‘The Crown’ Recap, Season 2, Episode 7: “Matrimonium”

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Woof. Now that the first giddy haze of Margaret and Tony is behind us, their incompatibility and mutual shitassery is all too apparent to The Crown‘s audience. Married they will be, but for all the wrong reasons, and the trainwreck is moving down the track in slow motion. It’s so familiar, watching someone you love make a genuinely terrible choice and knowing you cannot stop them and that you’ll be picking up the pieces in due course. Unfamiliar, perhaps, is knowing that the tabloids will cover each moment with a burning hunger to know your worst and most delusional self. Don’t do it, Margaret! I mean, honestly, don’t do it, Tony, either!

We open in Brussels, 1959, as a still-very-handsome and obviously post-coital Peter Townsend wakes and writes a letter to his old flame (with whom, if you’ll remember, he has a pact to never marry anyone else.) The recipient of said note is her usual hungover, smudgy-eyed, servant-yelling self, and when she hungrily rips it open and learns he is to marry a NINETEEN-year-old, you can imagine the speed with which she pushes a variety of breakables off her desk.

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This, as you can imagine, both amps up her old resentments towards the Queen AND puts a new urgency into her budding relationship with Tony (who, incidentally, calls Townsend “Group Captain Bore.”) Margaret, unsurprisingly, now wants to get married AT ONCE, TODAY, YESTERDAY so she can beat Townsend to the altar, while Tony is Too Unconventional For Words, Darling, You Cannot Tame a Tony and is very lukewarm on the topic.

It’s not his love for Margaret that convinces him to bring himself to the sticking point, it’s very clearly his ridiculously intense mommy issues (his mommy, good ol’ Duckface from Four Weddings, is a very bad mommy, so be sure) which make the idea of finally socially outranking the rest of his family seem VERY appealing. Is it worse to get married to spite your ex, or to impress your mom? I honestly don’t know. Neither are a real recipe for enduring happiness, I can tell you that.

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Let us now establish that Tony has many other lovers. MANY, including a married couple (The Frys, who were real people), the female half of which he has managed to knock up, and his plans do not seem to include getting rid of them.

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Once they’ve been informed, at least, it’s time to officially propose to Margaret, which obviously must be done in the MOST Tony manner possibly: picking her up on a motorcycle (thank God he has helmets at least!), engaging in exhaustingly acrobatic looking sex (Tony is so extra), a cute ring reveal, etc. He makes her promise never to bore him (good fucking luck) and he promises never to hurt her (hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha) and Margaret is INCANDESCENTLY joyful and triumphant.

The Queen, having no interest in fucking up a second chance at happiness for her very difficult and mercurial sister, gives her permission at once, but is forced to VERY gingerly ask that the official announcement be postponed for six months, as…the Queen is pregnant again! With Andrew! How marvelous. As you can imagine, Margaret barely manages to congratulate her before whining about the timing. She is, however, slightly mollified when Liz offers to throw her an elaborate engagement party and invite all her friends. Also, they can marry in the Abbey!

(This episode is almost exclusively about Margaret and Tony, but I’d like to briefly acknowledge that Philip makes a moderate attempt to be interested in the Queen’s pregnancy and even cajoles her into pretending to milk herself for his benefit. She’s still so besotted with him, even though he’s AWFUL.)

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The engagement party, when it comes, is as loud and exuberant and crass as you would expect from Tony’s crowd. Openly mocking the stiff bearing of Royal servants is not the greatest idea! Tony, obviously, has invited the Frys, which is…a choice a person could make, and their conversation is obviously fraught enough to pique the Queen’s interest. She asks Adeane to tell her What She Needs To Know about Tony (oh, boy, Liz, take a seat, this could take awhile).

(One of the most delightful scenes from the episode is a very-slightly sloshed Philip popping off about how Tony is way more inappropriate a suitor than he was, etc. Well, yeah, Philip, I enjoy your candor, but also you were marrying the heir to the throne and not her younger sister.)

We knew the meeting with Adeane was going to be bad as soon as we saw Tommy arrive at the Palace: when you bring in the big guns, it’s usually a sign that tremendously bad news is coming. I am actually amazed at how classy Adeane and Tommy were in their revelations about Tony’s promiscuity. Lots of “unconventional” lots of “well, artists,” lots of “likes to push the boundaries in his work and in his…urm…private life.” Liz holds up pretty well until Tommy (with the DEEPEST discomfort) starts to mention Tony’s same-sex exploits, at which point she’s like “okay okay okay I get it.”

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Before she talks with Margaret, the Queen proceeds to have a very standard issue mid-century rich-person birth, complete with scary looking obstetric tools and twilight sleep. A sleep she has barely woken from before Margaret comes in to be like “oh what a sweet baby CAN I ANNOUNCE NOW?”

Liz makes the difficult choice to ask Margaret if she’s sure she’s making the right decision, instead of telling her the results of Adeane and Tommy’s investigation, which is not what I would have done, especially considering that Margaret EXPLICITLY asks for the truth. The two exchange some very bitter words (almost all from Margaret’s end) and, whether we like it or not, the episode ends with the most splooshy and ornate Abbey wedding imaginable, with a bride and groom who are destined to make each other and those around them deeply, deeply unhappy.

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