We’re back in government mode for episode seven of Netflix’s The Crown, but we’ve still got a few jewels to discuss here and there. If you’ve missed any of our earlier recaps, head over here! (And then come back to this post to discuss “Scientia Potentia Est” — which, fittingly, means “knowledge is power.”)

We begin with a brief flashback, this time to Windsor Castle, ca. 1940. The planes and barrage balloons overhead are reminders that war was raging in Europe, and British RAF pilots were attempting to save their country from the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. (One of those pilots was, of course, Peter Townsend.)

Little Princess Elizabeth gets to ditch her etiquette lesson at the castle to pop over to Eton, where the Vice-Provost is instructing her on the finer points of the British constitution. Their discussion here focuses on the relationship between the government and the monarchy (the “essential” and the “dignified”). He explains that the relationship only works when the two sides trust each other.

Back in 1953, Elizabeth is having tea with her mother at the palace.

The Queen Mum, wearing pearls and her rings, is perusing the Daily Express. She brings up Albert Einstein — the looming threat of nuclear war hangs in the background of the entire episode, beginning with that visual of the barrage balloons — but neither she nor the Queen really know what he does, aside from a general understanding that he’s a scientist.

Elizabeth, wearing a single strand of pearls, pearl earrings, and one of the “inspired by” brooches, laments that she’s not better educated.

The Queen Mother, though, doesn’t see anything particularly wrong with that — it’s just the way things are. We get a better look at her triple strand of pearls and pearl cluster earrings in this view.

Tommy Lascelles comes to fetch the Queen for her audience with Churchill. On the way, they discuss his impending retirement. Elizabeth is dismayed and a little confused to learn that he’ll be replaced by Michael Adeane (his most senior deputy) rather than the more junior Martin Charteris. (Martin, you’ll remember was with Elizabeth when she became queen in Kenya.)

The corgis have been keeping Churchill company in Elizabeth’s absence. Mostly they’re watching him doze on the couch while he waits. He’s not in good health.

Regardless, he’s very worried about the Soviets and nuclear weapons. The Queen’s lack of wide-ranging education strikes again — he has to explain the basics of the threat to her. He’s sent Anthony Eden (the foreign secretary) to Washington to try to get the Americans to agree to a summit. (Churchill really was concerned with the nuclear threat, but again, the show is condensing and rearranging the timeline here. Churchill began pressing for this summit before the coronation.)

Churchill’s not the only one with health problems, though. Anthony Eden — who has fallen asleep here waiting for his meeting at the State Department — is extremely ill, thanks to a troublesome gallbladder. (This was also true, and it let Churchill take over more control as he basically took over Eden’s job, too.)

Back in London, Elizabeth steamrolls right past Tommy’s explanation about the “line of succession” for the private secretary job. Wearing another “inspired by” brooch and a triple strand of pearls, she invites Martin over for a conversation.

Here’s his face when she offers him the job outright. Wary, but also kind of excited. (Harry Hadden-Paton makes me miss Downton Abbey. PS: did you know that Harry’s real-life godmother is Sarah, Duchess of York?!? He’s not a stranger to this royalty business.)

The Queen also asks a favor of Martin — she wants him to find her a tutor.

After the meeting, Martin drives his wife, Mary, over to see the private secretary’s grace-and-favour apartment (where Tommy Lascelles still lives at this point, of course). In a classic case of measuring the drapes before buying the house, Mary asks Martin to have a tree trimmed outside the flat’s window.

Eden calls Churchill from America; he’s going to have to have surgery immediately. Churchill is furious that Eden’s health will delay the possibility of a summit. Eden, delighted that Churchill has revealed how important Eden is to the whole business, makes him tell him that he needs him over the phone. Churchill, promptly, has a stroke.

(Churchill really did have a stroke in 1953 — on June 23, to be more precise.)

At the palace, the Queen has no idea that her top two government officials are incapacitated. She’s doing her morning studying — take notes while reading The Sporting Life (a now-defunct racing paper).

Soon enough, though, the tutor that Martin has engaged shows up for their first meeting. Professor Hogg, who was nervous enough to swig from a flask before his arrival, asks Elizabeth to fill him in on what educational milestones she reached so that they can plan out their tutorial.

Elizabeth, rather ashamed, can’t give him any answers — she never took any exams or received any certificates.

