‘The Crown’ Season 4 Episode 5: A Ruckus In The Royal Bedroom

When Margaret Thatcher recaptured the Falkland Islands after a 10-week war with Argentina, it secured her status among many of her doubters as a true leader. Prince Philip, once a naysayer, even declared how impressed he is with her leadership. But to the millions of Britons left unemployed by her sweeping economic policies of the early 1980s, she did nothing more than wage a war against the working class. In the “Fagan” episode of The Crown (Season 4 Episode 5), the most famous Buckingham Palace break-in is framed as one downcast man’s attempt to reach the only person, Queen Elizabeth II, who might be able to get through to Thatcher and get her to see what she’s doing to the working people. But while intruder Michael Fagan may have climbed a drainpipe that led right to the Queen’s heart, his trespass into the palace only cemented Thatcher’s theory that a man is only as successful as he wants to be.

While we’ve seen glimpses of the Queen’s humanity, this is the episode that reveals the complexity of her inner workings. While Olivia Colman has made room for Gillian Anderson and Emma Corrin’s incredible performances this season, this is her episode, and in it she portrays a side of the woman we’ve never seen. After an initial moment of terror, her care for Fagan and what he tells her about the common people of England, resonates so deeply that you feel that she would like nothing more than to change things.

The living embodiment of a Billy Bragg song, Michael Fagan (played by Tom Brooke, recognizable from his roles on Game of Thrones, Sherlock, and Bodyguard) is a struggling, desperate man. The housepainter and decorator has fallen prey to Thatcher’s new policies, his wife has taken the kids and is shacking up with a new man, and the squalid flat he lives in is in his wife’s name so he can’t even lay claim to it himself. A man will do desperate things in times like this, but only one man would be so desperate that he’d break into Buckingham Palace… twice.

Fagan pleads for help at the unemployment office and is redirected to a very unsympathetic local minister of Parliament who sarcastically tells him that if Fagan wants to speak to someone about his gripe with Thatcher, he can either speak to the leader of the opposition party or, “failing that, the Queen.” Fagan knows he’s being mocked by the one person he thought would care about his best interests, which only increases his desperation. So as he takes the city bus home one night, he stops at the palace and shimmies over a fence undetected, wandering the grounds and then gaining access to the building, evading capture at every turn.

He finally makes it as far as a sitting room where he polishes off a bottle of cheap wine and breaks a vase. On this attempt he escaped after being spotted by a housekeeper, but as it happened, the Queen was not home.

When she and Philip learn of the break-in, they seem unfazed, even entertained by the situation, and rebuff any suggestion of added security around the castle, nor do they have any interest in alerting the Prime Minister of what happened. “Otherwise, the next thing you know, Downing Street will overreact and we’ll have alarms and surveillance cameras and policemen everywhere. Buckingham Palace is too like a prison as it is,” the Queen says. She has a point, but also, remember what happened to Mountbatten? Maybe calling ADT would not be a terrible idea.

Meanwhile, weeks pass and things get worse for Fagan. He instigates a schoolyard fight with his ex’s new boyfriend and as a result, is denied access to his children. And when a nation celebrates the Falklands victory, dancing in the streets and exalting Thatcher’s leadership, he can’t believe his eyes. As the Queen goes to bed that night, she brushes her teeth with her regular old toothbrush, the thing that will soon endear her to the man she thinks might kill her.

In the early morning hours of July 9, 1982, Fagan did the old drainpipe shimmy once again and, as incredible as it may seem, the show depicts many of the true details of what took place that morning: the Queen’s footman was not outside her door at the time of the break-in, having taken her Corgis for a walk. And a maid was in a nearby room cleaning, but she was unable to hear the Queen’s buzz for help. (In reality, Fagan did break an ashtray in the palace with the possible intention of slashing his wrists in front of the Queen.)

Though the Queen was lauded for maintaining her composure in Fagan’s presence, her initial reaction to him was sheer terror.

Of course she’d be terrified, she has literally never met an average person before. All of her meet and greets have been cast by her secretaries and vetted to endure only the most tasteful “regular” people have been admitted. She has no idea whether York Way, where Fagan lives, is “lovely,” (it’s not, he assures her). After Fagan pokes around the Queen’s bathroom, he brings out her toothbrush, surprised that her poshness has not driven her to go electric. The Queen, becoming more at ease with Fagan, probably had no idea she’d be in for a free interior design consult, but in his professional opinion, he’s shocked by how run down the castle is. Peeling paint, broken windows; it may be the seat of royalty, but it desperately needs a general contractor. If this was a Reese Witherspoon movie and Reese was the Queen, Fagan would be hired on the spot and he’d eventually become the star of Netflix’s new house-flipping series Mind Your Manor.

“I come to you, the head of state. You’re my last resort…. Save us all. From her,” Fagan says to the Queen, of Thatcher. She feels impotent, and offers the same advice to Fagan that she offers her daughter Anne in “Favourites,” explaining that with patience, things will bounce back, better than ever. The episode subtly provides commentary on what happens to a nation when conservatism overdoes it as Fagan explains that Thatcher’s policies are stripping away a sense of community, a sense of kindness. Every man for himself indeed.

Fagan is apprehended, the Queen almost sad to see him go. Though we’ll never know what the conversation between the real Fagan and the Queen was (if these shabby, paint-peely walls could talk!), the show’s interpretation provides a riveting version of events. When the Queen tries to bring Fagan’s concerns to Thatcher though, Thatcher dismisses Fagan as a mad man. But when the Queen presses her on how the country can help men like him, Thatcher is more blunt.

“If people like Mr. Fagan are struggling, do we not have a collective duty to help them?” the Queen asks. “What of our moral economy?”

“If we are to turn this country around,” Thatcher replies, “we really must abandon outdated and misguided notions of collective duty.” The Falklands may have cemented Thatcher’s legacy among her supporters, but to her detractors, well, it’s perhaps best summed up by the lyrics to the song that closes out the episode, “Stand Down, Margaret,” by the English Beat: “Would you give a second thought, would you ever give a damn? I doubt it. Stand down, Margaret.”

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Brooklyn. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.

Watch The Crown Season 4 Episode 5 ("Fagan") on Netflix