‘THE CROWN’ SHOWED US A SIDE OF PHILIP THAT WE HAD NEVER SEEN SARAH CADEN
In the most recent season of The Crown, the episode Avalanche saw the royals contemplate Prince Charles’s possible death while skiing in Switzerland. A member of the royal staff comes to speak to the Queen (Olivia Colman) and Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies) about ‘Menai Bridge’.
This, it is explained, is the code word for Charles’s demise and funeral.
“Why bridges?” Philip asks the Queen.
“We’re all bridges,” she replies. “I’m London Bridge, mummy’s Tay Bridge, you’re Forth Bridge… the choice of name was to suggest a link between this life and the next.”
Menzies’ Philip looks amused by this information, which is entirely in character for how he was portrayed in The Crown. He took the duty seriously, but not the minutiae of the pomp and ceremony, or even himself.
We must remember, of course, that the Netflix drama is a fictional imagining of royal actions and reactions in relation to real events, but the extent to which it boosted Philip’s popularity in the years before his death on Friday cannot be denied.
In 1988, when Charles was caught in the avalanche that killed one of his closest friends, Philip was not as warmly thought of as in recent times. In 1988, the Queen’s consort, husband even before she was monarch, was best known for gaffes that were offensive even before that was a thing.
The 1980s satirical puppet show, Spitting Image, felt free to treat him with disrespect, lampooning his foot-in-mouth comments and making much of the fact he was Greek — thus managing to both tut-tut his perceived racism and point out he was a foreigner in the royal ranks.
In short, Philip was, for a long time and not in a warm way, considered a figure of fun. He was universally regarded as representing all that was wrong with the royals — backward, insular, unreformed and detached from reality — until, latterly, he was not, and The Crown can take a lot of credit for that.
That is, The Crown and Prince Harry, whose ditching of duty has come to seem so at odds with the Philip as portrayed in the award-winning drama as a man both seriously committed to and mouth-twitchingly amused by his role.
Why we fell for Philip in The Crown is credit to the writers, but also to Matt Smith and Tobias Menzies, who have each portrayed him so far. Devil-may-care but dutiful is the Philip we came to know through The Crown, and that is the impression of Queen’s consort that has seen him out.
Listicles of his gaffes over the years abound. As far back as the 1960s, he was dishing up opinions on British women’s inability to cook. He complained during the recession of the early 1980s that everyone “was saying we must have more leisure. Now they’re complaining they’re unemployed”. In the mid-80s, he famously warned a group of British students in China they should not stay too long or they would “all be slitty-eyed”. He made all sorts of offensive generalisations: fat eastern Europeans, drunk Scotsmen, spear-throwing indigenous Australians.
Times have moved on, but these comments were not even funny in those times.
The Crown gave us another view of the man, who lived a role no one would envy, most freedoms given up in the name of supporting his spouse, regularly keeping his mouth shut, contrary to the impression of him as outspoken.
Further, as this last season of the show told the sad story of Diana’s experience as a wife of Windsor and Prince Charles’s introspective unhappiness, we saw the Harry and Meghan drama unfold in the present day.
It made sharper the on-screen dismay of Philip and his ilk at the self-indulgence of the younger generation. Something about that appealed to the viewing public, and so Philip, in his last years, earned an affection he possibly never enjoyed before.
We cannot know whether the
Queen’s husband of 73 years got to enjoy this popularity boost, or if he would have enjoyed it. Philip was never one to push himself as the focus of attention, a trait he deplored in others within his family.
With that in mind, we have to wonder if Harry will come home for his grandfather’s funeral and whether Meghan will come with him.
You wonder, too, if it fell to Charles to wake his son in the middle of the night, as he did when Diana died, to tell him the news. Could William have put aside his reportedly wounded feelings after the Oprah interview to tell his brother their mutually much-loved grandfather had died?
Philip’s death will make Harry feel even further removed from his family, both geographically and emotionally. The loss may not bring them closer, however. With Philip’s death dies not only the tie that binds, but the old-school sense of duty Harry has eschewed.
Charles Dance will portray Philip next in The Crown, and there could not be a better choice. Duty may die with him, but his popularity will survive.