u/Mirabeaux1789

"I've been Queen barely ten years. And in that time, I've had three Prime Ministers. All of them ambitious men. Clever men. Brilliant men. Not one has lasted the course. They've either been too old, too ill or too weak. A confederacy of elected quitters."

At first glance this line hits hard. A woman who has a little power in her office exercises what she can with firmness and frustration. However, looking at the terms of each of these 3 prime ministers, her monologue has nothing to support it.

Let’s start with the first: Winston Churchill. Born in 1874. Churchill had been in politics since at least 1908. He was responsible for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, arduously campaigned for the British establishment to take the threat of Hitler seriously, led the country through WW2, had multiple strokes while in his 2nd term in office to which he ascended at the age of 77, and finally left office at the age of 81. He saw the rest of his term out he would have left office at 82 years-old.

Second: Anthony Eden. Eden was also a man of poor health on top of being a drug addict. Eden suffered medical pain because of a botched surgery in 1953 that plagued him for the rest of his life. Facts recognized by Elizabeth in season 1. Eden was scapegoated by his cabinet and forced out of the party for destroying the last shred of British imperial status in front of the entire world. There is no way a PM could have survived a major foreign policy fiasco, especially one of which he was a chief architect. On top of all this, he was also a WW1 vet and had been in politics since 1922.

Third: Harold MacMillan. Another WW1 veteran and another person in politics since the 1920s. MacMillan by PM standards had a good run of 7 years, which is typical-ish for PMs who stick around for a good while. The Profumo affair was a real risk for national security because two men couldn’t keep it in their pants. At 7 years, this is the sort of thing PMs back then would get sacked for. Willy Brandt in Germany was sacked for having a spy in his inner circle. And might I say that MacMillan’s tumor being the size of an orange is true, I would be very freaked out as an old man too. Macmillan would end up leaving office at the age of 69. And it’s important to keep in mind that he left at the age of 69 in 1963, back when it was common for men to die in their 60s.

She was practically begging Churchill to step down and was dumbfounded by just how worse of a shape he was actually in behind her back. I mean for God sakes he would die only a few years after leaving office! He was anything but a willing quitter. There is no way that Eden could have responsibly stayed on. It was politically impossible and he was in no fit state to run the country. Had he refused to resign, he would have absolutely been sacked by the party if not the Commons. MacMillan retired as an old man whose political career was coming to a close and was suffering a pretty perspective-changing health shock. Her monologue was easy for her to say. She doesn’t actually have to run the country. All she does is live in etiquetteville and lives life of luxurious rubber-stamping. She had a fraction of the political experience and understanding that each of her PMs thus far had. Some perspective would have served fictional Elizabeth well.

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