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Queen Elizabeth II

The Crown writer calls out the monarchy as “deranged”

Peter Morgan, the writer of Netflix’s hit drama The Crown, has called out the “deranged” Royal Family in an interview with the Sunday Times.

While speaking to the magazine about the show’s success ahead of the Season 2 release on 8 December, Morgan discusses his creative process including that of viewing the monarchy as a”completely insane system.”

“If you had told me I would be doing this, I would have told you it was mad, hallucinogenic conjecture. I wouldn’t have guessed there would be anything more to say about this countryside woman of limited intelligence who would have much preferred looking after her dogs and breeding horses to being queen.” Morgan said.

“But now I’m here. Life is strange.”

To Morgan, the monarchy is “survival organisms, like a mutating virus” who have made it through the 20th century without The Queen making any “catastrophic errors.”

What at first sounds like an insult, could really be more of a compliment as Morgan further explains.

“Look at how many prime ministers are wheeled out in coffins, on stretchers, having made fools of themselves: Downing Street is full of sick people. And yet she survives.

“It is clearly a deranged institution and a completely insane system, but perhaps it’s the insanity that makes it work. Belief in God is so deranged that it makes absolutely no sense, but it holds people together somehow.”

Morgan’s unconventionally approach to the monarchy is unlike those of other biographers.

“Authorised royal biographers are so straitjacketed, deferential, fawning and unadventurous that they can only be after a knighthood,” Morgan continued. “Or they’re completely scurrilous and insolent, like Andrew Morton or Paul Burrell.

 “I think there’s room to creatively imagine, based on the information we have about her.”
Morgan has taken that creativity to a place that many royal fans may not appreciate, including a fake affair between Prince Philip and a ballet dancer.

The Crown team do not consult Buckingham Palace over the storylines.

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