Elizabeth is wearing her pearls in this scene, and as she has throughout the series, she pulls at the pearl necklace when she’s nervous. Here, the pearls begin to suffocate her when she confesses that she has trouble keeping up conversations with the people she meets as monarch.

She also wrings her hands during this scene, giving us a clear view of her rings and her watch. (The engagement ring still makes me sad.)

After their meeting is over, Elizabeth heads over to Clarence House, where she angrily confronts her mother about her lack of a formal education. The Queen Mum is in full Queen-Mum-mode, watching television and having a drink while wearing pearls, her rings, and a voluminous floral housecoat.

Elizabeth, who is wearing the “inspired by” bow brooch on her jacket, is highly critical, even when the Queen Mother points out that Elizabeth got a far better education than Margaret. (Yikes!)

The Queen Mother’s diamond ring flashes as she takes a drink here. The conversation devolves into an argument over what kind of education is proper — and who is a good parent.

Eventually, the Queen Mum rushes out of the room heads out of the room, leaving Elizabeth with her bow brooch and her thoughts.

Stuck in bed, Churchill makes Lord Salisbury and Jock Colville agree not to tell the Queen about his stroke. (If you recognize Colville’s name, it may be because he was the valiant man who traveled across London on the Queen’s wedding day to retrieve her pearls from the display of her wedding gifts.) Since Churchill and Eden are both incapacitated, Churchill has decided that the best course of action is to get Eisenhower to come to London. He wants the palace to dangle some state banquet bait in front of the American president.

None the wiser about Churchill, Elizabeth is back in the first “inspired by” brooch and her pearls as she works.

Tommy arrives to relay Churchill’s plan about the state banquet. The Queen is a little petulant about it — she’d wanted to go to Sandringham — but she eventually relents.

The press secretary succession problems continue, though. Michael Adeane has heard that Martin has been chosen as Tommy’s successor. Tommy figures out that Martin sent gardeners to trim that tree, and he is not happy about it.

State banquet preparations start in earnest, including my favorite: the footman who has to stand on the table with crazy mummy feet for polishing reasons.

Tommy calls Martin in to chastise him about both the job acceptance and the tree trimming. Nobody crosses Tommy Lascelles. Have these people not learned anything?

Meanwhile, the Queen is freaking out about having to meet and chat with President Eisenhower. She and Professor Hogg try to figure out a strategy, but he ends up needing time to research. Elizabeth only gets excited about any of this when she realizes that Hogg bets on horses.

Churchill has received a letter from the Queen telling him to recover quickly from his cold. Clementine, in her pearls, is appalled that they’ve kept this from the monarch. Then, Churchill finds out that Eisenhower has accepted the invitation to come to London, and he gets so worked up that he promptly has another stroke.

The banquet preparations are in full swing at the palace. (Here’s a true nerd moment from me, though: the setting is all wrong for a Buckingham Palace banquet. At BP, state banquets are held at a large, horseshoe-shaped table. The banquets with one long table are held at Windsor Castle.)

While everyone sets the (incorrect) table, Martin stops by to tell the Queen that everything has to be called off, because Eisenhower’s not coming after all. Much to Elizabeth’s dismay, he also turns down the private secretary job.

So Elizabeth rushes downstairs to confront Tommy about it. He gives her a lecture about tradition an continuity regarding all of the monarchy, including the staff. He also warns against “individualistic” decisions like the one she’s trying to make, where she’s thinking about her personal preferences rather than the health of the institution. Lascelles even gives her a rundown of the individualistic, egotistic decisions that Uncle David made that led to “rot” creeping in — and, eventually, the abdication.

Elizabeth is unhappy, but silenced on the matter. Even her pearly queen uniform is slightly askew.

As quickly as it was assembled, the banquet table is taken down.

With the private secretary mess still at the front of her mind, Elizabeth calls for her former private secretary, Jock Colville. She wants him to consult on the Adeane/Charteris issue.

But Colville, who works for Churchill now, thinks that she has found out about Churchill’s stroke, and he spills the beans. The Queen is furious that she’s been in the dark once again.

During a meeting with Professor Hogg, Elizabeth discusses her responsibility in light of Churchill’s incapacity. He encourages her to confront the government higher-ups, reminding her that all upper-class Englishmen respond well to scoldings from a nanny. To prepare for the meetings, Elizabeth sends staff to search all of the royal palaces for her notes from that meeting at Eton in 1940.

