The Crown quotes

Margaret Thatcher: I am sick and tired of those who would seek to rationalize and make excuses for the atrocities committed by the IRA. There's no such thing as political murder or political bombing or political violence. There's only criminal murder, criminal bombing, and criminal violence. And I give you my word, I will wage a war against the Irish Republican Army with relentless determination and without mercy until that war is won.

Princess Diana: Royal Highness, I just wanted to offer my condolences. It must have been completely devastating for you. And your reading at the Abbey, how you held it all together under the circs, I don't know how you did that. It was utterly brilliant.

Prince Charles: Thank you. I'm sorry. We haven't met.

Princess Diana: We have. I was in costume at the time. Sarah Spencer's younger sister.

Prince Charles: Oh, the mad tree.

Princess Diana: Diana.

Prince Charles: Yes.

Princess Diana: Sarah told me how close you were to Lord Mountbatten, that he was like a father to you.

Prince Charles: Yes.

Princess Diana: It must all be unimaginably awful.

Prince Charles: Thank you. It has been.

Queen Elizabeth II: While stalking, the trick really is to disappear into nature. To preserve the element of surprise. So next time you might not wear bright blue. It means the stag can see you. Or wear scent. It means he can smell you. [Thatcher stumbles and loudly gasps] Now he can hear you, too.

Queen Elizabeth II: Always a mistake to assume just because people are privileged, they lack grit. And a dangerous game, I think, to make enemies left, right, and center.

Margaret Thatcher: Not if one is comfortable with having enemies.

Queen Elizabeth II: [talking to Charles on the eve of his wedding] When your great-grandmother, Queen Mary, was a beautiful young princess, she was about to marry her Prince Charming. But before they got to the church, he fell ill and died. But everyone had been so impressed with her, that they put her together with his younger brother. Only one problem. The younger brother was Prince Charmless. Dull and shy. There was no attraction, certainly no love. But in order to make the marriage work, they were encouraged to focus on the bigger idea. Duty. They worked and worked and worked. And out of that work, a tiny seed grew. A seed of respect and admiration, a seed that grew into a flower they could eventually call love. They were married for forty-two years. They stabilized a country that was at war with itself, and they left the Crown stronger, while all around them, the great monarchies of Europe fell. Now I cannot claim to be the most intuitive mother, but I do think I know when one of my children is unhappy. Whatever wretchedness you are feeling now, whatever doubts you harbor ... If you could follow the example of your great-grandmother, love and happiness will surely follow.

Archbishop of Canterbury: Here is the stuff of which fairy tales are made. The prince and princess on their wedding day. But fairy tales usually end at this point with the simple phrase, "They lived happily ever after." This may be because fairy tales regard marriage as an anticlimax after the romance of courtship. As husband and wife live out their vows, loving and cherishing one another, sharing life's splendors and miseries, achievements and setbacks, they will be transformed in the process. Our faith sees the wedding day not as the place of arrival, but the place where the adventure really begins.

Margaret Thatcher: The very idea that the first time a prime minister should break down in this room and it be a woman.

Queen Elizabeth II: It is by no means the first time a prime minister has broken down in here. Over the years, this room has been part-office, part-drawing room, part-confessional, and part-psychologist's couch. We even have paper hankies. [gestures to the box on the table next to Thatcher] Or a brandy?

Margaret Thatcher: Whiskey, if you have one.

Queen Elizabeth II: Isn't this heaven?

Princess Anne: If you say so.

Queen Elizabeth II: I do. Tucked away in the country, rain and mud and horses and dogs, children, privacy. I do envy you.

Princess Anne: Well, it's not quite the Eden you imagine. For a start, there isn't privacy. They are there, wherever I go.

Queen Elizabeth II: Who?

Princess Anne: Journalists. Photographers who've just got it in for me. Bastards.

Queen Elizabeth II: Well, if you will keep calling them that...

Princess Anne: I told them to naff off. Once. And can you blame me? They're so mean to me all the time. I'm pretty low-key, as you know. I don't want praise or attention or thanks. But I'm only human. Sometimes even a pit pony needs a pat on the head.

Queen Elizabeth II: I know the feeling.

Princess Anne: It's not easy working in the heat and squalor of a Third World country doing real work for real charities. But do I get as much as a mention in any newspaper? Or a thank you? Do I heck. And yet all she has to do is put on a frock, and she's all over all the front pages, and everyone's falling over in shock at how wonderful she is.

Queen Elizabeth II: Who?

Princess Anne: Her.

Queen Elizabeth II: Diana.

Princess Anne: The only other young female in the family, yes, against whom I am now always compared. Lovely her, dumpy me. Smiling her, grumpy me. Charming her, awful me. And the constant questions about my marriage all the time, about Mark.

