A scene from “Unfinished Business”

Queen Elizabeth II: I was listening to the wireless this morning, where they described this fog as an act of God. Now, in your letter that you sent me, you said, "Loyalty to the ideal you have inherited is your duty above everything else, because the calling comes from the highest source, from God himself."

Queen Mary: Yes.

Queen Elizabeth II: Do you really believe that?

Queen Mary: Monarchy is God's sacred mission to grace and dignify the earth, to give ordinary people an ideal to strive towards, an example of nobility and duty to raise them in their wretched lives. Monarchy is a calling from God. That is why you are crowned in an abbey, not a government building. Why you are anointed, not appointed. It's an archbishop that puts the crown on your head, not a minister or public servant. Which means that you are answerable to God in your duty, not the public.

Queen Elizabeth II: I'm not sure that my husband would agree with that. He would argue that in any equitable modern society, that church and state should be separated. That if God has servants they're priests not kings. He would also say that he watched his own family destroyed, because they were seen by the people to embody indefensible and unreasonable ideas.

Queen Mary: Yes, but he represents a royal family of carpetbaggers and parvenus that goes back what? Ninety years? What would he know of Alfred the Great, the Rod of Equity and Mercy, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror or Henry the Eighth? It's the Church of England, dear, not the Church of Denmark or Greece.