Act of God

The Crown 1×4

Peter Townsend: You sure about this, sir?
Philip, Duke of Edinburgh: When I got married, my in-laws made me marshal of the Royal Air Force, as a result, I'm the most senior airman in the country and I can't bloody well fly. Yes, I'm sure.

Clement Attlee: It's interesting, for sure. What I don't understand is this. Why a Downing Street employee, working for the government, should come to me with this information? I've read the Aeneid, Mr. Thurman. "Do not trust the horse, Trojans. I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts."
Thurman: Mr. Atlee, I entered the civil service to serve the public and to serve government, any government. But I am also a responsible citizen and I cannot stand by while chaos reigns around me. This is not a government. Mr. Attlee, this is a collection of hesitant, frightened, old men unable to unseat a tyrannical, delusional even older one.

Thurman: Yours was the most radical, forward-thinking government this country has ever seen. How you lost the election escapes me.
Clement Attlee: Escapes us all.
Thurman: I believe I would be doing the British public and this country a service if I helped to usher him out of the door, and you back in.

Nurse: ...And the Queen is here, Your Majesty. Queen Mary: Could you be more specific? Nurse: Ma'am? Queen Mary: Which queen? Nurse: Queen Elizabeth, ma'am. Queen Mary: Which one? There are two. Nurse: The young one. Queen Mary: Oh, the Queen. Nurse: I thought you was all queens. They gave me a sheet. Queen Mary: We are. I was the queen so long as my husband the king was alive, but since he died, I am no longer the queen, I am simply Queen Mary. My late son's widow was also the queen, but upon the death of her husband, she became Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Her daughter, Queen Elizabeth, is now queen, so she is... Nurse: The Queen. Queen Mary: Bravo. Nurse: Nurses and nuns have the same problem. We're all called Sister. Queen Mary: So you are. Nurse: Well, she's outside. The Queen. Queen Mary: Then let her in. Sister.

Queen Elizabeth II: ...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. Next question.

Winston Churchill: You did well to get here. I gather half the Downing Street staff didn't?
Venetia Scott: It wasn't easy. Just crossing the road you take your life in your hands.
Winston Churchill: Well, then don't. You are too important to all of us.
Venetia Scott: Hardly. All I do is bring you things to sign. Then take them away again.
Winston Churchill: And so the wheels keep turning, and the business gets done, and the country is governed.
Venetia Scott: But what's my personal contribution?
Winston Churchill: You improve the quality of life for all that deal with you.
Venetia Scott: An ornament. A flower. By comparison at my age you were a published writer, and a cavalry officer, posted to India, fighting local tribesmen on the north west frontier...

Venetia Scott: I have been reading your autobiography... "Hear this, young men and women everywhere, and proclaim it far and wide. The earth is yours and the fullness thereof. Be kind but be fierce. You are needed now more than ever before. Take up the mantle of change..."
Winston Churchill: Stop.
Venetia Scott: "...for this is your time." You were 24. All energy and hope and passion and fire. It's remarkable.

Queen Elizabeth II: ... He can't fly.
Winston Churchill: Fly where?
Queen Elizabeth II: Well, nowhere, he is learning to fly.
Winston Churchill: Whatever for? Have we not enough qualified pilots to take him where he needs to go?
Queen Elizabeth II: No, he wants to fly himself. It's a boyhood dream. It's what he's always wanted.
Winston Churchill: Why was government not consulted?
Queen Elizabeth II: Because it's a private matter. And I am in favor.
Winston Churchill: Nothing you or His Royal Highness do is a private matter. And the father of the future king of England risking his life needlessly is... quite unacceptable.

Lord Salisbury: Winston, people are angry. They see us as the culprits. Winston Churchill: Culpable for what? It's fog. Fog is fog. It comes and it goes away. .... Sometimes we have sunshine. Too much sunshine and they call it a drought. Then we have rain. Too much rain, and they call it a deluge and find a way to blame us for that too. It's an act of God, Bobbety. It's weather. And for better or for worse, we get a great deal of it on this island.

Winston Churchill: I think she summoned me to haul me over the coals for my handling of the fog, but then the fog lifted, and she had to make a decision right then and there, in the room. You could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. And then she switched her tack without so much as a flicker. Clever. No, no, not clever. Ingenious.

Queen Elizabeth II: But what if the fog hadn't lifted? And the government had continued to flounder? And people had continued to die? And Churchill had continued to cling to power and the country had continued to suffer? It doesn't feel right, as Head of State, to do nothing.
Queen Mary: It is exactly right.
Queen Elizabeth II: Is it? But surely doing nothing is no job at all?
Queen Mary: To do nothing is the hardest job of all. And it will take every ounce of energy that you have. To be impartial is not natural, not human. People will always want you to smile or agree or frown. And the minute you do, you will have declared a position. A point of view. And that is the one thing as sovereign that you are not entitled to do. The less you do, the less you say or agree or smile...
Queen Elizabeth II: Or think? Or feel? Or breathe? Or exist?
Queen Mary: The better.
Queen Elizabeth II: Well, that's fine for the sovereign. But where does that leave me?

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