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Queen Elizabeth II

Was The Queen jealous of Jackie Kennedy?

Netflix’s hit drama, The Crown, is pushing the limits this season when it suggests The Queen was jealous of Jackie Kennedy.

The show has previously said that the storyline, while they follow history, does take creative liberties.

According to The Telegraph, one episode in the soon to be released second season shows the Duke of Edinburgh very taken with Jackie Kennedy while she visits Buckingham Palace on tour. Mrs Kenndy asks to be shown around the palace to which Queen Elizabeth states “It’s my house so I’ll do it.”

The Kennedy visit took place seven months after John F. Kennedy was elected in July 1961.

Feelings seem to be put aside during the tour, only for Her Majesty to learn from her equerry, Lord Plunkett, that he has heard the First Lady speak ill of The Queen when he was at a party of Mrs Kennedy’s sister, Lee Radziwill.

Lord Plunkett claims Mrs Kennedy said The Queen was “a middle-aged woman so incurious, unintelligent and unremarkable that Britain’s new reduced place in the world was not a surprise but an inevitability”.

Adding on that Buckingham Palace was “second rate, dilapidated and sad, like a neglected provincial hotel”.

In typical fashion, The Queen quickly wipes a tear from her eye and replies: “Well, we must have her again soon.”
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Peter Morgan, The Crown’s writer, has imaged this scenario. In the past, Mr Morgan has admitted that he is not out to please the royal family, but instead make a TV show.

“I think there’s room to creatively imagine, based on the information we have about her,” Mr Morgan recently noted.

A creative license may have been taken for this episode, but Cecil Beaton recorded in his diaries that Jackie Kennedy felt Queen Elizabeth was “pretty heavy going” and was “resented by her.” She also wasn’t a fan of the decor around Buckingham or The Queen’s fashion sense.

A further imagined scene has Mrs Kennedy requesting a private audience with Her Majesty to apologise for the “foolish” remarks, blaming it on drugs given to her by her doctor.

Season two of The Crown will be available to binge watch on Netflix on 8 December.

 

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