Churchill and Salisbury are quickly summoned to the palace.

The Queen asks for Salisbury first, making Churchill wait in the hallway. (It’s a different day, so she’s wearing a different dress, but the jewels are identical to the ones in the previous scene. They’re firmly part of her uniform here.)

She upbraids Salisbury for keeping the truth from her, using excellent words like “hampered” and “bamboozled.” She also drops a particularly excellent historical burn, telling him that she now doubts her father’s dislike of the old adage “never trust a Cecil.” (The Cecils have served monarchs since the days of the Tudors, to various degrees of loyalty. The 3rd Earl of Salisbury was involved in the Rye House Plot; the 4th Earl was locked in the Tower after the Glorious Revolution.)

Next, she summons Winston. He weakly enters the room and kisses her hand.

While she yelled at Salisbury, she pulls an even stronger move with Churchill — she’s disappointed. She feels betrayed by him.

She makes the Great Churchill cry! And with the help of her notes from Eton, she explains that she feels their trust has been broken — that crucial part of the relationship between monarch and government. She asks if he can continue. He says he doesn’t need to — she’s ready to move on without him now. But, you know, he’ll stay on anyway for now.

One person in the palace hasn’t gotten the memo about the cancelled state banquet: Philip, who has returned from a charity cricket match and gotten all gussied up, breeches and Garter and everything. He scrutinizes his wife and tells her that, somehow, she looks taller.

Here’s a look at his chest full of medals. Philip really did have all of these in 1953, and he has even more now.

Now that the banquet’s canceled, Philip proposes that Elizabeth schedule some personal time for him (except he says it in a much less family-friendly way).

Elizabeth agrees, even though she’s called Michael Adeane in for a meeting. He’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

The coronation may be over on The Crown, but we’ve still got plenty of jewels and drama to dissect. Here’s our bejeweled recap of episode six, “Gelignite” — and catch up on our previous recaps here if you’ve missed any!

We begin on June 6, 1953. Four days have elapsed since the coronation, and Elizabeth and Philip are at the Epsom Derby. Elizabeth wears her three-stranded pearl necklace, pearl earrings, and one of her “inspired by” brooches. (I believe she wore the largest of the Nizam of Hyderabad Rose Brooches for this event in real life.)

At Clarence House, Princess Margaret watches footage of her sister on television. Elizabeth’s post-coronation popularity is soaring. Some of the footage shown is from the original British Pathe newsreels from the event. In real life, Princess Margaret attended the Coronation Derby with her sister, and she appears in this footage with numerous other members of the royal family (and foreign royals, too). You can see video of it here and here. In the last episode, we saw lots of mirrors as sovereigns regarded themselves. In this episode, we get a mirror of a different kind, as the royals watch themselves reflected in different kinds of press coverage.

Fictional Margaret is likely watching a recap of the event she attended earlier in the day. She and Peter Townsend banter about her sister’s fame; Margaret, who is wearing a ring on her right hand, notes that she’s the luckiest woman, even if her sister is more famous. And they’re going on a trip to Rhodesia together soon! Everything’s great.

She and Peter canoodle, which gives us a good view of her daisy-shaped diamond and pearl earrings. (I think these are “inspired by,” era-appropriate pieces, not replicas.)

Margaret and Peter’s secret love is about to be not-so-secret. A reporter from the News Chronicle  noticed her picking a piece of lint off of Townsend’s uniform at the coronation, and he’s planning to write a story about it. In real life, the newspaper that broke the story of the Townsend affair was a Sunday paper, People, following stories in the American press.

Margaret has decided that it’s time to have a serious chat with her sister about Peter. She calls her up — which, as we see, involves a dizzying number of switches and operators and connections — and invites her (and Philip) to dinner.

Elizabeth wears the Flower Basket Brooch (often used in this production as a symbol of family, and in scenes connected with the late king) as she accepts the invitation.

Meanwhile, Philip is off hanging out with his buddies at their lunch club, which involves copious amounts of alcohol and a lot of leering at waitresses. (Sidenote: the illustration of the woman wearing the flower crown has got to be either Queen Victoria, or a contemporary piece following her fashion, right? If it is Victoria, it’s an interesting choice — a monarch who famously reigned during an age renowned for its prudishness, gazing over the rowdy antics of one of her royal descendants.)

