Queen Elizabeth II: Margaret does suffer more than anyone else by not having a more meaningful role. Suffers in health and happiness. She's overlooked. And in terms of ability and character and intelligence and flair, she does not deserve to be overlooked. So, why shouldn't we consider expanding the role, sharing the job a bit more?
Prince Philip: There are two answers to that question. Neither makes for pretty listening. Yes, the system is unequal and unjust and cruel. Primogeniture divides and destroys families. The system stinks. But in its cruelty and injustice, it reflects something else, which is harsh and brutal, which no one is suggesting we rearrange. Life. We all desire equality, but here's the thing. We were not born equal.
Queen Elizabeth II: And what's the second?
Prince Philip: Do you remember I told you once I got drunk with that god-awful monster Tommy Lascelles? Well, that night he shared with me his theory about the House of Windsor. I've never repeated it to anyone since.
Queen Elizabeth II: Go on.
Prince Philip: He asked me to imagine a mythological creature. A Reichsadler. A polycephalus, a two-headed eagle. For the purposes of this conversation, I want you to think of it as representing us. This family. Your family. There have always been the dazzling Windsors and the dull ones. Your father...
Queen Elizabeth II: A saint.
Prince Philip: But dull. Sorry. Your grandfather, too.
Queen Elizabeth II: George V?
Prince Philip: Deadly dull. At the height of the Great War, when the, the Tsar and the Kaiser and the Emperor of Austria were dazzling the world, where was he? He was sticking stamps in his album. His wife...
Queen Elizabeth II: Queen Mary, wonderful.
Prince Philip: Ditchwater. And so it goes, through George V to Queen Victoria and back. An uninterrupted line of stolid, turgid dreariness.
Queen Elizabeth II: Culminating in me?
Prince Philip: Well, yes, but alongside that dull, dutiful, reliable, heroic strain runs another. The dazzling, the brilliant, the individualistic, and the dangerous. And so, for every Victoria, you get an Edward VII. For every George V, you get a Prince Eddy. For every George VI, you get an Edward VIII. For every Lilibet, you get a Margaret. And she may have had a success in Washington, but let's not delude ourselves that serious diplomacy can be achieved through drinking and dancing. Let Margaret have the glory, but let's not rewrite the constitutional rulebook because she got lucky once.
Queen Elizabeth II: And where does that leave my relationship with her?
Prince Philip: Unchanged. You're the Queen. And she's your dangerous baby sister.
Tommy Lascelles: [flashback, after a young Margaret suggests taking Elizabeth's place as heir] What you are suggesting is unthinkable. The order of succession to the throne is determined by the Act of Settlement of 1701, not the wild and irresponsible whims of young princesses. The principle of undisturbed hereditary descent is a pillar of stability and perpetuity for the nation. Princess Elizabeth's destiny is to accede to the throne. Yours is to serve and support. I would urge you to accept your position in life ... and to dismiss forthwith any childish notions about rewriting the rule books that it might better suit your character. We all have a role to play. Princess Elizabeth's will be center-stage, and yours, ma'am, will be from the wings.
Queen Elizabeth II: Churchill would have had the character to do it face to face. Come to think of it, so would Anthony Eden. And Harold Macmillan. Each of them would have had the courage to express their anger to me directly. None of them would ever have resorted to going behind my back like that. I have it on authority you tipped off journalists that I was letting the side down by not going to Aberfan.
Harold Wilson: Never.
Queen Elizabeth II: It wasn't you?
Harold Wilson: No, ma'am. But perhaps one or two of my colleagues, concerned at the anger being directed at the government...
Queen Elizabeth II: Broke ranks? Took matters into their own hands?
Harold Wilson: It's possible.
Queen Elizabeth II: Perhaps they're right. The people of Aberfan deserved a prompt response. They didn't get one. They deserved a display of compassion, of empathy from their Queen.
Harold Wilson: And they got it yesterday.
Queen Elizabeth II: They got nothing. I dabbed a bone-dry eye, and by some miracle, no one noticed. After the Blitz, when we visited hospitals, I saw what my parents, the King and Queen, saw. They wept. I couldn't.
Harold Wilson: Well, you, you were a child. What do you expect?
Queen Elizabeth II: Not just as a child. When my grandmother, Queen Mary, whom I loved very much, when she died, nothing.
Harold Wilson: Well, she had been ill a long time. It had been expected.
