‘The Crown’ Recap, Episode 7: “Scientia Potentia Est”

If you have not yet watched The Crown, Episode 7, “Scientia Potentia Est,” I must beg you to close tab now. I do not usually say this, but the final scene was a real eye-popper and a pearl-clutcher and I want you to experience it in the fashion I did: on a laptop while stirring a pasta sauce, just before dropping a spoon in shock.

This is unquestionably Claire Foy’s best turn to date as Elizabeth. The emotional acuity of her portrayal is deepened and enriched, and that spine we started to see stiffen in the lead-up to her coronation gets a moment or two to really bail her out of complicated situations. Preparedness is the name of the game today: Elizabeth’s, her courtiers’, and the nation.

One of the hardest skills in the world to master is knowing what you don’t know, and it’s both endearing and frustrating to watch Elizabeth try to navigate world events with a hand tied behind her back: she has essentially zero education. Exquisite table manners, a smattering of constitutional hierarchies, but literally no background in literature, philosophy, science, mathematics, or anything else to speak of. It’s a bit of a joke when she says she always has to turn the conversation to dogs or horses (two fine topics!) when she’s meeting with statesmen and world leaders, but…not that much of a joke. Speaking of dogs, a fine brace of corgis have finally made their first appearance (I feel terrible for the people responsible for all that expensive wall-to-wall carpeting and the heavily-embroidered upholstery), though surely not their last.

Dogs and horses may have fit the bill for the first few decades of her life, but it’s sitting dumbfounded while Churchill attempts to explain the dangers of Soviet H-bomb armament that finally causes Elizabeth to crack. A tutor (the fictional Professor Hogg) is duly dispatched to her side, and Foy does an exquisite job at subtly telegraphing her shame while he patiently and with great, great kindness goes about the business of figuring out the gaps in her education. There being more gap than education, she has nothing to report. The subsequent fury with which Elizabeth castigates her mother for her failure to ensure she receive an education is met with the unkindest cut of all: a deft jab at Elizabeth’s own, essentially nonexistent, time spent mothering.

Oh right, I thought! Charles and Anne! She has children! We saw them a few episodes ago, briefly.

This must have occurred to Elizabeth herself, so she takes a moment to stare out a window at them, as each is duly assisted in a game of ball by a footman and a governess.

This is a tough note for the show to hit, as there is simply no insult harsher in our current sensibilities than that one could be a bad or an absent mother. She was, though, unquestionably the latter. Not remarkably so for her time or status, by any means, but we don’t see many sympathetic (female) television protagonists who have two small children they barely interact with.

The bit of royal drama pervading this episode (more important, somehow, than the cancelled state dinner with Eisenhower or even the shenanigans that surrounded it) is Elizabeth’s need to acquire a new private secretary, as Old Boy Tommy Lascelles is ready to go fly fishing/run around a big farm upstate, etc. She wants Martin, who assisted her ably while she was merely the Princess (as do I, as I think he’s nice and funny and a little bit dishy, and a known commodity). Like so many of the reasonable-sounding things Elizabeth wants, it is apparently Quite Impossible, as Tommy hastens to tell her.

No, that’s not quite accurate. As per usual, he tells her that of course she can do whatever she likes, and then he goes behind her back and tells Martin he has to say no at once, because it’s Quite Impossible and Michael Adeane is next in line for the job.

To Tommy’s credit, when Elizabeth storms in and starts hurling flowerpots at him, he makes a fairly decent case for following Palace tradition in this matter. It’s the little things, you see, that slowly pile up and steamroll, and then you’re left drafting an abdication announcement because the monarchy is not good at being an improv troupe. Martin is out (for now, he would eventually take over from Adeane and is considered to have been Elizabeth’s most loyal and closest secretary to date).

Returning to the issue of things happening behind Elizabeth’s back, the visceral pleasure of this episode (for us and for the character) arises when a confused courtier spills the beans that Churchill has hidden TWO STROKES from her within TWO WEEKS and has been all “oh I have a mild cough, best to reschedule,” backed up in his slipperiness by Lord Salisbury. She goes FULL QUEEN BITCH on the two of them (she rings a little BELL to DISMISS them, it’s MAGICAL) and is so elevated by having taken the reins and been firm with two very powerful men that even Philip notices her new strut.

Which.

Is.

When.

He.

Asks.

Her.

To.

Blow.

Him.

Which she does, with a smile, and reschedules her appointment with Michael Adeane accordingly.

Who is this woman?

[Watch The Crown, Episode 7 “Scientia Potentia Est” on Netflix]

Nicole Cliffe used to run The Toast, a niche site for queer archivists which Hillary Clinton at least pretended to like, but is now mostly just dicking around on Twitter.