Summary
A step up from the premiere, “Ruritania” is probably a bit funnier than it intends to be, but it repositions the Queen at the centre of the story and keeps the sulking teenagers refreshingly sidelined.
It takes an effort to remember this these days, but people really liked Tony Blair. Before all the war crimes, the Labour Party leader was seen as an exciting reformist, a neoliberal who had infiltrated an old system intending to tear it down and rebuild it anew — perhaps in his image. Episode 6 of The Crown Season 6 begins with Queen Elizabeth herself having a nightmare in which Blair is coronated as king and parades through Westminster Abbey in full regalia. And it’s hilarious.
Hilarious is perhaps not what we want from this particular show, though, to be fair, it doesn’t remain funny for very long. After an impressively dry premiere, “Ruritania” at least livens things up a bit, but more so than that it gives the Queen, very much the center of this outing in a way she hasn’t been for a while, an excuse to reiterate exactly what it is that she and the monarchy in its totality stand for – and why these things remain important.
The Crown Season 6 Episode 6 Recap
Blair’s increasing popularity means waning support for the royals. “People really do seem to love him and see him as a true son of England,” says the Queen early on, “a unifying national symbol in the way they used to see, well, me.” And “used to” is key here. The Queen decides to take the public temperature by polling focus groups on the key questions, and the majority is in agreement. The monarchy, by all accounts, is useless, outdated, and a waste of public money.
Blair Attempts to Rebrand the Monarchy
What to do? Well, the Queen takes the rather unusual approach of asking Blair himself to essentially rebrand the crown, using his particular ability to “read the mood of the country” to figure out where the royals are going wrong. Hopefully, with some constructive criticism, they can turn things around.
I strongly suspect this isn’t all intended to be as funny as I found it, but it’s certainly supposed to elicit some chuckles here and there. Blair in shirtsleeves, going over budgets and tokenistic royal titles like he’s looking over evidence in a murder case or planning some sort of heist, rather tickled me. Cherie at one point writes the monarchy off as, essentially, incapable of renovation, better knocked down and rebuilt from scratch. And there’s a huge deal made of quite how many people with ridiculous titles and outdated functions remain in the employ of the crown for largely ceremonial responsibilities that are of no good to the British public or, in the grand scheme of things, anyone at all. Unless you’re a swan.
A Win for Tradition, Eccentricity, and the Arcane
Blair’s idea is, essentially, to run the royals like a civil service, and he takes to the Queen several suggestions for cost-cutting and winning back the public trust that essentially amounts to emulating the successful Scandinavian monarchy model and sacking anyone with a title that sounds like something from a fantasy novel. Cue a montage of the Queen meeting these people, picking a favorite, and deciding not to bin any of them after all.
For once, though, this isn’t a petty decision made to prove a point. The Queen is considerably more sincere about anything related to the actual monarchy than she is, say, her own family, so the speech she eventually gives about the importance of tradition, pageantry, and the royal association with arcana and eccentricity is deeply felt. And, if we’re being fair, rather inextricable from Britain’s national identity. Even though the public expressed quite clearly that they didn’t want any of these things, the Queen contends that they do, and would only realize that when it was too late.
As much as I hate to say it, I think she might be right.
How does The Crown Season 6 Episode 6 end?
“Ruritania” ties off the conflict between Blair and the Queen – which is a conflict between tradition and reform – with a clear victory for Liz. Despite earlier successes with the Americans and support for an intervention in Kosovo, Tony bites off more than he can chew with the Women’s Institute, of which the Queen has been a member since before she was even Queen.
Despite claiming that he wouldn’t get party political in his speech, Blair very much does so, and the women slow-clap him into profound embarrassment. This really did happen, and there’s a funny Guardian report of the whole thing from the time if you’re interested.
What did you think of The Crown Season 6 Episode 6? Let us know in the comments.
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