Queen Elizabeth II: When I had my first child, a moment of such significance for every mother ... I have known for some time there is something wrong with me.
Harold Wilson: Not wrong.
Queen Elizabeth II: Deficient, then. How else would you describe it when something is missing?
Harold Wilson: These meetings are confidential, yes? I have never done a day's manual work in my life. Not one. I am an academic, a privileged Oxford don, not a worker. I don't like beer. I prefer brandy. I prefer wild salmon to tinned salmon. Chateaubriand to steak and kidney pie. And I don't like pipe smoking. I far prefer cigars. But cigars are a symbol of capitalist privilege. So, I smoke a pipe, on the campaign trail and on television. Makes me more approachable. Likable. We can't be everything to everyone and still be true to ourselves. We do what we have to do as leaders. That's our job. Our job is to calm more crises than we create. That's our job, and you do it very well indeed. And in a way, your absence of emotion is a blessing. No one needs hysteria from a head of state. And the truth is, we barely need humanity.
Michael Adeane: [after hearing Philip calling for "sweetie" on the tannoy and assuming he wants to speak to Elizabeth] His Royal Highness the Duke of...
Queen Elizabeth II: Not me, I'm afraid. I'm "darling" or "cabbage." "Sweetie" is someone else.
Prince Philip: I owe you an apology.
Princess Alice: Whatever for?
Prince Philip: My faithlessness. All this time, I've been trying to keep you out of sight of the cameras, when, quite clearly, you should have been centre stage.
Princess Alice: If anyone owes anyone an apology, we both know it's the other way round. At least your sisters had something of their mother. When we were forced to leave Greece, I couldn't cope. I needed care. I needed help.
Prince Philip: But that, that wasn't help that they gave you. It was torture.
Princess Alice: They tried their best.
Prince Philip: No. The treatment they gave you was barbaric. And your courage in rising above it was remarkable.
Princess Alice: I didn't do it alone. I couldn't have. I had help every step of the way. Now, Bubbikins, you mentioned faithlessness. How is your faith?
Prince Philip: Dormant.
Princess Alice: What?
Prince Philip: Dormant.
Princess Alice: That's not good. Let this be a mother's gift to her child. The one piece of advice. Find yourself a faith. It helps. No, not just helps. It's everything.
Queen Elizabeth II: If I tell you something, do you promise it will stay between us?
Lord Porchester: Of course.
Queen Elizabeth II: This is how I'd like to spend all my time. Owning horses, breeding horses, racing horses. It's what makes me truly happy. And I actually think it's what I was born to do. Until the other thing came along that someone else was born to do, that they elected not to do. Which meant that first my father, and then I, had to do a job we were never meant to do.
Lord Porchester: Well, you've managed to make it look like the other thing is the only thing you were ever meant to do.
Queen Elizabeth II: You're kind. But it isn't. And on days like today, in places like this, in company like this, you get a glimpse of what it all might have been like. The unlived life and how much happier it might have made me.
Louis Mountbatten: Gentlemen. In the past decade alone, I have, by my reckoning, been in seventy-three coups in forty-six different countries around the world. And the success of some of these might encourage us. In Ghana, two years ago, President Nkrumah was ousted with just 500 men. And in 1961, South Korea, Major General Park Chung Hee seized power with 3500 men. And in 1964, Gabon, just 150 men were able to arrest President M'Ba, and thus gain control over the levers of state power. And, of course, it was with just one Legion that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Perhaps we would not seek to follow his fate. Sic Semper Tyrannis, gentlemen. Now, what all successful insurgencies have in common are five key elements: control of the media, control of the economy and the capture of administrative targets, for which you'd need the fourth element, the loyalty of the military. Now, in Ghana and Gabon, this could be achieved with a handful of battalions, but here, in the United Kingdom? We would need to secure Parliament, Whitehall, Ministry of Defense and the Cabinet Office. Prime Minister would be arrested, of course, along with other politicians still loyal. Then we'd have to shut down the airports, air traffic control. Same with the train stations. Curfews would be put in place, Martial Law declared. And I haven't even mentioned the police. It would take tens of thousands of unquestioningly loyal servicemen, and even in my heyday, I could never command that. Which brings me to the fifth element: Legitimacy. Now, our government draws its strength from long-established institutions that support it. The courts, body of common law, the Constitution. For any action against the State to succeed, you'd have to overthrow these as well. But in a highly evolved democracy such as ours, their authority is sacrosanct. Which is why, gentlemen, a coup d'etat in the United Kingdom doesn't stand a chance.