Queen Elizabeth II: Yes, how is Mark?

Princess Anne: That's it, exactly like that. "How is Mark?" Mark's fine! I'm fine. The children are fine.

Queen Elizabeth II: Well, I'm happy to hear that. Only there has been talk.

Princess Anne: I thought you didn't listen to talk.

Queen Elizabeth II: And a meeting recently with Commander Trestrail.

Princess Anne: Who?

Queen Elizabeth II: The head of the Royal Protection Branch. He felt compelled to mention rumors about a Sergeant Cross, and the two of you being intimate. And in light of these rumors, Scotland Yard has recommended his transfer back to desk duties in Croydon.

Princess Anne: Don't, don't do that to me. You ca ... You can't. He is the one thing that makes me happy.

Queen Elizabeth II: You have so much to make you happy.

Princess Anne: Then how come none of it does?

Queen Elizabeth II: It will again if you're patient.

Princess Anne: Is that it? Is that the advice? "Stick it out, grin and bear it. Persevere"?

Queen Elizabeth II: Well, these things usually pass if you have the patience to wait.

Princess Anne: I used to enjoy my reputation as the difficult one. I used to relish scaring people a bit because I could control it. But recently, I'm the one who's scared. Because it's starting to feel more like it controls me, and it's changed. It's not just feeling angry, but a kind of recklessness where I just want to smash it all up.

Queen Elizabeth II: But that will pass too.

Princess Anne: Is that it? Is doing nothing your solution to everything?

Carol Thatcher: Why is Mark so obviously your favorite?

Margaret Thatcher: What?

Carol Thatcher: You have twin children, and you clearly prefer one over the other.

Margaret Thatcher: Carol, that's not true.

Carol Thatcher: It is indisputably and painfully true. And what I want to say to you is, is that just because you had a difficult relationship with your mother ...

Margaret Thatcher: Darling, I really don't have time for this.

Carol Thatcher: You cannot let it affect your relationship with all women. Most of all, your own daughter.

Margaret Thatcher: Darling, you do pick your moments. I am busy. In a few minutes, I have the chiefs of staff coming.

Carol Thatcher: Then give me one of those minutes. You disregard me. You overlook me. And you favor Mark.

Margaret Thatcher: Because he's stronger. Like my father was stronger. Yes. You are right. I did struggle with my mother, but it had nothing to do with her sex. It had to do with her weakness. I could not bear how she was prepared to just be a housewife.

Carol Thatcher: Because her husband treated her as such.

Margaret Thatcher: That is not true! Your grandfather, my father, was wonderful with women. Wonderful. He encouraged me. He taught me. He made me who I am. He was determined my ambition be limitless. And he tried with your grandmother. But there is a limit to what one can do if people are themselves limited.

Queen Elizabeth II: When you've been in my position as long as I have, you see how quickly and how often a nation's fortunes can change. Joblessness, recession, crises, war. All of these things have a way of correcting themselves. Countries bounce back. People do. Because they simply have to.

Michael Fagan: That's what I thought. That I'd bounce back. And then I didn't. First the work dried up, then my confidence dried up. Then the love in my wife's eyes dried up. And then you begin to wonder, you know, where's it gone? Not just your confidence or your happiness, but your ... They say I have mental health problems now, but I don't. I'm just poor.

Queen Elizabeth II: The state can help with all of this.

Michael Fagan: What state? The state has gone. She's dismantled it along with all the other things we thought we could depend on growing up. A sense of community, a sense of, you know, obligation to one another. A sense of kindness. It's all disappearing.

Queen Elizabeth II: I think you're exaggerating. People still show kindness to one another, and they still pay their taxes to the state.

Michael Fagan: And she spends that money on an unnecessary war and declares the feel-good factor is back again. In the meantime, all the things that really make us feel good (the right to work, the right to be ill, the right to be old, the right to be frail, be human) gone. You may think you're off the hook, but she's got her eye on your job, too. Let me tell you. You'll be out of work soon.

Queen Elizabeth II: Let me assure you, Mrs. Thatcher is an all-too-committed monarchist.

Michael Fagan: She has an appetite for power, which is presidential. And in this country, a president and a head of state cannot coexist. Mark my words, she's put us out of work. She's quietly putting you out of work.

Margaret Thatcher: On behalf of the government and the Metropolitan Police, I am so sorry. It is a national embarrassment that the Queen of the United Kingdom should be subjected to troublemakers and malcontents who feel at liberty to resort to violence.

Queen Elizabeth II: Oh, but he wasn't violent. In fact, the only person Mr. Fagan hurt in the course of his break-in was himself. And while he may be a troubled soul, I don't think he's entirely to blame for his troubles, being a victim of unemployment, which is now more than twice what it was when you came into office just three years ago.

