down the front and red stripes on the side of the legs. Here, he’s wearing four medal ribbons: the K.C.V.O. (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order), The Queen’s Golden Jubilee, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and Afghanistan with Rosette. He’s also wearing his Pilots’ Wing badge (above the ribbons) and the Star of the Grand Cross Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (below the ribbons). (Source: Royal Central)

Dege & Skinner made Harry’s frockcoat for the wedding, and also made the uniforms that both Harry and William wore for their official double portrait in 2009 (painted by Nikki Philipps). Dege & Skinner actually was originally only asked to make miniature frockcoat uniforms for the four pageboys at the wedding, but they offered to make Harry a new coat as well, so he accepted.

Harry’s choice to keep his beard even while wearing a military uniform was a little surprising, as military rules tend to ban facial hair while in uniform. However, since he’s not in active service, it was allowed, and really seems to indicate his desire to do things his own way.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

Meghan’s Funko Pop! figurine, of course, features her in her famous wedding day look.

Meghan’s dress, made from silk cady and featuring a bateau neckline and three quarter sleeves, was designed by Claire Waight Keller at Givenchy.

While the dress was relatively simple, Meghan’s wedding veil featured embroidery of distinctive flowers from all 53 countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, as well as flowers from her native state, California, and from the garden of Kensington Palace. At full length, it was five meters, almost 16.5 feet long! There’s a full list of all the flowers featured over at Royal.uk which is super fun to read through! Funko did a decent job trying to emulate the veil, considering their size and production restrictions, and you can kind of see that the different patterns are supposed to represent various flowers.

The Queen lent Meghan Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau to wear for the wedding. This tiara dates back to 1932 and features a centre detachable brooch from 1893. A lot of detail was lost in the figurine’s rendition of the tiara, of course, but there’s definitely enough there that you can easily tell what tiara it’s supposed to be.

Meghan also wore Cartier earrings and a bracelet. Her engagement ring is vaguely represented in the figurine, but not in any sort of detail.

The wedding bouquet included a variety of flowers, including a few that Prince Harry actually went out and picked from Kensington Palace’s garden. Forget-Me-Nots, his mother Diana’s favorite flower, were particularly featured. As is traditional for royal brides, the bouquet also included a few sprigs of myrtle picked from a plant originally grown on the Isle of Wight by Queen Victoria. The figurine includes a few of these details, but it doesn’t have as much detail or texture as the actual bouquet, of course.

Over-Analyzing The Crown: S4E6 Terra Nullius

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All My Posts on The Crown
S3: 1 & 2: “Olding” & “Margaretology” 3: “Aberfan” 4: “Bubbikins, 5: “Coup” 6: “Tywysog Cymru” 7: “Moondust" 8: “Dangling Man” 9: “Imbroglio” 10: “Cri de Coeur”
S4: 1: “Gold Stick” 2: “The Balmoral Test” 3: “Fairytale” ( + Cinderella References) 4: “Favourites” 5: “Fagan” 6: “Terra Nullius” 7: ”The Hereditary Principle” 8: “48:1” 9: “Avalanche”
The Medals, Sashes, and Tiaras of The Crown; Tiaras/Crowns Overviews: Season 1 ; Season 2

Since I had great fun over-analyzing every episode of Season 3 of The Crown last year, I’m doing the same thing this year! So if you haven’t watched Season 4 Episode 6 of the Crown yet and don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading now. :)

Top: Bob Hawke on The Crown; Bottom: Bob Hawke in real life

Top: Bob Hawke on The Crown; Bottom: Bob Hawke in real life

  • The episode opens with politician Bob Hawke (about to become Australia’s prime minister) speaking to a reporter on TV, who asks him about Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s forthcoming tour of Australia. Hawke notes that he doesn’t consider this a very important part of his job and expounds on his republican views and his desire to have an Australian head of state. He refers to the queen as a “pom,” which is an Australian slang word used to refer to Brits. It’s not entirely known where this term came from, but the most common theory I found spouted about the Internet is that it’s short for pomegranate and refers to the red cheeks that visiting Brits and new British immigrants to Australia get from the heat and sun there (source: Country Life).
    In the show, Hawke also refers to the royal family by saying “You wouldn't put a pig in charge of a herd of prime beef cattle — even if it did look good in a twin set and pearls.” In real life, Bob Hawke’s widow and others stated that he would never have said such a thing about the Queen. This uproar over this portrayal is discussed in this article from The Daily Mail, which also includes a video of the real Bob Hawke talking about Charles’s visit to Australia; what’s interesting, is the interview’s beginning is almost identical to how it’s shown in The Crown (where he says he’s met Charles and found him a nice young bloke), but where the show has Hawke going off and saying various rude things about the Queen, in real life, he was much milder and said, “I don’t think we’ll be talking about kings in Australia for ever more ... we would be better off as a republic. But I don’t think it’s a matter of great importance.” He then continues to talk about his larger concerns, namely, the welfare of people in Australia. (written quotes from that interview are included in this article from The Guardian)

    • Check out how closely the show captured the interview background of the 4 Corners news show just for this single one minute sequence!

    • Several articles also have reported that Bob Hawke was in fact a republican, but wasn’t nearly as keen on pushing the royals out of Australia as is shown in The Crown. The Australian stated, “The truth is that Hawke never saw the Charles-Diana visit as a chance to advocate a republic. Hawke always got on well with the Queen. He believed Australia should not become a republic until the Queen’s reign ends. This is a testament to the respect most Australians have for her.”

  • Next, we see Martin Charteris apprising the Queen on the results of the Australia election. The Queen describes Hawke as “the rough, tough former trade union negotiator and the proud holder of the world record for beer drinking.” Charteris said he won it by drinking “a yard of ale in a sconce pot in 11 seconds,” and then notes that Hawke was now a teetotaller.
    I found a truly delightful article published in the Australian Times that looks into Hawke’s beer-drinking record in depth that you should totally go read if you have a chance. That article explains the story far better than I ever could: “Oxford University is an institution steeped in quaint tradition, and even more so in the 1950’s when Bob was a student. Students take their evening meal in the dining hall of their college, and are required to attend wearing a gown. Back in Bob’s day, if you turned up not wearing a gown, you were subject to a challenge against the ‘sconce master’ of the college. “Sconcing” is a tradition unique to Oxford University, which demands a person drink a tankard of alcohol, usually ale, as penance for a breach of etiquette — such as forgetting to wear one’s gown to dinner! The story goes that Bob had to drink the yard of ale from a sconce pot faster than the sconce master, or face buying a round for all present. Being unable to afford to buy the round, Bob had no choice but to beat the sconce master. And beat him he did, setting a world record and carving a place in Australian history at the same time.”
    The Independent reported in 1994 that Bob Hawke gave up alcohol in 1980 and remained a teetotaller as long as he was prime minister.

  • FUN RIDICULOUSLY SMALL ROYAL REFERENCE: While talking to Charteris in her office, the Queen waters a flower in a pot. I’m not a gardener myself, but this flower looks to be a lily of the valley, which are in fact, the real life Queen’s favorite flower (source: House Beautiful). I could not find any evidence that the Queen actually keeps potted plants or waters them herself (please tell me if you do!), but she did take up gardening at 91 (Source: British Heritage).

  • The Queen emphasizes the importance of Charles and Diana’s visit to Australia here, implying here and later that it’s their job to persuade Australia to keep in the Commonwealth. In real life, it wasn’t viewed that way at all. The Australian quoted Sir William Heseltine (the Queen’s ACTUAL private secretary from 1986-1990; as I’ve mentioned before, in real life, Martin Charteris retired in the late 70s), as saying “The visit by the Prince and Princess of Wales to Australia, which features large in the series, I can attest was certainly not conceived as a weapon to ward off any move to a republic. It was one in the regular series of visits by Her Majesty herself and members of her family undertaken as one of the ways in which the family showed their devotion to the overseas monarchies.”

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Scenes from The Crown.

Diana in real life wearing a wide necked loose green dress similar to one on the show.

Diana in real life wearing a wide necked loose green dress similar to one on the show.