Yep, that’s Philip checking out a waitress’s derriere. It’s often said that Philip has had various dalliances during his long marriage to the Queen, and The Crown is playing with that idea a bit in an episode about marital fidelity and morality. The man sitting beside Philip in this frame is Baron, the court photographer who took Elizabeth and Philip’s wedding pictures.

The special guest at this meeting of the lunch club is Tony Longdon, who has just returned from Cairo. (Longdon is played by Ed Stoppard, who starred alongside Claire Foy in the recent series of Upstairs, Downstairs.) Longdon has sobering news from Cairo, where King Farouk was ousted in a military coup the previous year. Philip, who thinks a lot about the precarious nature of monarchies, is very interested.

By the time he gets home, though, he’s very drunk. A pearl-clad Elizabeth watches him stumble in. (Note how many times she’s shot from behind a window in this episode, emphasizing her separation and even isolation from other characters.)

That night, Elizabeth and Philip get ready to go to dinner at Clarence House. They’re in black tie, because Margaret wants it to be a special occasion. Here, you get a brief glimpse of Elizabeth’s diamond bracelet.

Everyone is very stiff and formal, at least until Margaret dismisses the staff.

She wears an era-appropriate suite of gold-toned jewels.

She informs Elizabeth and Philip that she and Peter want to get married. We get a good look here at the suite of sapphire and diamond jewels that Elizabeth is wearing. These aren’t replicas of the Queen’s actual sapphire suite (which was a gift from her father). Instead, this necklace looks like it was inspired by the original tiara from the Cambridge Sapphire Parure, which belonged to Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent at this point in time.

Elizabeth is a little reticent about the relationship, but she can’t say no to her sister’s happiness. Margaret is so thrilled that she even gives us a glimpse of her bracelet. And Peter, who now gets to call Philip by his name instead of “sir,” is pretty pleased as well.

But in the car, Philip and Elizabeth have a lengthy, sometimes contentious discussion of the issue. Philip thinks that Peter should go back to his wife (although Peter is officially divorced). Elizabeth wants Margaret to be happy. I’m just glad we get a good look at these sapphire cluster earrings.

A note on the historical timeline here: Townsend was officially divorced from his first wife in November 1952. At Christmas, he told Tommy Lascelles about the relationship, and said at that time that both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh knew. The Queen Mother was reportedly told by Princess Margaret in February 1953. The Crown is fudging the timeline here for dramatic purposes.

Things are about to, er, hit the fan. The News Chronicle reporter has finished his story, and the editor speaks to the paper’s owner about publishing it. The editor refers to the story as “gelignite” — an explosive. (Hence the title of the episode, an interesting choice given that several scenes take place in Northern Ireland.) There’s a lot of discussion about whether printing the story is appropriate. The editor argues that, by televising the coronation, the royal family has broken the traditional rules of deference and respect regarding media coverage.

The owner goes straight to Tommy Lascelles to hash things out. Let’s take a moment here to appreciate the hair and makeup team of the series, shall we? Pip Torrens, who plays Lascelles and has such wonderfully expressive non-expressions in the role, is bald in real life. This is Tommy’s face on his arrival at Clarence House, where he’s gone to tell the Queen Mother about the impending press coverage of the affair.

On his way, he catches Princess Margaret throwing a rager to celebrate her victory. She gives him this look, and then shuts the door in his face.

The Queen Mum wears pearls (but no brooch) as Lascelles gives her the news that the details of Margaret’s affair — and of other relationships between royals and divorcees — may soon be made public. In real life, Margaret had told her mother about the relationship herself months before the news broke. Here, the Queen Mum is depicted as being completely in the dark. (I’m still lamenting the way that her character has been sidelined in this series. She was so much more involved in so many things.)

The next morning, Elizabeth calls her sister to chat about the romantic revelations of the night before. She suggests that Margaret should consider a Scottish wedding, because the Church of Scotland allows divorced persons to remarry in the church.

Margaret’s got her ring on her right hand again as she entertains the possibility (and, of course, smokes like a chimney). We see this right-hand ring over and over again this episode, just as we see the Queen’s wedding and engagement rings several times. Perhaps we’re meant to see Margaret’s ring as a reminder of the left-handed rings she’s been so far denied?

