‘The Crown’ Season 4 Episode 8 Recap: Catfight!

Of course, by calling this recap “Catfight” I’m referring to the sniping between Prince Charles and Prince Andrew just prior to Andrew’s wedding to Sarah Ferguson. Princes, amirite? This was a wedding that was so overshadowed by the bigger royal news of the day, that it only warrants 20 seconds of screen time on The Crown Season 4 Episode 8 (“48:1”). That bigger news, of course, was the “row” between the Queen and Margaret Thatcher, an unprecedented moment in the monarchy that threw out those royal protocols by which everyone must abide, because sometimes you can’t help but blurt out how you really feel.

It’s not often on this show that we get excited by a special guest star, but for the first time in The Crown‘s history, we get two queens for the price of one, with Claire Foy (I gasped) returning for a flashback, as she records a speech in South Africa on her 21st birthday in 1947, declaring that her “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 countries of the Queen’s commonwealth are just like her children, she just can’t bear to choose a favorite. Unfortunately, when we flash forward to 1985, apartheid and police brutality are dividing South Africa, the very place from which the Queen delivered her speech declaring unity and service, and a global spotlight is shining brightly on the country’s racial injustice. The rest of the Commonwealth nations have pledged to impose economic sanctions on the country to put pressure on the government, but Thatcher refuses to do so.

Both women travel to the Bahamas for the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting along with the 48 other heads of state from Commonwealth nations, and the trip is used to come to an agreement on the sanctions to be imposed on South Africa. Thatcher specifically refuses to use the word “sanctions” requesting a variety of other word choices in the “Roget Montage” we watch as she rejects synonym after synonym before finally settling on the phrase “economic signals.”

Though the treaty — careful wording and all — was signed by Thatcher, at a press conference later, she was confronted about how she made concessions and bowed to the will of the other 48 countries. “Not that I’m aware of,” Thatcher says, spinning the situation to her advantage by proclaiming that the other 48 actually bent to her as a result of her careful language choice.

The Queen, who begged Thatcher to support the measure in the first place and put her own support behind the rest of the Commonwealth, is livid at Thatcher’s gaslighting. She tells her press secretary, Michael Shea, she might just want to break the protocol in which the Sovereign always supports the Prime Minister, to publicly express how disappointed she is with Thatcher’s lack of compassion. The sanctions (sorry, signals), after all, were not just economic policy, they were meant to help abolish the apartheid system.

Shea advises the Queen not to make any such statement, but he makes the decision to anonymously inform the Sunday Times of her feelings, and the news of a rift between the two women grips the nation.

At Thatcher’s next weekly meeting with the Queen, she confronts the Sovereign about what she thought was an “unbreakable code of silence” which has now been broken, and the Queen assures her that there’s no merit to the story. Thatcher then informs the Queen, “I ain’t one to gossip but the call is coming from inside the house,” and the Queen and her secretary make Michael Shea admit to the leak and take the fall.

Meanwhile in the B-story, Prince Andrew is playing up his wedding for

He informs the Queen that Edward, not Charles, will be his best man. Andrew is sick of Charles hogging the spotlight, and, in stark contrast to Thatcher and Elizabeth’s stoic war of words and conviction, Charles and Andrew are 100% petty and whiny and don’t hold back. On the day of the wedding, both men are furious at their mother – Andrew feels overshadowed by the headlines, Charles resents the fact that his mother has done the one thing “she keeps telling me I cannot do. She opened her mouth and expressed an opinion.” Charles tells Andrew to get over the news coverage though, as “you can hardly blame the newspapers for wanting to write about the wedding of a fringe member of the family who will never be king,” and Charles exits, leaving his siblings with mouths agape.

“That was impressively cunty,” Edward admires.

Charles has often been portrayed as depressed but we’re now seeing what happens when nearly 40 years of frustration manifests into cruelty. (More on that in the next episode, though.)

“48:1” is an episode of semantics and language. Words have power; Michael Shea (ever the flowery writer, as we saw from his rejected manuscript full of “nugatory distinctions” and “waxing viridescence”) understood that when he brought his claims to the press. Thatcher understood that, as she changed the sanctions narrative to flatter herself. And the Queen understood it more than anyone, hence her code of silence.

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 8 ("48:1") on Netflix