  • Content Warning: Eating Disorders. [italicized]

    We get a quick flashback to a lunch with the Queen, Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, and Princess Anne. All of them are wearing similar colors and prints, clearly emphasizing their familial connection, but in their own particular colors and styles. In this scene, it’s implied that Margaret tells the others about Diana’s bulimia (this isn’t explicitly shown, but we do see a quick montage of Diana binging and purging in the middle of the conversation and the royal ladies looking very shocked afterward); she would know best, as Margaret, Diana, and Charles, all lived in Kensington Palace at the time (although Charles spent quite a bit of time out at his home in the country, Highgrove). Margaret lived in apartment 1A and the Waleses lived in Apartments 8 and 9. You shouldn’t expect “apartment” to refer to anything small, by the way; Diana and Charles’s rooms covered three floors (Source: Marie Claire).
    To the royal ladies’ credit, they are completely shocked by the news of Diana’s bulimia.

    • These bulimia scenes are incredibly heartbreaking, of course. Diana spoke about her struggles with her eating disorder quite openly later in life. In one interview with BBC, she said, “I had bulimia for a number of years. And that's like a secret disease. You inflict it upon yourself because your self-esteem is at a low ebb, and you don't think you're worthy or valuable. You fill your stomach up four or five times a day - some do it more - and it gives you a feeling of comfort. It's like having a pair of arms around you, but it's temporarily, temporary. Then you're disgusted at the bloatedness of your stomach, and then you bring it all up again. And it's a repetitive pattern which is very destructive to yourself.” She attributed the bulimia to the struggles in her marriage, saying “The cause was the situation where my husband and I had to keep everything together because we didn't want to disappoint the public, and yet obviously there was a lot of anxiety going on within our four walls.”

    • Princess Margaret, who in the show, was the only one who spoke out openly against the marriage before it happened, saying that clearly neither Diana nor Charles wanted to marry each other, continues her trend as being the most observant member of the family by stating, “People do the strangest things when they’re unhappy”

      Content Warning end.

  • At the royal ladies’ lunch, it’s stated that it was Diana who wanted to take baby William on the Tour of Australia. This is not actually the case. According to her biography by Andrew Morton, she was ready to leave William behind during the tour until the then-prime minister of Australia Malcolm Fraser suggested bringing him along. Apparently it was portrayed as Diana’s idea in the press at the time though.

  • In the next scene, after a few very quick dialogue-less shots of Charles arriving to play polo with Camilla and her husband Andrew, we see Charles and Camilla laughing, drinking, and telling a bawdy joke together at a gathering of friends. Andrew Parker Bowles is in the crowd, with his arm leaned up on a sofa behind another woman (likely alluding to his own affairs). I think this is mostly to show how happy these two truly are together. Diana is conspicuously absent.

  • The gaiety of this scene contrasts sharply with the next shot, which has Charles and Diana miserably huddled next to each other on a sofa as they sit across from the Queen, Philip, and a counselor of some sort. Diana has her arms crossed and Charles has his hands clasped together (exposing his ever-present signet ring); their body language indicates that they don’t want to be there and don’t feel close to each other at all. DIana’s in a loose green dress with a wide neck; everything about it seems to emphasize how thin she is (it’s very similar to a dress the real Diana wore on the Australia tour. Couldn’t find a screenshot of the dress in the show, but I’ve included the real life green dress to the right). The Queen and Philip similarly have their hands gathered up separately, but they sit with their legs and body posture facing each other, signifying how close they are and only emphasizing the distance between the younger couple

Left: Emma Corrin on The Crown. Right: Diana in real life.

Left: Emma Corrin on The Crown. Right: Diana in real life (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).

Top: Diana and Charles with William arriving in Australia. Bottom: Emma Corrin and Josh O’Connor arriving in Australia on The Crown.

Top: Diana and Charles with William arriving in Australia (Credit: Bob Thomas / Getty). Bottom: Emma Corrin and Josh O’Connor arriving in Australia on The Crown.

  • The Queen refers to her and Philip’s tour of the Commonwealth back in 1954, which we saw portrayed in S1E8’s Pride & Joy, and states that it was hard, but brought them closer together. This is hilarious considering that we saw them have a huge fight on that tour, complete with Elizabeth throwing things at Philip. I haven’t had a chance to write about the first and second seasons yet, but apparently their argument in Australia depicted on The Crown actually happened in real life (Source: Express).
    Elizabeth’s obliviousness towards her children (shown previously in S4E4’s Favourites) continues when Margaret wryly asks whether leaving her children behind for six months “might have had consequences” by saying “On what? The tour was a triumph.”

  • Diana’s outfit as they board the plane to Australia is similar to one she wore in real life, but with some key differences. In real life, she wore a navy blue and white striped cardigan; her cardigan on the crown has very colorful stripes that are almost childlike - emphasizing both her youth and her connection to baby William. We get a fight on the plane between her and Charles’s long-suffering private secretary Edward Adeane (who yes, was the son of Michael Adeane, who was private secretary to Queen Elizabeth from S1-S3, the one who Philip gave a clock and then promptly forgot about) about being separated from William for two weeks, but as I previously mentioned, in real life, she actually hadn’t insisted on bringing William along. William stayed primarily at Woomargama and the prince and princess visited him several times during the trip. This entire scene is basically just added for drama and to illustrate how different Diana is from the rest of the royals.
    One thing this scene does illustrate though, is Diana’s views on motherhood. She states, “the greatest service I can give the royal family is to be a living breathing present mother – to this child who will someday be king.” Insider has an article talking all about Diana’s approach to raising her sons which is pretty good, although it does repeat the tired, disproven story that Diana insisted on taking William to Australia. 

  • There’s a really adorable Town and Country article all about the effect William’s stay at Woomargama Station had on the little town. It’s just. So cute.

  • Next we see Charles and a very unhappy Diana getting off the airplane in torrential rain with baby William. In the show, a newscaster notes that in Alice Springs, they’d received more than a month’s rain in a week. Diana says goodbye to William tearily, as Charles snaps at her to get going.
    In real life, the whole Wales family arrived in apparently good spirits on a sunny day. A UPI article from 1983 confirms this, noting that the couple were greeted at their stop in Alice Springs “in brilliant sunshine.” I get why The Crown did this though, as in reality, there HAD been several days of torrential rain and flash floods that disrupted the entire area right before the royal couple arrived. In fact, the rain and floods were so bad in the area that the casino hotel that the couple planned to stay in was inaccessible except by helicopter; they had to make do with a motel that stood on top of a ridge. This wasn’t shown on The Crown, of course, but it would have been interesting to see. Commentators at the time claimed that the motel stay was a “royal first.”
    There was one contrasting report from The Age in 1983, which said “She seemed uneasy, even glum, and looked at the tarmac with downcast eyes throughout much of the brief airport picture session.” This is not demonstrated in photos of the event though. At the very least, if she was visibly unhappy, it wasn’t to the extent shown in the show. However, Diana was very good at hiding her feelings. Years later, she said to Andrew Morton (who wrote the biography Diana: Her True Story), “I’ve got what my mother’s got. However bloody you’re feeling, you can put on the most amazing show of happiness.”

  • The Crown also shows the royal family going essentially directly to a press conference to talk to a horde of journalists, where Diana stumbles over her words and accidentally calls “Ayers Rock” “Ayers Dock,” to titters in the audience and the ridicule of the prime minister (watching on his tv set). I couldn’t find any evidence that Diana actually made that large of a gaffe, but Charles DID joke that baby William was being fed “warm milk and minced kangaroo,” which um, angered some people (Source: Meaww).

  • Bob Hawke is shown briefly mentioning that there are protests in Canberra about the cost of Charles and Diana’s visit. I couldn’t find ANY evidence of this happening at the time. Please tell me if you do and I will HAPPILY add that information in here. Maybe I just wasn’t using the right magical keywords to appease the Google gods.
    I did find a bit about protests happening in New Zealand? The Telegraph says: “Nor was the couple’s two-week stay in New Zealand trouble-free. On their way to a banquet in Auckland their car was hit by an egg filled with red paint, and in Wellington a Maori bared his buttocks at the couple in a protest over land rights.”

Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II watching film from her 1954 visit to Australia in The Crown

Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II watching film from her 1954 visit to Australia in The Crown

  • We get a scene of the Queen reminiscing over her glory days while watching a film of her visit to Australia in 1954. These appear to be film strips of the real Queen and Philip, not Claire Foy and Matt Smith. Philip hears the music of the film and joins her. They talk a bit about the size of the crowds, citing that over a million people turned out to see them in Sydney. This will become important later.
    Philip asks why the Queen sent Charles and Diana to Australia, stating that the country was too important “to send out the understudy.” As I mentioned already, there weren’t any serious fears that Australia would get rid of the monarchy or any need for the royals to keep Australia in the fold; this was a planned, regular visit just like Philip and the Queen’s in 1954.

