The Hereditary Principle

The Crown 4×7

Dazzle Jennings: This is a huge secret! It's virtually a state secret...

Princess Margaret: Love is a tender kiss for most people. For me, she saves her sharpest ax.

Princess Margaret: Well, I am ready for a new chapter… without men, without… cigarettes, without…

Princess Margaret: I'm finally ready… to focus on the one thing that won't let me down.
Queen Elizabeth II: What's that?
Princess Margaret: Us. My position as a royal. My duty. So I come on bended knee with a familiar request. Give me as much responsibility as you can. As many jobs, as much work. What your sister needs to stay afloat… is a sense of meaning.

Princess Margaret: It's outrageous that I, an HRH, should travel to see her.
Anne Tennant: I gather it's part of the process, that the patient accept that they are a patient. Apparently, the healing cannot start until the grandiosity is diminished.
Princess Margaret: What grandiosity? I'm so far down the royal pecking order these days, I'm virtually an untouchable.

Princess Margaret: I had therapy once before. ... The problem we face is I'm… Well, I'm so opposed to all of this. I find it pathetic. It violates everything I was brought up to believe.
Penelope Carter: What were you brought up to believe?
Princess Margaret: Self-pity won't get you very far. You've just got to get on with it.
Penelope Carter: Well, that's a very common attitude. It's also quite old-fashioned.
Princess Margaret: Did you just call me common? And old? Because that would not be a good way to start.

Princess Margaret: Five, Mummy! Five members of our close family locked up and neglected!
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: What do you expect us to do?
Princess Margaret: Behave like human beings.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: Oh, don't be so naive. We had no choice...

Princess Margaret: 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 Margaret: Why?
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: Because… their illness… their imbecility--
Princess Margaret: Don't use those words.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: Their professionally diagnosed idiocy and imbecility… would make people question the integrity of the bloodline.
Princess Margaret: What?
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: Can you imagine the headlines if it were to get out? What people would say? The hereditary principle already hangs by such a precarious thread. Throw in mental illness… and it's over. The idea that… one family alone has the automatic birthright to the Crown is already so hard to justify. The gene pool of that family… had better have 100% purity.

Princess Margaret: It's all a family disease, isn't it? When they… they tell you you can't marry. When they strip away your official role. When they side with your husband as your marriage falls apart. And now this. This final… insult. That every diminishment, every… rotten… misfortune… is written… is written in my blood. So… without… tiptoeing to protect me or dressing things up, tell me the truth. As well as being born second… am I destined to be mad, too?

Dazzle Jennings: One cannot fully receive God until one has submitted to something larger, and the moment I did...
Princess Margaret: Don't tell me. The lights went on, you found happiness?
Dazzle Jennings: More than happiness. Ecstasy. And the gloom we talked about so many times… the emptiness… has gone.

Dazzle Jennings: So come over.
Princess Margaret: I would, but in case you hadn't noticed, Dazzle, I've already submitted to something larger. The royal family of the United Kingdom. If I became Catholic, it would be a national scandal. There'd be talk of betrayal, second Reformation. And they'd make me give up my title and kick me out.
Dazzle Jennings: Would that be so bad? To free yourself once and for all? To find happiness?
Princess Margaret: Why would I? The title, my seniority, the proximity to the Crown is my happiness. It's who I am. I don't expect you to understand.
Dazzle Jennings: No, I don't understand! You've just discovered terrible things about your family. A system that ignored five members of its own to protect itself. Will that same system protect you? No! It doesn't protect anything except the center. Those away from the center...
Princess Margaret: But I am in the center! I am in the very center. I am the Queen's sister, daughter to a king-emperor, and I will always be in the center.

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