One of the most powerful scenes in The Crown - Season 1 was when Elizabeth II was reading a letter from her grandmother, Queen Mary of Teck. Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, had just died. She was next in line to the throne and Queen Mary wrote to her the words of wisdom that served as the foundation for the new Elizabethan age:
Dearest Lilibeth,
I know how you loved your Papa, my son. And I know you will be devastated as I am by this loss. But you must put those sentiments to one side now, for duty calls. The grief of your father’s death will be felt far and wide. Your people will need your strength and leadership. I have seen three great monarchies brought down through their failure to separate personal indulgences from duty. You must not allow yourself to make similar mistakes. And while you mourn your father, you must also mourn someone else: Elizabeth Mountbatten. For she has now been replaced by another person: Elizabeth Regina. The two Elizabeths will frequently be in conflict with one another. The fact is, the crown must win. Must ALWAYS win.
In the next scene, Elizabeth was about to disembark from a plane. Her husband Philip told royal aide Tommy Lascelles that he was going to escort his wife. Tommy blocked him and said, “No, sir. If you don’t mind, the crown takes precedence.”
While the scenes above were probably crafted out of artistic license and the real-life events did not happen exactly as portrayed in The Crown, Queen Elizabeth II has indeed been a dutiful monarch. Despite her imperfections, she lived out what she promised in her 1947 speech in South Africa:
"I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong."
The British Royal Family is supposed to be a symbol of transcendent virtues that bind the United Kingdom’s citizens together regardless of their differences. To become a unifying force, British monarchs must not take sides in any political conflict in their country. They may advise or encourage rulers, but they are to remain neutral. They must also represent the pinnacle of everything that is good about British culture. Hence, they must be at their best behavior at all times. Such responsibilities are difficult to bear because they cannot publicly express many of their preferences or show their human frailties like commoners do. The crown that symbolizes their calling to epitomize the best of the United Kingdom takes precedence over their individual desires.
Based on her 1947 speech, Queen Elizabeth II is a successful monarch possibly because she conditioned her mind right from the start that her life was not about her happiness. It was about serving her people. Dr. Jordan Peterson said that when you choose a vocation, you reject other potential options to focus on a narrow path that will subject you to painful discipline. You will no longer be a child that has the potential to be anything. But when you do surpass the constricting experiences of your occupation, you will become something that can accomplish a wide range of good deeds that a child cannot do.
Queen Elizabeth’s role is undoubtedly quite restricting. Imagine being forbidden to share your opinions! Or subjecting your family to centuries-old protocols. Imagine always being in the public eye so you can be judged if you’re meeting the expectations of citizens whom you don’t even know. Yet being queen is also what liberates her to accomplish noble deeds that we commoners cannot.
So many things will fall into their rightful place once we millennials accept that choosing a vocation entails embracing everything that will suck about it. And there’s gonna be a lot! Those irritations and hardships, those boring routines and the rejections from other people, are actually the fires that will burn away the deadwood so that only the branches that will produce abundant fruit will remain.
Unfortunately, some of the members of the Royal Family are now putting their personal indulgences above duty. One way that they do so is by promoting misguided political causes instead of staying neutral. It looks like they're meddling in certain political issues to become more popular or to amass more wealth for themselves. Their citizens pay them to refrain from taking sides so that they can focus on preserving the best of British culture that unites all of their people. If they can’t remain transcendent, what’s the point of funding them with taxes? For the sake of my fellow millennials, I hope that the British Monarchy will go back to being apolitical. That will be a good reminder for my generation that there are causes which are far greater than politics. And those noble aspirations should unite us regardless of our differences.
(Photo from Canva)
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