  • Later, we see Diana struggling with the heat at Ayers Rock (now known as Uluru) and unable to climb the tourist site. In real life, it appears that Diana hesitated because of her unsuitable dress and shoes, not due to heat or illness. The Sydney Morning Herald at the time reported “As she stepped off the plane at Ayers Rock, she looked down in horror. Her dress, buttoned down to the front, was immediately blown open revealing her petticoat and knees. From that moment, the Princess made constant but hopeless attempts to keep the dress closed."
    In reality, the royal couple did actually climb Ayers Rock. However, the show didn’t depict this, as Uluru is actually a spiritually important place to the Anangu (a name referring to several aboriginal Aaustralian groups); climbing of it was banned in October 2019 (Source: The New Daily). Although The Crown shot this scene in Spain, not Australia, and digitally added in the rock in post-production, the fact that they didn’t show them climbing the whole rock illustrates the series’ attempts at cultural sensitivity. Apparently some of the footage of this scene in The Crown also features archival footage of traditional land custodian Reggie Uluru; Netflix made a donation to a Mutitjulu community charity in return for this (Mutitjulu is an aboriginal community in the area and the home of Reggie Uluru).

  • Later, Charles complains to Camilla about Diana on the phone. This hearkens back to what Charles told his mother in S4E4 “Favourites,” namely, that he called Camilla when he needed cheering up. In this conversation, he refers to Diana as a child and says he misses Camilla’s adulthood.

    Note that he calls Camilla “my darling” on the phone. This will become important later.

Top: The Crown; Bottom Two Photos: the real life Charles and Diana

Top: The Crown
Bottom Left: Charles and Diana at Ayers Rock (Credit: TIm Graham / Getty).
Bottom Right: Charles and Diana at Uluru (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty).

Left: The Crown; Right: the real life Charles and Diana

Left: The Crown
Top Right: Charles and Diana (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty).
Bottom Right: Charles, Diana and baby William (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).

  • We get another argument of Diana arguing with Edward Adeane over her need to see William. In real life, the royal couple visited William in Woomargama several times throughout the trip. It appears that these visits were always planned.

  • After the royal couple arrives at Woomargama, The Crown shows Diana and Charles playing happily with William in front of photographers, recreating a famous picture from the time.

  • Next is a scene of Charles and Diana out at Woomargama talking about William while their baby naps, the one thing they seem to have in common at this point in the episode. Charles notes affectionately that he was “crashing and bashing into everything” and also calls him “a mini tornado.” This is very accurate to real life. Charles once recounted a similar event in a letter to a friend, noting that he and Diana had enjoyed watching William crawling around “at high speed knocking everything off the tables and causing unbelievable destruction” (Source: Elle).

  • Their conversation about their relationship is very beautifully done, like a scene from a play. The showrunner of The Crown was, of course, originally a playwright.  Charles acknowledges how unhappy Diana is; Diana asks him how she’s supposed to feel about his relationship with Camilla. She specifically refers to the bracelet incident (which was shown in S4E3 Fairytale), his wearing “CC” cufflinks Camilla gave him, and a picture of Camilla falling out of his diary on their honeymoon. The cufflinks and picture incident were both mentioned in Andrew Morton’s “Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words,” which was based on extensive interviews with Diana herrself.

    • At the climax of the confrontation, Diana points out that Charles and Camilla are perfect for each other and asks angrily “So where do I fit in?” Charles responds, “You fit because you are my wife. And I love you.” This conversation echoes reports from many of Charles’s friends that Charles did, in his own way, actually love Diana, at least in he early years of their marriage. The lines indicating that they are in fact, very similar and both need more encouragement and appreciation, also echo reports from people who knew both of them. By the end of the conversation, they recommit to their relationship and promise to encourage and lift each other up more. Charles’s last line in this scene is “Happy Easter, my darling,” which, you’ll note, is exactly what he called Camilla just a few scenes earlier.

    • I do greatly enjoy that they’re literally celebrating Easter by hanging out and playing with sheep.

Left: The Crown; Right: Princess Diana

Left: The Crown
Right: Princess Diana (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty).

Top: The Crown; Bottom photos: Diana and Charles

Top: The Crown; Bottom photos: Diana and Charles

Left: The Crown; Right: Princess Diana

Left: The Crown
Right: Charles and Diana (Credit: David Levenson / Getty).

  • The next few scenes show the couple at their best, happily greeting crowds in a variety of different Australian cities, most notably Sydney, where they’re positioned right outside the opera house. Diana’s outfits are very similar to what she wore in real life, but not always exact copies, as you’ll see above.

  • Although I couldn’t find figures on the size of the crowds at the time (except in Melbourne, where 200,000 turned out), everyone seems to think that this tour signified the start of Diana-mania.
    The Telegraph reported: “On a more serious note, police in Australia had vastly underestimated the size of the crowds that would turn out to greet the couple. A senior officer famously said: ’We haven’t seen this in royal tours here before. It is more akin to Beatlemania.’ Thus was the phrase ‘Dianamania’ coined by the tabloid press. The couple often ran late because of delays caused by the crowds, leading to a frenetic atmosphere among those waiting in the heat. Children became separated from their parents in the crush, hundreds of people fainted, flowers and flags were thrown at the couple, and police became seriously concerned about crowd surges. Police numbers were increased by 25 per cent. By the time the couple visited Tasmania ten days into their tour, local police were warned by their counterparts in Canberra to step up crowd control because of ‘an element of hysteria’ that had been evident in crowds in Sydney.

  • Content Warning: Eating Disorders. [italicized]

    Although The Crown shows the crowds exciting and invigorating Diana, in real life, she found the attention overwhelming and exhausting. Sally Bedell Smith, who wrote a biography about Prince Charles, said “For her part, Diana was upset by the disproportionate interest in her, especially when she realized that it was disturbing Charles. She collapsed under the strain, weeping to her lady-in-waiting and secretly succumbing to bulimia. In letters to friends, Charles described his anguish over the impact ‘all this obsessed and crazed attention was having on his wife.’” This strain become most publicly apparent when Diana burst into tears in the midst of a crowd at the Sydney Opera House; the scene was caught by photographers, but apparently overlooked by Charles at the time.

    Content Warning end.

Left: The Crown; Right: Princess Diana

Left: The Crown; Right: Princess Diana (Credit: Anwar Hussein / Getty).

Left: The Crown; Right: Princess Diana

Left: The Crown; Right: Princess Diana (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).

  • The beautiful scene of Charles and Diana dancing recreates some very famous photos of the couple dancing together in Australia, in pretty much the exact same outfits. I did find actual video of their dancing; although they dance to “Can’t take my eyes off of you” in The Crown, it’s a different song in real life (I haven’t figured out which one, but if you do, please let me know!)
    Afterward, Charles joins Diana in her room. We know that despite their unhappiness, the couple did uhm, at least have some fun together after this 1983 Australia trip, as Prince Harry was born in September 1984.

  • In the next scene, Charles is having breakfast and is told that Camilla is on the phone; he refuses the call. On The Crown podcast, actor Josh O’Connor said that he had been instructed to think of Camilla as sort of like a bad habit that he’s trying to quit - every time he says “this’ll be my last camilla” and yet he always ends up going back to her. This seems to show one of his attempts to leave Camilla behind. (In the podcast, the actor acknowledged that this was an incredibly reductive way of viewing an actual person, but said it was a good tool for him to understand the situation. Emerald Fennell, who plays Camilla, was NOT a fan of this approach when she heard about it).

  • They have a wonderful appearance on a radio show in which Diana says, “I don’t think of myself as royalty, first and foremost I’m a wife and a mother, that’s what is most important thing to me.” This is very similar to something she said in real life: “Most importantly, [my role is] being a mother and a wife. That's what I try to achieve; whether I do is another thing, but I do try.” (Source: Little Things). In The Crown, she also notes “his favorite cuddly toy used to be a whale. Now it’s a koala.” In real life, she really did tell a reporter that William had a koala he loved now. I didn’t find anything referring to his formerly loving a whale, but this was likely chosen because Charles and Diana were Prince and Princess of Wales.