Speaking of rings: here’s a rather important one coming down the staircase at Clarence House. This hand belongs to the Queen Mother. I think it is very intriguing that we’re shown a diamond on her right hand as she heads to confront Elizabeth about Margaret’s relationship. This ring, on her right hand, is most definitely not meant to be her engagement ring. Royal jewelry lovers will note that the Queen Mother’s own engagement ring was set with a sapphire, not a diamond. (Also, she wore her engagement ring on her left hand.)

But she did have another diamond ring that is now very famous: the diamond ring that Prince Charles gave to his second wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, as an engagement ring. I have no idea if the production knew about the links between the Queen Mother and that particular ring, but if this is meant to be Camilla’s ring, it’s a great inside-baseball reference. Camilla was divorced (with a living spouse) when she married Prince Charles — exactly the same position that Peter Townsend is in during this episode (and that Wallis Simpson was in during the abdication crisis). The royal family’s perceptions of divorce shifted radically between 1936/1953 and 2005 — and part of that shift included the death of the Queen Mother, whose opinions about divorce, the abdication crisis, and the death of her husband were all intertwined.

At Buckingham Palace, the Queen Mother and Tommy Lascelles have a come to Jesus talk with the Queen about Margaret and Townsend. Note that Elizabeth does not wear her pearls in this scene — no necklace or earrings, in fact. We tend to see her without her pearly queen uniform in scenes where she is being “Elizabeth Mountbatten” rather than the Queen. And indeed, she’s trying to act as a sister here, not a monarch.

But that’s precisely the problem — she is the monarch. The Queen Mother, who is wearing her pearls, reminds her that popularity can be fleeting, and her position can be severely damaged with one wrong decision.

Tommy Lascelles makes the case even clearer by giving her a crash course on the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. (In real life, he sent Elizabeth a memo with the same information.) To prevent members of the royal family from damaging the monarchy by choosing unsuitable spouses, George III decreed that all members of the royal family who are under the age of 25 have to have the monarch’s permission to wed. Elizabeth didn’t know this — or at least not all of it — and she’s even confused about which King George was behind the law in the first place. (The Queen’s spotty education will come up again before this season ends.)

A quick note about this frame: see the enormous painting in the background? This scene was filmed at Wilton House, home of the Earls of Pembroke. The painting is Van Dyck’s Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, and his Family, which was completed by 1635. The painting depicts the wedding of an aristocratic couple whose union was doomed — the groom died within a year of the marriage. It’s also a relic from a time of incredible instability for the monarchy. By 1649, the monarchy had been abolished and the king was executed. (Be careful, Elizabeth!)

At the end of this meeting, Elizabeth knows that she must ask her sister to wait two years, until her 25th birthday, to marry Townsend. As the Queen, she can’t take the risk of granting her permission. She’s going to have to ruin her sister’s happiness, and she’s crushed.

The News Chronicle follows through with the publication of the story. The paper here is dated June 14, 1953 — the precise date that People broke the news in real life. We get pictures of Margaret in that terrible non-replica tiara from the coronation to illustrate the story.

Elizabeth wears her queenly pearls to tell Margaret that a) she has to wait two years to marry Peter, b) Peter can’t go with her on her upcoming trip to Rhodesia, and c) Peter’s going to have to take a posting somewhere else. This is Margaret’s face as she processes.

Margaret’s distraught, and she and Peter go riding off to have some private time together. He tells her that he’s going to take one of the positions offered to him: a posting in Belgium. Everybody’s upset.

But before he leaves, the Queen grants Peter a consolation prize: he can accompany her on a scheduled trip to Northern Ireland, and then he and Margaret can have some time together on her return from Rhodesia before he heads off to Brussels. On the plane to Belfast, Elizabeth talks to Tommy Lascelles about the situation, and she fidgets her pearl necklace, just as she did after her accession, as if it’s choking her. We also get a good view here of her rings and her watch — marriage and time, thematically popping up again.

A be-brooched Elizabeth arrives in Northern Ireland to an adoring crowd. In real life, she arrived in Northern Ireland for her coronation visit on July 1, 1953. Here’s newsreel footage from British Pathe.

But when she watches the footage of her arrival on television later that night, she notes that Peter is sucking up a lot of the press attention, and she makes this face.

For an evening reception at Government House in Hillsborough, Elizabeth puts on her diamond and pearl finery: the Lover’s Knot Tiara, the Gloucester Pendant Earrings, and Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee Necklace. Since we’re post-accession and post-death of Queen Mary, all of these jewels are officially in Elizabeth’s possession.