Louis Mountbatten: I'm getting a feeling that I've not had since Dieppe, that I'm walking into a trap.
Queen Elizabeth II: I'd like to think you had that sinking feeling on another occasion recently, when going to see your friends at the Bank of England. Is it even true?
Louis Mountbatten: Yes, I did go to lunch at the Bank of England to meet and listen to people who are horrified by what's happening to the country. A horror I hope you share.
Queen Elizabeth II: Perhaps. But conspiring with them is not the solution.
Louis Mountbatten: It is the beginning of a solution. Why are you doing this? Why would you protect a man like Wilson?
Queen Elizabeth II: I am protecting the Prime Minister. I am protecting the constitution. I am protecting democracy.
Louis Mountbatten: But if the man at the heart of that democracy threatens to destroy it, are we supposed to just stand by and do nothing?
Queen Elizabeth II: Yes. Doing nothing is exactly what we do, and bide our time, and wait for the people that voted him in to vote him out again, if indeed that is what they decide to do.
Princess Alice: One of the few joys of being as old as we both are is that it's not our problem. It's not really our country, either.
Louis Mountbatten: What are you talking about? Of course it's our country.
Princess Alice: We Battenbergs have no country. Our family might have kings and queens in its ranks, but we're mongrels, too. Part-German, part-Greek, part-nowhere at all.
Louis Mountbatten: Well, this is my country. It gave me a home, it gave me a name, and in return, I've given it my life. And to see it like this breaks my heart.
Queen Elizabeth II: I've had the opportunity now to read the translation of what you actually said, and the inferences you made. The similarity between Wales's suffering and yours was clear.
Prince Charles: Was it?
Queen Elizabeth II: Unmistakable.
Prince Charles: Only to you.
Queen Elizabeth II: To all Wales, apparently. [walks over to her bed and picks up the translated copy of Charles' speech] "If this union is to endure, then we must learn to respect each other's differences. Nobody likes to be ignored, to not be seen or heard or listened to."
Prince Charles: Well, am I wrong? Isn't there a similarity between my predicament and the Welsh? Am I listened to in this family? Am I seen for who and what I am? No. Do I have a voice?
Queen Elizabeth II: Rather too much of a voice for my liking. Not having a voice is something all of us have to live with. We have all made sacrifices and suppressed who we are. Some portion of our natural selves is always lost.
Prince Charles: That is a choice.
Queen Elizabeth II: It is not a choice. It is a duty. I was a similar age to you when your great-grandmother, Queen Mary, told me that to do nothing, to say nothing, is the hardest job of all. It requires every ounce of energy that we have. To be impartial is not natural, it's not human. People will always want us to smile or agree, or frown or speak, and the minute that we do, we will have declared a position, a point of view, and that is the one thing, as the royal family, we are not entitled to do. Which is why we have to hide those feelings, keep them to ourselves. Because the less we do, the less we say or speak or agree or...
Prince Charles: Think. Or breathe. Or feel or exist.
Queen Elizabeth II: The better.
Prince Charles: But doing that is perhaps not as easy for me as it is for you.
Queen Elizabeth II: Why?
Prince Charles: Because I have a beating heart. A character. A mind and a will of my own. I am not just a symbol. I can lead not just by wearing a uniform, or by cutting a ribbon, but by showing people who I am. Mummy, I have a voice.
Queen Elizabeth II: Let me let you into a secret. No one wants to hear it.
Prince Charles: Are you talking about the country or my own family?
Queen Elizabeth II: No one.
Prince Philip: My mother died recently. She, she saw that something was amiss. It's a good word, that. A-Amiss. She saw that something was missing in her youngest child. Her only son. Faith. "How's your faith?" she asked me. I'm here to admit to you that I've lost it. And without it, what is there? The, the loneliness and emptiness and anticlimax of going all that way to the moon to find nothing but haunting desolation. Ghostly silence. Gloom. That is what faithlessness is. As opposed to finding wonder, ecstasy, the miracle of divine creation, God's design and purpose. What am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that the solution to our problems, I think, is not in the, in the ingenuity of the rocket, or the science or the technology or even the bravery. No, the answer is in here. Or here, or wherever it is that, that faith resides. And so, Dean Woods, having ridiculed you for what you and these poor, blocked, lost souls were, were trying to achieve here in St. George's House, I now find myself full of respect and admiration and not a small part of desperation as I come to say, Help. Help me. And to admit that while those three astronauts deserve all our praise and respect for their undoubted heroism, I was more scared coming here to see you today than I would have been going up in any bloody rocket!