  • In the next scene, we have the coolest shot following a woman getting out of a pool, getting out, and going over to the edge of the building’s roof, where she joins others waving down at Diana and Charles, surrounded by gigantic crowds of people. This is an incredibly effective way of signifying the Diana mania. Diana is shown talking to many people in the crowd in a very friendly, interested way, illustrating her real life talent at connecting with people. Diana really was swarmed by a crowd at one point. Again, she’s wearing an outfit incredibly similar to what Diana wore in real life.

    • Footage of Diana in the crowd is shown on TV as the Queen and Princess Anne watch during a joint uniform fitting. Anne smartly notes, “There’s a problem that nobody expected,” pointing out that Diana’s intense popularity (drawing “bigger crowds than [the queen] got back in the 18th century or whenever”) was sure to upset Charles. “You and I both know how much Charles craves attention, reassurance and praise – it was supposed to be his debut. Instead, it’s Diana’s.” Anne also bitterly notes that people are commenting on “what a natural mother [Diana] is,” hearkening back to her words about being constantly compared to Diana back in S4E4 “Favourites.”

  •  Anne’s prediction is quickly shown coming true in the Australian scenes. Charles appears at a polo match and the crowd calls to ask where his wife is, saying “we only came to see princess Di.” Charles ends up falling from his horse, which can’t have made him happy, and people chant “We want Di! We want Di!” In contrast, Diana is off posing with some swimmers, and then greeting some sick children to uproarious acclaim.

  • The final straw for Charles seems to come when he speaks at a dinner; his comments about Diana are greeted with laughter as Diana blushes at the compliment prettily in the background. He takes this badly and interprets it as "her pulling faces.” During their fight, Diana points out “Thanks to me, people have shown up.” Charles shouts, “People are laughing in my face, booing the heir to the throne, booing the crown.”

    • During this whole scene, Diana wears a red dress with sparkly polka dots on it which combines two real life dresses. She’s also shown wearing the Spencer Tiara, her family tiara. As the blog The Court Jeweller has noted, the tiaras on The Crown unfortunately tend to be just enough larger than the real life things to look slightly absurd.

Top Left and Bottom Left: The Crown; Top Right and bottom right two: Charles and Diana

Top Left: Charles and Diana in The Crown; Top Right: Charles and Diana
Bottom Left: Diana in The Crown; Bottom Middle: Diana (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty). Bottom Right: Diana (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty).

Top: The Crown; Bottom: Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Hazel Hawke, Prince Charles, and Princess Diana

Top: The Crown; Bottom: Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Hazel Hawke, Prince Charles, and Princess Diana (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty).

  • In the next scene, the royal couple meets the Australian Prime Minister and his wife. The PM talks to Charles and tells him that if Diana hadn’t been with the prince, Australia might have shaken off the royals (which must have done GREAT things for Charles’s insecurity). Hawke notes, “That superstar may have just set back the cause of republicanism in Australia for the foreseeable future.” (remember though, this wasn’t a real concern either for Hawke or the royals at the time.

    • The PM also makes reference to “terra nullius” (Latin for nobody’s land), which is what George III called Australia when the British first arrived. This seems to refer to Charles and Diana’s efforts to strike out new territory in their marriage and ultimately failing. Their attempts to save their relationship are based on basic misunderstandings about each other’s characters, just as Britain’s takeover of Australia was based on (deliberate) misunderstandings about that land and the people there.

    • The costumes are pretty close to how they really were in real life, although the PM’s dress is different in shape. My one big quibble though is that in the show, Diana’s anxiety over the state of her marriage and Charles’s anger towards her popularity is obvious on her face; Diana was well known for putting on a good face when she was miserable, which is partially why it took so long for the public eye to realize that the marriage wasn’t a fairy tale.

  • After this, we get a montage of quick scenes of the couple touring in New Zealand just like the one we got earlier in the episode showing them around Australia. However, although the earlier montage was very happy and showed the couple’s increasing closeness, this montage only emphasizes how unhappy both of them are. We get some shots of Diana staring in the mirror with dark circles under her eyes and crying while lying in bed. The tour ends with the couple getting off the plane in England in the rain and getting into separate cars that are literally heading in separate directions; Diana goes to Kensington Palace while Charles goes to Highgrove.

  • Diana instantly calls the queen and asks to see her. This is a super quick scene, but while talking on the phone, Diana is shown wearing a white nightgown and a robe with ruffles all down the sides, which match the ruffled curtains behind her. Kensington Palace is clearly HER home that she designed and loves; she is the one that belongs here.

Upper left, The Crown. Every other photo: The real life Princess Diana.

Top Left: The Crown.
Top Right and Bottom Left: Princess Diana (Credit: Princess Diana Archive / Getty).
Bottom Middle: Princess Diana (Credit: Mirrorpix / Getty).
Bottom Right: Princess Diana (Credit: Kypros / Getty).

  • Diana arrives at Buckingham Palace in a green and red tartan dress with a big white collar that calls back to similar tartan outfits she wore at Balmoral in S4E2 The Balmoral Test and during princess lessons in S4E3 Fairytale. Since I’ve already pointed out similar real life tartan outfits in my blog posts on those episodes, I looked at real life Diana outfits with a similar neckline and similar coat this time instead; there are plentiful examples.
    The Queen watches at the window for her arrival, which both hearkens back to the way she saw Diana at Balmoral in S4E2 and also illustrates her anticipation of why her daughter-in-law is there. She walks in quickly and never takes off her big dark blue coat during the entire scene. In the story, this is clearly because she’s too upset to even consider it. Thematically, it seems like she wants to go somewhere else, away from her marriage; she already has her coat on and is ready to go. The coat actually covers up the tartan for most of the scene; in the screenshots I’ve found of it, the dress appears black.

    • Diana refers to the Queen as “Mama,” which clearly startles Elizabeth. Diana really did call the Queen “mama” in real life, as does Prince Edward’s wife Sophie, Countess of Wessex and Prince William’s wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (Source: Marie Claire). Note that when the Queen sits down, she’s backed by pictures of Charles’s investiture as Prince of wales from S3E6 Tywysog Cymru, which indicates her long-standing connection to her son vs. her shorter acquaintance with Diana, and also refers back to the first time we saw Charles really struggling with his role as prince of Wales in the series (we did see him struggling with his father’s expectations of him back in S2E9 Paterfamilias, but not quite in the same way).

    • Diana begins by saying that she’s come to the queen because she’s struggling. The Queen, sitting in front of a table full of positive coverage of Diana, asks why, as she’s just had a triumph in Australia; echoing her language about her own 1954 tour earlier in the episode (which then, illustrated her indifference toward her children). Diana responds by saying that she didn’t consider it a triumph if at the end of it, she and Charles are “wretchedly unhappy” behind closed doors and then goes on to say, “He resents me, resents the attention I get.” The Queen asks why he resents her and Diana says she doesn’t know, and that’s why she’s come to ask his mother.
      The Queen ends up taking offense at Diana’s words and asks if she’s saying that Elizabeth and Philip have been terrible parents (which Diana strenuously denies), hearkening back to the earlier conversations with Princess Margaret and Princess Anne. She then notes that she herself also struggles to understand Charles too, but that “us sitting here sticking knives in him isn’t helpful either.”
      Elizabeth also quietly notes that perhaps Diana is playing to the crowd a bit too much and overdoing it, saying “We do all know when we’ve played to the gallery excessively.” Diana agrees slightly, but also says that she’s doing the best she can, as she was thrown into the deep end of being a royal with no help or assistance (in real life, she was even less prepared than she was in The Crown. She was certainly never given any princess lessons like those shown in S4E3 Fairytale). Diana then emphasizes that all she wants to do is play for the team and be part of it, but feels resented by most of the family, and begs for the Queen to help her by showing her love, approval, and acceptance, saying that she believes the rest of the royals would follow suit.

    • In real life, the Queen and Diana were relatively close at the beginning of her marriage to Charles, as Diana came to call on her for advice several times. Eventually though, the Queen began to really dread Diana’s visits, as the princess would often cry during them. (Source: Reader’s Digest). I don’t know of any specific incidences regarding the Queen being startled by Diana hugging her though; I couldn’t find any references to it.

