"Idiocy and imbecility..."
Another strong episode here, and the first Margaret episode for ages (will there be many more?) as she hits her mid-life crisis with the realisation that her life has been unhappy and there isn't much time left to put things right, certainly not if the lung operation she's just had is an indicator.
There is, of course, a wider theme here of mental health and stigma, as Margaret discovers a family secret in the treatment of some insttutionalised members of the Queen Mum's family- and the first scenes of Katherine and Nerissa give us some juxtapositions characteristic of The Crown as they watch the Royal Variety Performance on telly (is this the one where Tommy Cooper died?) in their institution, and Katherine's birthday is contrasted with that of Prince Edward.
We hear the reasoning, and the voice of a royal generation, from the Queen Mum; when the Abdication propelled the Bowes-Lyons from minor Scottish aristocrats to toyalty by marriage, those within the family seen as suggesting a bloodline that as not "pure" needed to be hidden away. It was, as Margaret says, cruel, inhuman and reprehensible. Genetically, it seems, the royal family cannot have inherited the gene- but that has no bearing on the matter. If the hereditary principle depends on this sort of thing, the hereditary principle must go.
But the episode is also about Margaret, doomed to a life of heartache, emptiness and self-conscious usefulness, where potential lovers turn out to be "friends of Dorothy" and she feels threatened by Diana. I'm not sure she needs the Queen to give her purpose- she's rich and famous; there are plenty of things she could do to make the world a better place. But she is a paradox- a terrible snob who rails against her position as a "spare" whose proximity to the crown grows further apart with each royal birth and, as Gore Vidal said, far too intelligent for her station. And yet, especially as played by Helena Bonham Carter, she's a perversely likeable bitch.
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