The Crown (TV Series)

Act of God (2016)

Claire Foy: Queen Elizabeth II

Quotes 

• Queen Elizabeth II : It doesn't feel right, as Head of State, to do nothing.

  Queen Mary : It is exactly right.

  Queen Elizabeth II : Is it? But surely doing nothing is no job at all?

  Queen Mary : To do nothing is the hardest job of all. And it will take every ounce of energy that you have. To be impartial is not natural, not human. People will always want you to smile or agree or frown. And the minute you do, you will have declared a position. A point of view. And that is the one thing as sovereign that you are not entitled to do. The less you do, the less you say or agree or smile...

  Queen Elizabeth II : Or think? Or feel? Or breathe? Or exist?

  Queen Mary : The better.

• Queen Elizabeth II : Bad time?

  Queen Mary : Not at all.

  Queen Elizabeth II : How are you?

  Queen Mary : I'm always happy to see you, and my mood will improve yet further if you promise me one thing.

  Queen Elizabeth II : Name it.

  Queen Mary : Not to ask me how I am. It's all anyone ever does. Forget death by lung disease, it's death by bad conversation.

  Queen Elizabeth II : All right. I promise. But if you are feeling up to it, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.

  Queen Mary : Fire away.

  Queen Elizabeth II : I was listening to the wireless this morning, where they described this fog as an act of God. Now, in your letter that you sent me, you said..."Loyalty to the ideal you have inherited is your duty above everything else, because the calling comes from the highest source. From God himself."

  Queen Mary : Yes.

  Queen Elizabeth II : Do you really believe that?

  Queen Mary : Monarchy is God's sacred mission to grace and dignify the earth. To give ordinary people an ideal to strive towards, an example of nobility and duty to raise them in their wretched lives. Monarchy is a calling from God. That is why you are crowned in an abbey, not a government building. Why you are anointed, not appointed. It's an archbishop that puts the crown on your head, not a minister or public servant. Which means that you are answerable to God in your duty, not the public.

  Queen Elizabeth II : I'm not sure that my husband would agree with that. He would argue that in any equitable modern society, that church and state should be separated. That if God has servants they're priests not kings. He would also say that he watched his own family destroyed, because they were seen by the people to embody indefensible and unreasonable ideas.

  Queen Mary : Yes, but he represents a royal family of carpetbaggers and parvenus, that goes back what? Ninety years? What would he know of Alfred the Great, the Rod of Equity and Mercy, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror or Henry the Eighth? It's the Church of England, dear, not the Church of Denmark or Greece. Next question.

• Philip, Duke of Edinburgh : [to Queen Elizabeth II]  "Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk on earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return. " You know what's remarkable about those words?

  Queen Elizabeth II : Go on.

  Philip, Duke of Edinburgh : They were written 300 years before man first got in a plane. Leonardo da Vinci.