    • The Queen tries to dismiss Diana but her daughter in law ends up hugging her for a long, sickening moment, as the queen stands there in shock, unsure what to do. Diana tells her that love and acceptance is all she wants from her, all that ANYONE wants from her, and at that, the Queen promptly flees the room. People generally are summoned into and dismissed from the Queen’s presence, so this signifies how rattled the Queen actually is to just leave herself.

  • The episode is bookended by another luncheon scene with the Queen, Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, and Princess Anne, in which the others react with shock to the news of Diana hugging the Queen. Anne actually says “I feel sick.” Although people rarely hug the queen and it’s generally seen as a breach of protocol, the Queen doesn’t actually seem to mind it when it happens. After Michelle Obama rather famously hugged the Queen in 2009, the Guardian reported that at least four other people have been known to hug the queen: a community activist named Alice Frazier who met her on her U.S. tour in 1991, Prime minister of Australia Paul Keating in 1992, Prime Minister of Australia John Howard in 2000 (although he disputes this), and Canadian cyclist Louis Garneau in 2002. The queen did not object or seemingly mind the hugs on any of these occasions. There have also been numerous photos of the Queen being kissed on the cheek by various family members (including Princess Anne). Since the royal family is obviously more reserved in public than they are in private, it’s certainly likely that they would hug at their own private family gatherings.

    • There are also lots of photos and reports of the younger royals, Princess Diana, and even Prince Charles hugging fans.

    • It seems like the Queen really did think that Diana needed to just get on with it and deal with her unhappy marriage (source: readers digest). The Queen was from a different time in which it was pretty much expected that you’d ignore the problems under the surface and carried on (see, how the Queen approached most of her marital problems with Philip in Seasons 1 and 2 really quietly). Diana was clearly not made for that life and didn’t want to hide how miserable she was.

Left: Olivia Colman in the Crown Right: Diana on the tour of Australia

Left: Olivia Colman in the Crown
Right: Diana on the tour of Australia (Credit: David Levenson / Getty).

  • The fact that in this scene and in her scene with Diana, the queen is dressed in a very similar print to one Diana wore in real life does seem to indicate that she heard her and sympathized with her, but wasn’t sure how to help her or what to do. She appears to still be considering her experience with Michael Fagan from the previous episode, as she points out that the crown stays relevant by changing with the times, and perhaps Diana has a point.

  • The Queen Mother has a particularly heartless moment in which she calls Diana an immature child and notes that Diana, like Philip, will someday give up her struggles and bend, and when she bends, she will fit. When the Queen asks – “what if she doesn’t?” – Princess Margaret says, not unfeelingly, but prophetically, “then she will break.” This ties Diana and Philip together again, and points to Philip’s struggles with his role as the Queen’s consort seen throughout season 1 and 2.

  • Alas, the Queen Mother and Diana really didn’t seem to get along very well. The Queen Mother was extremely close to Charles and also seemed to be predisposed to dislike Diana, as her lady-in-waiting Lady Fermoy was Diana’s grandmother (who testified in court that Diana’s mother was unfit to care for her children) and generally didn’t get along with Diana (Source: GoodTo, quoting Andrew Morton’s biography).

  • The very last shot of the episode has Diana back at Kensington Palace, blending in with the ruffled curtains in her ruffled nightgown, sitting at the window just as she did in S4E1 Gold Stick, back when she was a young teenager full of hope and excitement about Prince Charles visiting her sister. She looks very young and very alone and lost, very much like the child the Queen Mother just called her. Keep in mind, at this point in the story, Diana is only 21.

Over-Analyzing The Crown: S4E5 Fagan

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queen and fagan.jpg

The Queen (Olivia Colman) wakes to find Michael Fagan (Tom Brooke) at her bedside, in The Crown.

[I really don’t want to make y’all wait any longer for this post, so I’ll add in more photos later this week!]

Since I had great fun over-analyzing every episode of Season 3 of The Crown last year, I’m doing the same thing this year! So if you haven’t watched Season 4 Episode 5 of the Crown yet and don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading now. :)

  • The episode starts off with news announcements about Michael Fagan breaking into Buckingham Palace, asking “Is anyone safe?” The Queen watches the TV quietly, in a brown and red paisley outfit. The print is rather confused looking, indicating the Queen’s personal inner turmoil over the entire situation. The announcements end with the thesis of basically the entire episode: “How did he get in, and what did they talk about?”

    • In real life, we have no idea what they talked about. The Queen has never spoken about it. Fagan has given numerous statements to the press over the years, but his stories have changed several times, so he’s not exactly a reliable witness.

  • After the credits, the story jumps back three months prior, where we see Michael Fagan waking up in his flat to Thatcher speaking on his radio (he tells her to f off). He walks about his dingy, water-damaged apartment and looks sadly at empty bunk beds and pictures of his kids and their drawings. He wraps himself in a yellow and white floral blanket and stares out the window.

    • The show made sure to actually shoot all scenes set at and around Fagan’s flat at an actual housing estate that still exists today. The director of the episode noted on The Crown podcast that they really didn’t need to change anything about the estate to match the early 1980s except remove the satellite antennas.

      • American note: Although estate sounds very grand to many of those outside of the UK, inside England, “housing estate” usually refers to high density, multiple-story tower block public housing. These estates are usually administered and run by a ruling council, as shown later in the episode.

    • Thatcher is really an ever-present figure throughout this episode. Her voice and stories about her policies show up in Fagan’s apartment several times on radio and TV, play in the background at the unemployment office, and her picture is proudly displayed in the MP’s office. This illustrates the effect of her harsh economic policies on Fagan’s entire life.

    • The events of this story have been foreshadowed for a few episodes now. Thatcher’s cabinet questioned her economic policies in Episode 2, The Balmoral Test, and The Queen noted the huge rise in unemployment in Episode 3, Favourites. The Falklands War also began in Episode 3, in which it was noted that Argentina entered the war partially to distract from their own interior economic problems. It’s clear that Thatcher is doing the same thing here, as the civil unrest the Queen discussed in episode 3 has now turned to overall patriotic fervor.

Left: Tom Brooke as Michael Fagan in The Crown. Right: Michael Fagan in real life.

Left: Tom Brooke as Michael Fagan in The Crown.
Right: Michael Fagan in real life (Credit: James Mullin / Shutterstock).

  • As he rides his bus past Buckingham Palace on the way to the job center, “Boys Don’t Cry” by The Cure plays in the background. This 1979 post-punk/new wave song likely came out when Fagan was still doing well, living with his wife and kids, and working regularly. The lyrics are very on point here, as the song talks about a man who has given up trying to regain his lost lover and hides how sad he really is. Similarly, Fagan’s wife has left him, but he makes no attempt throughout this episode to try to win her love back; his focus is, instead, seeing his children. The music in this episode is really important, as the songs are almost entirely modern rock/punk songs about male disillusionment and sadness. We haven’t heard songs like this in the show before, as we haven’t focused on a commoner male character before like this, who’s at such an incredibly low point in his life. I feel like the most similar situation we’ve seen to this before is when we saw Princess Margaret breaking down in S2E4 Beryl to “Angel Eyes” by Ella Fitzgerald, but even that is from a specifically female point of view.

    • Fagan wears essentially the same outfit the entire episode, a distinctive dingy green and red coat over various blue shirts, which looks VERY MUCH like a coat the real life Fagan wore. If you pay attention to this episode, you’ll see that the background in both the estate and Buckingham Palace shows a lot of red and green; the Queen wears a lot of red, green, and blue as well. This seems to illustrate both their similarities and their differences.

    • The job center is super crowded with long lines of people who look similarly tired and dispirited. He’s here to collect his jobseeker’s allowance, which is available in the UK to adults who are unemployed and actively seeking work. To get the benefit, the jobseeker must appear at the center in person every two weeks to certify that they are still actively seeking work. This is actually still the policy in the UK, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic, those receiving jobseeker’s allowance have been excused from sign on attendance since March 2020.

    • Fagan gives a lot of cheek to the woman at the job center about how she asks him the same thing every two weeks and how she should know who he is now, but tbh, I just feel sorry for her. She probably deals with hundreds of people a day and couldn’t possibly remember them all. It is a bit ironic that he jokes about how he worked with the Olympic Committee and the United Nations, as that is TOTALLY the type of people we would normally see on The Crown. This intense focus on the real world away from the royals and the top echelons of power is new to the show, except for a few episodes that focused on specific disasters affected the common people, like the smog in Season 1 and the Aberfan disaster in Season 3.