Prince Charles: Dear Uncle David, I want to thank you again, and Wallis, for having me at your home in the Bois de Boulogne. It's a rare thing that fate should allow a former king and a king-in-waiting to meet. To tell the truth, it opened my eyes to a few things. To the nature of kingship, the nature of love and all the difficulties that go with both. I'm sure you know the family would have preferred me not to visit you. Afraid, perhaps, I might recognize myself in you, sympathize with you. Well, let me confess that I do recognize myself in you. Your progressiveness and flair. Your individuality and imagination. What a king you would have made in a kinder world. What a king we were denied. It makes me so sad to see you living in exile, when all you did was take a stand for principle, and love one woman completely. You were cruelly denied your right to reign alongside the woman that you wanted by your side. But I give you my word. I will not be denied what you have been denied. The Crown is not a static thing resting forever on one head. It is moving. Alive. Divine. The changing face of changing times, and if, God willing, it has been ordained that I should wear it, then I shall do so on my own terms and hopefully make you proud.
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor: I'm sorry not to see your girlfriend.
Prince Charles: Well, she's picking me up after this. We're spending the evening together before I return to Dartmouth. But don't tell anyone. It's a secret. She's not official, yet.
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor: Is she the one?
Prince Charles: Yes. I think so.
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor: Then if I may offer two pieces of advice. Never turn your back on true love. Despite all the sacrifices and all the pain, David and I never once regretted it.
Prince Charles: Thank you. And the second?
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor: Watch out for your family.
Prince Charles: They mean well.
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor: No, they don't.
Queen Elizabeth II: It's age. Happens to us all.
Harold Wilson: Uh, no, ma'am. It's not just age. No. It's been diagnosed. It has a name. Alzheimer's. I first noticed symptoms two years ago. I always speak without notes. I've something of a photographic memory. But then one day, I dried. And in the months that followed, I noticed more forgetfulness. Agitation. Delusion. Paranoia.
Queen Elizabeth II: I shouldn't worry too much. Several of your predecessors had far more serious afflictions, and they continued to govern without the public being any the wiser.
Harold Wilson: Uh, no, ma'am, it's a ... It's a mental health issue now. I shall put myself in the hands of the doctors.
Queen Elizabeth II: Oh, Prime Minister, I am sorry. This will come as a terrible shock.
Harold Wilson: Well, maybe, but, uh, no shock lasts longer than forty-eight hours. There's too much appetite for the next shock.
Queen Elizabeth II: I'll miss our sessions terribly. I don't mind admitting I let out an unconstitutional cheer when you beat Mr. Heath this time.
Harold Wilson: I always said deep down, you're a leftie at heart.
Queen Elizabeth II: Nothing to do with the politics. You're just a better companion. Although, I wouldn't have said that the first time we met.
Harold Wilson: No! You thought I was going to rough you lot up. And look what a sentimental old royalist I turned out to be. [rises to his feet and bows] Your Majesty.
Queen Elizabeth II: Prime Minister? If you saw fit to invite your Queen to supper at Downing Street before you left, she would be honored.
Harold Wilson: But that's an honor previously only given to Churchill.
Queen Elizabeth II: The Duke of Edinburgh and I would like that very much.
Harold Wilson: So would Mrs. Wilson and I.
Queen Elizabeth II: Ask yourself, in the time I've been on the throne, what have I actually achieved?
Princess Margaret: You've been calm and stable and...
Queen Elizabeth II: Useless and unhelpful. This country was still great when I came to the throne, and now look. So much for the Second Elizabethan Age, which Winston talked about. All that's happened on my watch is the place has fallen apart.
Princess Margaret: It's only fallen apart if we say it has. That's the thing about the monarchy. We paper over the cracks. And if what we do is loud and grand and confident enough, no one will notice that all around us it's fallen apart. That's the point of us. Not us. Of you. You cannot flinch. Because if you show a single crack, we'll see it isn't a crack, but a chasm, and we'll all fall in. So you must hold it all together.
Queen Elizabeth II: Must I do that alone?
Princess Margaret: There is only one queen.
