Six series, three queens
The Crown was written by Peter Morgan, who had already written a film, The Queen, and a stage play, The Audience, about Queen ELIZABETH the Second and her weekly meetings with her prime ministers. Netflix released it in six series between 2016 and 2023, following the ROYAL family from the Queen's wedding in 1947 to the early 2000s. It was one of the most expensive television dramas ever made, with its first two series reported to have cost around a hundred million pounds.
Because the story covers more than fifty years, the main cast was replaced every two series so the actors could age with their characters. Claire Foy played the young QUEEN, Olivia Colman took over in middle age and Imelda Staunton played her in her sixties and seventies, while Matt Smith, Tobias Menzies and Jonathan Pryce each played PHILIP, the DUKE of Edinburgh. It is a drama for older viewers, and it mixes real events with invented conversations; in 2022 Netflix began describing it as a fictional dramatisation inspired by real events.
The king who gave up the throne
Elizabeth was never expected to be queen. Her uncle, Edward the Eighth, became king in January 1936 but chose to ABDICATE before the year was out so that he could marry Wallis Simpson, an American who had been divorced twice. His younger brother became king instead, and his daughter Elizabeth, then ten, was suddenly next in line to the THRONE.
Even the family name was younger than she was. In 1917, during the First World War, King George the Fifth changed it from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which sounded German, to WINDSOR, after the castle.
A coronation on television
She became queen in February 1952, at the age of twenty-five, while on a tour in Kenya, when her father died in his sleep. Her CORONATION took place in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, and it was the first to be shown on television. Around twenty-seven million people in Britain watched, many of them crowded round a neighbour's set, and thousands of families bought their first television for the occasion.
Her first prime minister was Winston CHURCHILL, played in the show by John Lithgow, and by the end of her life she had worked with fifteen of them. In 2015 she became the longest-reigning British MONARCH, and her REIGN lasted seventy years, until she died at BALMORAL, her Scottish home, in September 2022. Our Victorians page covers the queen whose record she broke.
Corgis, palaces and the rest of the family
The Queen was given her first CORGI, Susan, for her eighteenth birthday in 1944, and owned more than thirty over her lifetime, most of them descended from Susan. BUCKINGHAM PALACE, the family's London home and office, has 775 rooms, including 78 bathrooms. The Imperial State CROWN, which she wore each year to open Parliament, is set with nearly three thousand diamonds.
The grid also holds her sister, Princess MARGARET, whose love life the show follows closely; her children CHARLES and ANNE; DIANA, who married Charles in 1981; and CAMILLA, whom Charles married in 2005, the wedding that closes the final series.