  • The rest of Fagan’s day is dedicated to working a “cash in hand” job painting a room, where he quips that the paint color “beige 28” is the color of his life. Conveniently, he’s wearing a beige shirt when he says this. Afterward, he goes to a pub, where he clearly is looking out for his wife. He tries to talk to her about their flat (we find out later that she’s the listed tenant on the flat, so he can’t get any money to fix up the flat without her involvement), but she brushes him off, saying tonight. She also brushes him off when he asks about the kids. This brush off frustrates him and he takes out his anger on her new boyfriend, calling him a Twat. His wife and her new boyfriend both throw the fact that the new guy works for a living and looks after his kids in Fagan’s face, which angers him even more. who taunts him by saying he’s the one who’s caring for Fagan’s children. This almost escalates into a fight, but bystanders manage to pull the men apart before they actually come to blows.

    • This sequence ends with the ska song “Monkey Man,” a cover by The Specials (originally by Toots Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals). A Monkey Man, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is “a weak or gullible man, especially one subservient to women generally.” This ties in with Fagan’s feelings of helplessness about his life, particularly when it comes to his family. The songwriter has said that the song was actually inspired by a girl he loved who left him for another man, which is…very on point for the situation.

  • The shots of Fagan’s housing estate, complete with bars at the windows, switch quickly to the metal Buckingham Palace gate - once again juxtaposing the upper class royal setting of the Palace with Fagan’s lower class, realistic life. The director of the episode said on the Crown podcast that he really wanted to make it clear when the episode was in “Faganland,” quipping that Faganland is also known as “real life.”

    • In the Queen’s regular audience with Thatcher, Thatcher’s in her power blue color and the Queen is in a lighter blue (once again matching Fagan’s usual colors- this will happen throughout the flashback in the episode). Thatcher brags a lot about the war in the Falklands.

    • In the next scene, the Queen and Philip are walking to an event together (past some bright yellow flowers that are reminiscent of Fagan’s sad yellow floral comforter), and Philip notes that they should “roll out the red carpet” for Margaret Thatcher, as she pushed ahead with the conflict in the Falklands even when no one else supported it, and it’s turned out to be a huge success. “She’s finally doing what we’ve been waiting years for someone to do …lead this country firmly and decisively after years of incompetence and mismanagement.” The Queen also complains that Thatcher brought up palace security again, which angers her, saying “Do you want our walls to be built even higher? Or the public to stand ten feet further back at engagements.” This foreshadows Fagan’s break-in to the palace while also establishing the theme of the Queen’s need to meet regular people.

    • The Queen says, “I take great pleasure in meeting members of the public and have learnt so much from them. You remember the lesson Lord Altrincham taught us.” They meet up with Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother at a Garden party, where they meet “regular people.” This hearkens back to S2E5 “Marionettes,” in which Lord Altrincham criticized the queen in his newspaper and advises her to become more transparent and inclusive of regular people. The Garden Parties replaced debutante presentation parties (which were only reserved for the very rich and noble) and are still held three times a year at Buckingham Palace and once a year at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Scotland (although they were cancelled this year due to COVID-19). You can see that the Queen IS really trying to reach out to her people, but as becomes apparent throughout the episode with the juxtaposition of her life with Fagan’s, she’s still incredibly out of touch with the lives of regular Britons. It’s also rather funny that they all put on gloves before shaking hands with the regular people, as if they don’t want to actually touch any commoners.

    • Princess Margaret cares far less about meeting regular people than the Queen and specifically checks with Martin Charteris that they don’t have to have actual conversation with anyone. Margaret’s dislike of the whole thing was also demonstrated in the earlier S2E5 episode, in which Margaret complained to Philip about meeting commoners. In that episode, we also saw that the Queen Mother didn’t particularly like the idea either, but she is silent here. Ironically, Margaret wears drab green and red, matching Michael Fagan’s outfit most closely, but I think the use of the colors is juxtaposed to show their differences here, not their commonality. The royal band is also wearing red uniforms and green hats, which again, matches

  • The lines of colorfully dressed, respectable, happy commoners at the garden party eager to meet the royals contrasts sharply with the drab despair of the unemployment line at the job center. Thatcher’s voice echoes over the radio in the background (in a distinctly dystopian way, although this of course, is just from a radio broadcast); she’s talking about her up-bringing “we were taught to work jolly hard. you were taught to improve yourself. you were taught self-reliance.” This is a pretty tone-deaf message when there are clearly no jobs to be had for so much of the country. As Fagan said in an earlier scene, everything in here feels pretty beige and dull and dreary. Fagan is again back here to collect his check, and quips sharply to the worker that he works as james bond, who (quite rightfully, in my opinion), calls him a twat. He asks who he can complain to, and she says he should go contact the MP, who can contact the parliamentary ombudsmen. This is ultimately the comment that sets his whole plot in motion. The worker then shuts the window in his face, which seems symbolic of a lot of the bureaucratic obstacles he’ll face in this episode.

    • We get another shot of Fagan in his sad, empty apartment, watching footage of a military parade on TV and listening to Thatcher speaking on the radio, defending her economic policies again by describing her actions as some sort of tough life.

  • Fagan’s next at his MP’s office; he’s waiting for him to arrive because frankly, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. He tries to talk to the MP “about the system,” calling it “unfair and a disgrace.” He calls Thatcher “devil woman” and complains that he doesn’t have any work to do because she’s spending money on the war instead of using it to build houses he could paint and decorate. The MP seems rather stand-offish from the beginning, insisting that he supports the war and not really listening to Fagan’s concerns. Fagan lays out his central frustration in a simple question: “Why would you spend over three billion pounds on a war against total strangers rather than looking after your own family?” This points to his views of the country as a family and as its responsibilities to its citizens.

    • Fagan calmly points out that the MP hasn’t actually noted his concerns, and hasn’t taken any notes the entire time, and ultimately forces him to write down /something/. Fagan says that having Thatcher’s picture in the office makes it feel like “we’re in turky or iraq,” which adds to the previous dystopian like feel of Thatcher’s voice over the unemployment line.

    • Finally, in frustration, after a few minutes of arguing about the workings of democracy, the MP tells Fagan that the Queen has a private audience with Thatcher every Tuesday and quips, “Why don’t you drop in at Buckingham Palace and tell her? “

  • And we’re back to the Trooping the Color, which we saw previously in S4E1 Gold Stick. This shows the passing of time, the Queen taking the salute from her troops (which we’ll circle back to later), and refers to various lucky members of the public getting to attend the event, again illustrating the royal family’s attempts to connect to the public and ultimate failure at doing so.

  • Then a sharp cut from the “regular people” at the trooping the color, sitting in rows watching the event, to people waiting in rows at the social services office. Again a cut from bright outside light and music to a drab, dreary office setting. Fagan’s in a terrible situation here, we find - as Social Services won’t let him see his children until he fixes up the water damage in the flat, he can’t get money or help to fix the flat from the Council or social services because he’s not listed as the primary tenant on the flat, and his wife, who IS the primary tenant of the flat, won’t talk to him about it (as we’ve already seen happen in the pub). So he’s completely prevented from seeing his children at all. The office worker tells him he needs to talk to the estate council, but as Fagan has already told him, the council pointed him to social services, so he’s left without anyone to help him.

  • On his way home on the bus, he passes by Buckingham Palace and abruptly gets off, looking up at the palace through the barred gates. He then manages to get in by jumping over the fence, climbing up a drain pipe, and crawling through an unlocked window. He sees a few guards but manages to avoid them pretty easily. He then basically just wanders around the palace, trying various door handles and even sitting on the throne at one point. He enters a room full of gifts (notably with a portrait of the queen there, staring at him) and downs half a bottle of wine pretty quickly, managing to knock over a vase in the process. He manages to get into the Queen’s bedroom, but it’s empty. Eventually, a maid sees him and rushes to the security office, sounding the alarm.

    • Fagan really did sit on the throne. He said in an interview with The Independent in 2012, “It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears; I tried one throne and was like 'this one's too soft'. I was having a laugh to myself because there was one right next to it, so I tried another.”

