|
|
The Queen Shows Importance of the Monarchy in History of English-Speaking World
The movie, The Queen, concentrates on the events surrounding the death of Princess Diana, a week of severe trial for the British monarchy.
by Melvin Rhodes
My wife and I have recently seen The Queen—the movie, that is, not the monarch herself. I haven't seen her in person since I was 6 or 7 years of age and she came to visit our hometown in England.
I was reminded of this by another movie we saw recently, a rare gem from New Zealand that was available for rent at our local video store. The name of that movie was Her Majesty, which told the story of a young girl in New Zealand back in 1954 when the British Empire was still fairly intact. The queen, having only recently ascended the throne, was making a tour of the empire. The young girl in the movie was determined that the queen should visit the small town of Middleton, New Zealand, and began a one-girl campaign of daily letter writing to Buckingham Palace. Her letters resulted in "Her Majesty" visiting the small community.
In contrast, The Queen is a more adult drama, focusing almost exclusively on the events that took place in the week between the death of Princess Diana and her funeral.
Princess Diana's death was the first major crisis confronting the new government of Prime Minister Tony Blair. His party had won a general election in early May of 1997. Princess Diana was killed less than four months later. Mr. Blair at that time was still quite popular. The queen's popularity was to be severely tested in the days following the death of her former daughter-in-law.
It should be remembered that meetings between the queen and her prime ministers are kept confidential, so nobody knows exactly what was said between Tony Blair and the queen during the week leading up to the funeral. Palace insiders, however, have been quoted as saying that the movie gets it right. Both the prime minister and the queen come out looking good, which is not the case for everybody else involved.
It is often forgotten outside the United Kingdom that Tony Blair is the leader of Britain's Labour Party. As a socialist party, many of its members are naturally antimonarchy, seeing monarchy as an antiquated system of privilege. Tony Blair dismisses the idea of Britain without a monarchy as "unthinkable." This view is not shared by his wife, Cherie, who is of Irish-Catholic background.
Related Information on UCG Sites:
Other Articles by Melvin Rhodes
British commonwealth:
British royal family:
Search Our Site
Key Subjects Index
General Topics Index
Biblical References Index
Good News Magazine Index
Booklets and All Literature Index
Home Page of this site
|
