The Way Ahead

The Crown 5×5

Prince Charles: In any other professional sphere, I'd be at the peak of my powers. Instead, what am I? I'm just a... useless ornament, stuck in a waiting room, gathering dust.

Prince Charles: You claim to want to refresh the monarchy. Well, what I'm proposing is precisely that. A new welfare monarchy that's less about... mystery and magic and divine right, and more about our practical role in today's society.

Prince Charles: ...the difficulty stems, I think, from when... when we in the monarchy set ourselves up as a sort of ideal. As husbands or as wives or as... as parents. And very often, the truth is very far from that. The question people have to ask themselves is what do they want in their leaders? Do they want someone who errs, but who learns from their mistakes, who grows, who... who recognizes the need for change, who has a vision? Or someone who is content to continue making the same mistakes and to keep things as they are?

John Major: Reaction to the interview is divided between those that feel the prince has shown himself unfit to be king and should have had the good grace to stay silent, and those that have been... pleasantly surprised by what they saw and heard.
     Interestingly, it was his desire to be defender of faith in general, to... Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Sikhs, Hindus, rather than Defender of the Faith that has won most favor. His words having undeniably connected with whole constituencies that are traditionally left unreached by the monarchy.
Queen Elizabeth II: It is not a monarch's role to campaign or chase constituencies like a politician because the Crown itself is a unifying symbol. It binds together a kingdom of four nations and a worldwide, multi-racial Commonwealth. Symbolically.
     Charles is frustrated because the Crown has many of the functions of an inanimate object. He prefers to be animate. But there's a danger in that. One can end up undoing more than doing.

Princess Anne: For years, I've doubted Charles. That he wasn't strong enough. Tough enough. But look what he's just come through. First that phone recording, subsequent humiliation. Then that interview and subsequent criticism. And it hasn't broken him. The opposite.
     He might be as mad as everyone thinks, but he's not as weak as everyone thinks. The Charles I saw today was strong. Confident. Mature. Not only does he have what it takes for the job, in some ways, he's already begun. ...
     For the past year, possibly more, Charles has been slowly but surely setting up his own court at St James's. His own Camelot. His own advisors, his own... modern, progressive agenda. He knows one day he will be King Charles III. And if we want to know what that will look and feel like... well, he's starting to show us.

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On the IMDb