I spent several remarkable weeks binging on the excellent Netflix Drama “The Crown” earlier this year. I would hardly claim to be a Royalist, but I have always respected our monarchy and admired our Queen. Perhaps my motivation at the time was the platinum jubilee, when, not for the first time in my life, I found myself standing observing history being made in my lifetime. If you have never watched this drama, it is a good investment of time, in my opinion and I can recommend it to you. Peter Morgan, the writer gets under the skins of people we believe that we have come to know, and we share their joys, their sorrows, and the demands that living under the shadow of the crown and with the eyes of the world on their every word and move means. We experience the tensions, normally confined to family life, but being played out on the worlds stage. Filming of season five stopped abruptly on Thursday with the announcement of the death of her majesty and the press release explained that the drama would end with the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The writers now have the task of writing scenes that we are experiencing as a world today.
We move into a new era and once again have just lived through a week that will be written about and dramatized for generations to come. Never has there been a change in the monarchy and a change of Prime Minister in the same year, let alone in the same week. There are generations, like me, who have only known life living under the rule of the queen. Later today I am taking part in a Civic Ceremony in the centre of Ipswich where we as a county will herald in the new king, I will stand with my faith colleagues, and Civic dignitaries with anticipated audience of around 70,000 people, and following the reading of the proclamation of the monarchy of King Charles III we will all proclaim “God save the king” and for the very first time in my life I will sing the national anthem with the words “God save our gracious king!” I anticipate that being a strange experience. King Charles III takes up the monarchy after an apprenticeship of seventy years, and never has there been a monarch so experienced to rule the nation. He has enormous shoes to fill and has an unenviable task ahead of him, but we wish him well.
The first four seasons of the Drama “The Crown” charts the story of “Our Queen” from her marriage to Phillip Mountbatten on Thursday 20th November 1947 in Westminster Abbey, right through to the mid nineties with the end of the Thatcher government and the breakdown of the marriage between Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales. It is only when you watch the life of this remarkable woman who was thrust into the limelight as the eldest daughter of the Duke of York in April 1926 while the nation was under the rule of King George V, her grandfather. She was third in succession to the throne and following the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936, her father King George VI became king, and she became the Heir Presumptive. The drama The Crown does a good job of depicting the emotions of grief, anguish and professionalism as Claire Foy does an incredible job of portraying the day in the life of Elizabeth as she was suddenly elevated from being princess to queen while on a tour in Kenya and in a matter of hours, she mourned the death of her father and assumed the crown, becoming our monarch for seventy amazing years.
We salute the passing of maybe the most remarkable woman of our time, a woman of faith who has led the nation with honesty, dignity, passion, and humour and like his mother just over seventy years ago, King Charles III mourns the passing of his dear “mama” just seventeen months after the death of his “papa” and at a time of mourning, he takes on the weight of the monarchy at one of the most challenging times in history.
Sunday 11th September 2022 will go down in history as the day we say goodbye to our much-loved queen and say, “God save the king!”