The Crown

For this week’s blog post I chose to watch The Crown. This series is a biographical story of Queen Elizabeth II journey becoming Queen of England and follows until around the late 1990’s. I spent most of my week watching the first half of the first season. I am eager to finish out the rest of the series, as I feel like that I have learned so much about the royal family that I never knew from watching this series.

Queen Elizabeth’s father, King George IV, dies when she is just 25 years old. Newly married and with two young children, and not expecting to be in this position for at least twenty more years, she takes the crown as the new Queen of England. At the young age of 25 I can imagine that taking on this role would be beyond overwhelming. At the exact same time she is mourning the death of her beloved father on top of all of it. Obviously, she doesn’t seem absolutely thrilled about taking the crown. Her entire life will be forced to change, and her husband isn’t thrilled about any of it, which makes the transition even harder. She is forced to change her last name and Phillip throws a little bit of a temper tantrum saying, “You’ve taken my career from me, you’ve taken my home, and you’ve taken my name.” Part of me can empathize with Phillip, of course this is difficult situation that he is he is being brought into, but what did he expect? He married a royal and had to of known this was bound to happen someday. Most of these decisions are not in her control, she fought to keep her last name but got completely shot down. While watching the first season, I couldn’t help but root for Queen Elizabeth. She takes the crown 1952, when all women gained the right to vote in in the United Kingdom in 1928. Personally, I see her becoming Queen an even bigger step for British women, and women in generally. She came in to power at a time when women were treated as much lesser then their male counterparts and expected to just be housewives. So here I am in 2018, cheering her on and yelling, “Girl Power!!!!” at my TV screen.

Overall, I find this show to be very interesting and education. The best part for me is the happiness and pride I feel for her as she takes the crown. Putting a young woman in that position of power is something that I feel is so amazing and inspiring. I’m sure any young woman would feel the same way.

Long live the Queen