    • The creators of this episode said on The Crown podcast that it was kind of unbelievable how easy it was for Fagan to get into the Palace, and that if it HADN’T happened in real life, no one would believe it.

    • If you’ll note, the carpet throughout Buckingham Palace is red, calling back to Philip saying they should roll out the red carpet for Thatcher.

    • Fagan wasn’t the first intruder at Buckingham Palace. A young teenager named Boy Jones repeatedly broke into the palace to stalk Queen Victoria, stealing the queen’s underwear and food. He kept breaking in even after being imprisoned for three months, and eventually was deported to Australia.

  • The entire sequence where Martin Charteris reports on the break-in to the Queen and Philip is pretty funny. Philip laughs at the intruder’s drinking a bottle of wine valued at six pounds. Philip is also very proud of remembering the vase that was broken, describing it as “a ghastly little pink thing with little blue worms all over it” and “a strange-looking duck.” The Queen quickly corrects him by noting the exact symbolism of the vase, naming the rivers of guyana and the national bird present on it, which is pretty damn impressive considering how many gifts she must receive every year. Her private secretary looks at her with pride over her recall of these little details.

    • The Queen (in drab green again) asks Charteris to keep the matter away from the Home Office, as she still doesn’t want her security measures raised. Her concern is “Buckingham Palace is too like a prison as it is.”

  • Fagan manages to make his situation worse when, after watching his kids play on a playground with his wife’s boyfriend, he jumps over the playground wall and tries to speak to his wife. The wife and boyfriend quickly motion the kids away, which seems only to enrage Fagan. The fight that almost happened at the pub earlier in the episode now actually happens on the playground, resulting in the boyfriend putting Fagan in a chokehold. Fagan leaps back over the wall (similarly to how he got in and out of Buckingham Palace the first time) and runs away, as his wife yells “Are you proud of yourself? Leave us alone. We don’t need you in our lives.”
    The incident at the playground results in a meeting with social services, who says Christine will have permanent custody of the kids and Fagan can’t have any contact with his kids, for their best interest. He doesn’t say anything in response but just looks distraught.

    • What do they know about Fagan that we don’t? Do they perceive him as dangerous to the children? I really haven’t found much information on Fagan’s family life. All the sources seem to confirm that his wife Christine had left him, taking their four children with her, but I can’t find any explanation of why.

    • After the fight, “Twenty Four Hours” by Joy Division” plays in the background, specifically - the lyrics “A cloud hangs over me, marks every move Deep in the memory, of what once was love.” This very sad song, which was recorded just over a month before the band’s frontman Ian Curtis committed suicide, talks about everything in the singer’s life slipping away from him.

    • In real life, Fagan was much more of a piece of work than he’s portrayed as in the series. He complained about his portrayal in The Crown, saying that they made him appear ugly and uncharismatic, but I’m really not sure why, as they actually made him appear sympathetic. In reality, he actually visited Buckingham Palace 12 times in the summer of 1982 and told his mother that he was visiting his girlfriend “Elizabeth Regina,” indicating a far more intense obsession with the Queen than was shown in the episode. Fagan himself told the Independent in one article that he couldn’t find a bathroom and ended up peeing on the corgi food. After his first break in to the palace, he actually was arrested for stealing a car (he was apparently trying to drive to stonehenge in search of his wife. was his wife in stonehenge? i don’t know. maybe it made sense in his head). He also claimed that the entire decision to break into the palace was the result of a prolonged reaction to taking too many hallucinogenic mushrooms several months before.

  • After the devastating social services meeting, Fagan returns to TV reports showing that the UK has won the Falklands war. Notably, the news reports that the queen has returned to Buckingham Palace. He looks out from his balcony incredulously, as all around his estate, people are celebrating the victory in the Falklands, singing “Rule Britannia” and chanting “Maggie Maggie Maggie! Oi Oi Oi!”

  • Next we see the Queen going about her evening in a very prosaic series of scenes. She watches the news eats dinner alone while wearing green, then gets ready for bed, wearing a blue and white floral robe and matching nightgown. We notably see her praying at her bedside; her faith hasn’t been discussed much in Season 3 or 4, nor has it really been addressed much since Billy Graham’s appearance in S2E6 Vergangenheit, but little moments like this do remind us that she is a Christian and takes her religion quite seriously.
    Meanwhile, Fagan breaks into the palace again, somehow avoiding guards as they change shifts and breaking a window to get in.

    • In the show, a maid walks past carrying a vacuum and later is shown vacuuming the carpet. I’ve seen people complain on Facebook groups and such that this is inaccurate, as there are some reports online that housekeepers are not allowed to use a vacuum in Buckingham Palace. However, The Atlantic reported that Buckingham Palace had a vacuum cleaner as early as 1902, which seems to contradict that report. In addition, The Crown actually has their own royal protocol advisor, Major David Rankin-Hunt, who worked for the royal family for 33 years. He’s very active in the show and often corrects things on screen that aren’t accurate for the royal household, like folding in people’s pocket flaps and making sure their umbrellas are wrapped tightly enough and such. Since the vacuum cleaner is literally a plot point in the script (as it keeps the maid from hearing the Queen’s bell), I find it really hard to believe that Rankin-Hunt would overlook such a big thing if vacuums were really banned in the palace. It’s hard to know though.

    • The floral floor-length nightgown matches Fagan’s description of her outfit in real life: “Her nightie was one of those Liberty prints and it was down to her knees." This refers to a clothing brand called Liberty known for using floral prints.

  • As Fagan enters the queens’ bedroom, the queen sleeping says “morning bobo.” This refers to the Queen’s long-time dresser, Margaret “Bobo” Macdonald” who actually served her first as her nanny (which reminds me very much of Queen Elizabeth I’s relationship with her governess Kat Ashley, who rose to become her chief lady in waiting). We saw Bobo in the background a few times in Season 1 and 2, but the IMDB cast list for the show doesn’t show anyone playing that role in Season 3 or 4.

    • The darkened bedroom looks much more like the scenes we’ve seen of Fagan’s life this episode than the royal family scenes, which have all been in very bright rooms or outside in bright sunlight. Fagan actually seems to blend into the background as he moves about initially.

  • It’s been really confusing trying to sort out all the different stories about this that Fagan has given over the years, so I honestly just started to look at the police report to figure out what happened.

    • The police report from the time said that Fagan initially got into the palace by climbing over the railings and entering an unlocked window to a room which housed “the Royal Stamp Collection.” All the doors in that room were locked, so he quickly left it through the same window. He then climbed a drainpipe to get to the roof, took off his sandals and socks, and climbed across a narrow ledge to get through an unlocked window in an office of the master of the household which had just been opened for the day by a housemaid. He wandered around the palace for 15 minutes or so without being challenged by anyone. *In the show, the window was locked the second time and he had to break it to get in.

    • The police report notes that Fagan claimed to find his way to the queen’s apartments by “following the pictures.” In an anteroom of the bedroom, he smashed a glass ashtray and brought it with him, intending to slash his wrists in front of her. AGAIN, the show clearly makes him seem much more sympathetic than he was in real life. In the show, his bleeding hand is the result of his breaking the window to get in, rather than breaking an ashtray or slicing his own wrists.

    • In both real life and the show, Fagan opened the curtains upon entering the bedroom. In the show, he prevents her from calling for help, but in real life, she immediately pressed the night alarm bell (this is about 7:15 am). This unfortunately, occurred right after her police sergeant (who’s in the corridor at night) had just gone off duty; this is reflected in the show when Fagan says that there isn’t any officer outside of the room. There were a few servants on duty already. However, the footman who was outside walking the dogs and a maid was cleaning in another room with the door closed. Thus, no one actually noticed the night alarm bell at first. In the show, the maid doesn’t hear the bell due to the sound of the vacuum.

    • The Police report (which notably doesn’t say what Fagan is doing during this time) notes that the Queen next used her bedside telephone to ask the palace telephonist to send the police to her bedroom. The telephonist called the police lodge at 7:18 am. At 7:24, the Queen called again for help, as a police officer still hadn’t arrived. She eventually elicited the help of a maid, who helped her usher Fagan into a nearby pantry on the pretext of getting him a cigarette. At this point, the footman returned from walking the dogs and helped keep Fagan there by supplying him with cigarettes. The Queen “kept her dogs away as the man was getting agitated.” Eventually, a police officer arrived, and then another, and they took him away.