But — this was a real event, including the drum tattoo she observes, and these were not the jewels she really wore. On newsreel footage from the visit, you can see her in the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara. The necklace can’t be seen clearly (though I think it might be the Nizam), and the earrings appear to be a smaller pair. I’m really struggling to figure out why we haven’t seen the GGBI yet in the series — it’s such an easy, obvious piece to replicate and use accurately for this period in the Queen’s life.

The Queen wears the “inspired by” bow brooch near the end of the visit.

As the royal party boards the plane, however, Townsend makes a mistake that seals his fate with the Queen: he acknowledges the public and press interest with a wave. (Note: Townsend was indeed apparently with the Queen on this visit, as an “extra equerry in waiting,” though he wasn’t treated to the kind of visual press coverage he’s given here — at least not in the British Pathe footage.)

And then, he calls the Queen “Lilibet.” Not while she’s wearing her pearl uniform, Peter!

Lascelles comes over to ask if “Her Majesty” has made up her mind about Townsend. The reply? “She has.” If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time she’s referred to herself in third person during the series, and it’s an important turning point. Elizabeth Mountbatten showed up to the meeting with her mother and Lascelles, but the sovereign has now made her decision about Townsend. He’s off to Brussels, effective immediately.

Townsend is hauled in front of Lascelles and Co. (including Martin Charteris) at Buckingham Palace and informed that he won’t get to say goodbye to Margaret; instead, he’s headed to Brussels the same day. Townsend is furious, and he reminds them that the public will sympathize with the romance, and that they should be careful about press coverage and perception. (In real life, Townsend was apparently set to head to Brussels on July 15, which was before Margaret and the Queen Mum were due back from Africa.)

Cut to Rhodesia, known today as Zimbabwe. Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother really did visit the country in the summer of 1953, leaving on June 30. Margaret knew Townsend wouldn’t be there when she returned, and according to the Shawcross bio of the Queen Mum, the press reported that Margaret was “unsmiling and sullen” during the trip. In the world of The Crown, though, she’s not aware that he’ll be gone before she returns. At an official dinner, the Queen Mum is wearing a large brooch here, but we don’t get a good look at it. (Where do we send our petition to get better views of the Queen Mum’s jewels next season?)

Curiously, Princess Margaret — who is giving a speech — is wearing Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee Necklace. Uh, couple of problems here. For one: if the Queen is wearing the necklace in Northern Ireland, how is it supposed magically travel to Africa with Margaret? Tough for a necklace to be on two continents at once!

For another: Margaret never wore this necklace, which is an heirloom of the crown, in public. There is another royal with a copy of the necklace: Princess Alexandra (Margaret’s first cousin) has a version without the center crown. It was given to her by her husband, Angus Ogilvy. To my knowledge, Margaret didn’t have a copy. This is a necklace for the Queen, not for her sister.

Fictional Margaret finds out that Peter has been sent away via telegram in Rhodesia, and she is super duper ticked off about it. She calls her sister in a fury, and we get another scene with switchboards and operators and connections, and it takes a while for them to locate the Queen at Sandringham.

Elizabeth is in Elizabeth Mountbatten-mode at the stables in Sandringham, wearing just her rings and her watch. She’s taken aback by Margaret’s anger over the telephone. Margaret even accuses Elizabeth of resenting Margaret and Peter’s popularity, making veiled threats about the future.

The newspapers jump on the new developments in the story, declaring that Margaret has been “punished” and Peter has been “banished.”

One newspaper appears to show Margaret in a tiara and necklace.

Everybody’s commenting on the story. The Churchills read it and talk about it, with Clementine in her prim and proper pearls. In reality, they’d known about the affair since June 13, the day before the story broke in the British press. It was Churchill who demanded that Townsend not go to Rhodesia and be posted elsewhere, although he was in support of the romance. (Per Shawcross, Clementine’s hilarious real-life reaction to the situation: “Winston, if you are going to begin the Abdication all over again, I’m going to leave! I shall take a flat and go and live in Brighton.”)

In Paris, the Windsors cackle with their pugs.

Elizabeth is still uncertain about the whole business, and she’s even more unsettled when Philip leaves again, this time for a house party with Baron and Mike Parker.

She’s made her sister give up a relationship on moral grounds, and now her husband is exhibiting signs of immoral behavior himself. She watches at a distance, from behind the window, once more
.