Margaret Thatcher: If unemployment is temporarily high, ma'am, then it is a necessary side effect of the medicine we are administering to the British economy.

Queen Elizabeth II: Shouldn't we be careful that this medicine, like some dreadful chemotherapy, doesn't kill the very patient it is intended to heal? If people like Mr. Fagan are struggling, do we not have a collective duty to help them? What of our moral economy?

Margaret Thatcher: If we are to turn this country around, we really must abandon outdated and misguided notions of collective duty. There are individual men and women, and there are families. Self-interested people who are trying to better themselves. That is the engine that fires a nation. My father didn't have the state to rely on should his business fail. It was the risk of ruin and his duty to his family that drove him to succeed.

Queen Elizabeth II: Perhaps not everyone is as remarkable as your father.

Margaret Thatcher: Oh, you see, that is where you and I differ. I say they have it within them to be.

Queen Elizabeth II: Even someone like Mr. Fagan?

Margaret Thatcher: Mr. Fagan is another matter. Two different doctors have reached the conclusion he is suffering from a schizophrenic illness. If he is spared criminal prosecution on account of his condition, then a nice, secure mental hospital will ensure he will not be a danger any longer. Now, if you will excuse me, I really must go.

Queen Elizabeth II: Where to?

Margaret Thatcher: To the victory parade at the City of London.

Queen Elizabeth II: A victory parade?

Margaret Thatcher: Yes, ma'am. We have just won a war.

Queen Elizabeth II: We are rather a tough bunch in this family. We don't give out much praise or love or thanks. Perhaps someoe like Diana is best placed to...

Princess Anne: Hug everyone else too.

Queen Elizabeth II: To connect with the modern world. And isn't that how the Crown survives and stays relevant? By changing with the times.

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: Diana is an immature little girl who, in time, will give up her struggles, give up her fight, and bend, as Philip did. As they all do. And when she bends, she will fit.

Queen Elizabeth II: And if she doesn't bend, what then?

Princess Margaret: She will break.

Penelope Carter: Are you aware of anyone else in your immediate family struggling with mental health issues?

Princess Margaret: The Prince of Wales, he has his ups and downs. I wouldn't say that's condition. That's just marriage.

Princess Margaret: Not everything that is wrong with this family can be explained away by the abdication.

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: Well, the abdication did change everything. You were too young to understand. Everything. It's complicated.

Princess Margaret: No, it's not! It's wicked, and it's cold-hearted, and it's cruel. And it's entirely in keeping with the ruthlessness I myself have experienced in this family. If you're not first in line, if you're an individual character with individual needs, and God forbid an irregular temperament ... If you don't fit the perfect mold of silent, dutiful supplication, then you'll be spat out, or you'll be hidden away, or, worse, declared dead! Darwin had nothing on you lot. Shame on all of you.

Princess Elizabeth: On this, the occasion of my twenty-first birthday, I welcome the opportunity to speak to all the peoples of the British Commonwealth and Empire wherever they live, whatever race they come from, and whatever language they speak. As I speak to you today from Cape Town, I am 6,000 miles from the country where I was born. But I am certainly not 6,000 miles from home. That is the great privilege of belonging to our place in the worldwide Commonwealth. There are homes ready to welcome us in every continent of the earth. Before I am much elder, I hope I shall come to know many of them. Although there is none of my father's subjects, from the eldest to the youngest, whom I do not wish to greet, I am thinking especially today of all the young men and women who were born about the same time as myself and have grown up like me in the terrible and glorious years of the Second World War. Will you, the youth of the British family of nations, let me speak on my birthday as your representative? Now that we are coming to manhood and womanhood, it is surely a great joy to us all to think that we shall be able to take some of the burden off the shoulders of our elders, who have fought and worked and suffered to protect our childhood. To that generation, I say we must not be daunted by the anxieties and hardships the war has left behind for every nation of our Commonwealth. We know these things are the price we cheerfully undertook to pay for the high honor of standing alone seven years ago in defense of the liberty of the world. If we all go forward together with an unwavering faith, a high courage, and a quiet heart, we shall be able to make of this ancient Commonwealth, which we all love so dearly, an even grander thing. More free, more prosperous, more happy, and a more powerful influence for good in the world than it has been in the greatest days of our forefathers. To accomplish that, we must give nothing less than what my father, King George, the first head of the Commonwealth, calls "the whole of ourselves." There is a motto which has been borne by many of my ancestors. A noble motto. I serve. I should like to make that dedication now. It's very simple. I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong. God help me to make good my vow and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.