      • The show’s depiction of events diverges sharply from real life at this point. In the episode, the queen and fagan talk for a bit until she points out that he’s bleeding. As he goes to the powder room to clean up his cut, she rings the alarm bell, without any response. She tries to pick up the phone, but he comes back in the room before she can actually call anyone. They end up talking for several more minutes before a maid comes in with the tea and asks the queen if she’s alright (Major kudos, by the way, to the maid, who somehow doesn’t scream or drop the tea or anything). The queen responds calmly, “Yes, quite alright. But you might ask the policeman to come in."

      • The show DOES reference the whole cigarette trick by having Fagan ask the Queen for a cigarette.

      • I actually honestly wish they had followed the real life story a little bit closer, as I would have loved to see the queen trick Fagan into going to a pantry and protect her dogs from him. This show ALWAYS needs more corgis, In My Opinion.

    • The little scene between Fagan and the Queen in the bedroom is very well written and very sad. He says he wants to talk to her about what’s going on in the country, and that she hasn’t any reason to fear him. I’m not going to analyze the substance of their conversation too much, but it’s a really beautiful scene that ultimately brings out the queen’s compassion and sympathy for his plight. He begs her to “save us all” from Thatcher and says that she can actually do something. However, as we’ve seen emphasized throughout this show, the Queen really doesn’t have any power in political situations like this and can’t really do anything to help him besides talk to Thatcher, which ultimately does nothing.

      • Fagan comments that the palace is somehow “posher than you’d think but yet more run down,” as it has chipped paint, peeling wallpaper, and stains everywhere. He made a similar observation in an interview, stating, “It was very ordinary. I don't think they spent too much on decoration. Maybe it was due a redec?"

      • Within the scene, Fagan shows off his intelligence, noting that the palace is actually public property and that trespassing isn’t a crime if he doesn’t steal anything. At the time, trespassing was a civil offense, not a criminal one. He was not charged with trespassing, apparently to avoid having the queen come and testify against him.

      • There’s a very funny moment where Fagan says that Thatcher will put the Queen out of a job next; the queen dryly responds “Let me assure you; she is in an all too committed monarchist,” perhaps thinking of Thatcher’s obsequious curtsies to her.

      • The Queen tries to reassure Fagan by saying “Countries bounce back. People do. Because they have to. One of the most well crafted lines has Fagan saying, “First the work dried up, then my confidence dried up. Then the love in my wife’s eyes dried up, then you begin to wonder you know, where’s it gone, not just your confidence or your happiness…(trails off). They say I have mental health problems now. I don’t. I’m just poor.” As he continues, the Queen sits across from him naturally, a subtle reference to her regular audiences with the prime minister.

      • The Queen ultimately ends up connecting with him and slightly defending him from the officers. Their conversation ends this way:
        Queen: "Is there anything else you'd like to say to me?"
        Fagan: "No. Thank you.”
        Queen: "I do hope they don't make things too difficult for you, in light of all this."
        Fagan: “Thank you."
        Queen: "Well, goodbye." (Fagan stands and reaches out his hand to shake hers)
        Officers, barreling through the door to come help: "Don't touch her!"
        Queen: (to officers) “It's alright.” (she shakes Fagan’s hand) “I will bear in mind what you've said."

      • The handshake with Fagan, with bare hands and no pretense, thematically ties back to the earlier handshakes at the garden party, when everyone was wearing gloves and on their best behavior.

      • Olivia Colman does a great job of looking absolutely petrified of him initially, but in usual queenly fashion, quickly regains her composure as she speaks to him calmly. Her fear is only again evident at the very end of the scene, when after Fagan is taken away by the police and she’s finally alone again, she falls back into her chair, gasping and eyes tearing up, looking completely drained.

  • Then we’re back to where the episode started, with the news reports about Fagan’s break in. Margaret Thatcher watches the news with several stone-faced advisors, looking very distressed.

    • The episode makes it look like the final days of the Falklands War happened right when Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace, but that’s not quite true. Fagan’s first break into the palace was in early June 1982 and his final entry was on July 9. The British managed to retake all the islands on June 20, a few weeks earlier.

    • I’m really not talking about the war too much because I honestly don’t know much about it and I don’t want to be run out of Argentina in the future if I get something wrong. However, I do want to note that although Thatcher said in her first audience in this episode that there were no British casualties in whatever specific operation she was talking about, there were actually casualties on both sides of the war. Casualties included 255 British service members, 3 female British civilians of the Falkland Islands, 633 Argentinian service members, and 16 Argentinian civilians. The servicemen on both sides came from several branches of the military, including the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force.

  • The Queen does try to speak to Thatcher about Fagan, noting that he is a victim of unemployment and economic problems, which are not his fault, but ultimately is unsuccessful. Thatcher describes the high unemployment as “a necessary side effect of the medicine we are administering to the British economy” and dismisses the Queen’s questions of moral economy by saying, “If we are to turn this country around, we really must abandon outdated and misguided notions of collective duty.” *NOTE: I am only talking about the portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in this show; I have not done in depth research into her real life views on people. I do plan to read her biography in the future and go back and supplement these posts then, but unless I actually say “in real life” or something equivalent, I am always talking about the characters in the show and not the real people.

    • This line demonstrates that in her own way, Thatcher does care about the “common man” as much as the Queen, just in a very different way. When the queen notes, “Perhaps not everyone is as remarkable as your father,” Thatcher stoutly responds, "Oh you see, that is where you and I differ. I say, they have it within them to be." When the Queen brings up Fagan, Thatcher notes that he’s another matter, as he’s been diagnosed with mental illness and schizophrenia. She then quickly excuses herself, as she needs to go to the victory parade (which the Queen was notably not invited to).

    • This scene is set up to emphasize the distance between the Queen and Thatcher in these audiences, which is the same it’s always been, but looks further apart then ever, when compared to how close the Queen sat to Fagan during their conversation.

  • Later on, while watching the victory parade on the television with her husband (both of them dressed in similar shades of brown and grey), Elizabeth comments on Thatcher taking the salute from the troops instead of the sovereign. This did happen in real life and raised some eyebrows at the time. In 1945, after World War II, King George IV took the salute from the troops rather than Winston Churchill.

    • As the royal couple talks comfortably, Philip refers to Fagan as a lunatic and a fool. The Queen counters, “but in the best sense, like Lear’s fool.” Philip responds grumpily “Don’t get all Shakespearean with me.” This is a reference to a character in King Lear, which has a couple of interesting layers to it. In the time of Shakespeare, leaders often had fools, or court jesters, to amuse them. They played an important role though, as they are able to speak truth to power and confront their leaders in ways that no one else can. In addition, fools in that time often had mental illnesses, and were considered blessed by God. Within King Lear specifically, the fool serves as the king’s advocate but also his conscience, critiquing Lear’s faults. All of this is a very apt description of Michael Fagan, who has a mental illness and simultaneously served as the Queen’s advocate and critic.

    • We have one of the first really emotional moments this season from Philip when his face breaks apart a little and he says, “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there to protect you. I feel terrible.” The Queen reassures him in a very loving way, saying “but you're by my side all the time and do much more than keep me safe. but thank you.” They then exchange another quietly funny moment, as she observes, “I suspect Mr. Fagan is rather glad he didn't come through that window and land on your bed.” Philip laughs quietly and responds, “Yes, that would have been a rather different conversation.”

  • The show ends with a final look at Margaret Thatcher on the TV screen, waving happily to the crowd at her victory parade. The Queen looks at her with clear concern.

    • The credits run to the 1980 ska song “Whine and Grine/Stand Down Margaret” by The English Beat, which is specifically about the band wanting Margaret Thatcher to resign. At the time it came out, Uncut magazine described the song as “polite insurrection set to uptempo reggae and African hi-life guitar,” which is flipping amazing.

  • As the explanation in the credits says, Michael Fagan was committed after his arrest. He only spent three months in the psychiatric hospital. The second photo in the credits shows Michael Fagan saluting alongside four men; they don’t explain this in the show, but this actually shows Fagan with The Bollock Brothers. Fagan recorded a cover of The Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen’ with this punk band in 1983.

    • Over the years, Fagan has continued to distinguish himself with various petty crimes. He was notably imprisoned for four years in the late 90s after he, his wife, and their (now-adult) son were charged with conspiring to supply heroin. He lives in London now,