Our recap of the jewels of episode five of Netflix’s The Crown is coming at you a day early, thanks to tomorrow’s holiday here in America. I don’t think you’ll mind having it a bit early, though, because it’s a sparkling one. Last episode was all about how fog obscures; this time, “Smoke and Mirrors” focuses on the way that monarchy conjures up magic.

We begin in May 1937. Wee Princess Elizabeth is helping her father, King George VI, rehearse his coronation. They’re working on one of the most important parts of the service: the moment when the Archbishop of Canterbury anoints the monarch with holy oil. (Remember that the last episode included a conversation between Elizabeth and Queen Mary about the monarch’s connection to God.)

The rehearsal is interrupted, because the crown jeweller has brought over the crowns for Bertie to try on. First, we see the production’s replica of St. Edward’s Crown, which is the crown that the monarch wears only once: when he or she is crowned during the coronation. (This was an old tradition revived by George V in 1911, and George VI and Elizabeth II followed his example.)

The real St. Edward’s Crown was made in 1661 after the restoration of the monarchy, and it was patterned on the original crown, which was melted down after the execution of Charles I. The other crown is the Imperial State Crown, which had just been remounted specifically for King George VI by Garrard before the 1937 coronation. The monarch wears the Imperial State Crown during part of the coronation; it’s also the crown worn during the state opening of parliament.

Bertie tries on St. Edward’s Crown and regards himself in the mirror. This is the first of four monarch/mirror scenes in the episode. Bertie doesn’t like what he sees, noting that he wishes he’d never had to look at himself wearing the crown. He also remarks on the crown’s weight, both physical and symbolic.

We flash forward to March 1953, when Queen Elizabeth II is trying on St. Edward’s Crown ahead of her own coronation. I think that the replicas of the two crowns in this production are … fine. It’s really, really hard to make the settings of a replica crown look real. They all look plasticky.

Like her father, she looks very seriously at herself in the mirror. (She also has another mirror in this scene: her son, Charles, who will likely one day wear this crown himself.) Elizabeth asks the crown jeweller (the same one who delivered the crowns to her father) if she can borrow the crowns to practice. He’s a little flabbergasted that she feels she has to ask — they sort of belong to her, after all.

Next, Elizabeth decides to pop on the Imperial State Crown and go surprise Philip. But he’s not around — he’s out taking another flying lesson.

That night, Elizabeth puts on another set of royal jewels for a trip to the Royal Haymarket to see a play. We saw this scene in the trailer, so we’ve already dissected the big problem with it: Elizabeth had none of these jewels in her possession in March 1953. Queen Mary is still alive at this point in the episode, so the Vladimir Tiara (which seems too big?) and the Gloucester Pendant Earrings still belonged to her. And Queen Alexandra’s Wedding Necklace (which is too small) belonged to the Queen Mother — we saw it on her in episode one. Elizabeth didn’t inherit this until 2002, and she’s actually never worn it in public.

During this royal theater date, Elizabeth asks Philip for a favor: she wants him to be on her coronation committee. He says he will, but only if he can be in charge. (He really was chair of the commission, but that appointment happened a year earlier, in April 1952.)

While coronation preparations are in full swing in Britain, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are settling down in their new villa in Paris.

Because the royals have cut them off, they need a new source of income. In this scene, they’re cashing in on their fame with an interview and photo shoot for a publication. The interviewer is in her professional pearls, including a leaf-shaped brooch.

David and Wallis obediently play dress-up for the photographers. Here, Wallis wears dresses up in formal jewels…

…and in sportswear.

David even lets the interviewer in to his little shrine to his ten-month reign. She asks why there are no photos of him wearing the crown, and he replies that he didn’t make it that far — that he didn’t have a coronation. As he says this, Wallis reaches out and fixes his hair. The scene is shot from below, so she looms large, as the powerful reason that David didn’t reach the pinnacle of power.

And the jewelry she’s wearing here are replicas of real pieces from her collection: two pearl necklaces, the longer of which with its pearl pendant, worn off-center. The shorter of the two necklaces, in real life, was the only piece of jewelry that Queen Mary gave to David; it may be the pearl necklace bought by George V from the estate of Marie Feodorovna of Russia. The bracelet worn on her right wrist is the production’s version of Wallis’s gem-set cross charm bracelet, which was made by Cartier.

As the Windsors play for the cameras, Queen Elizabeth II is presenting her plans to have Philip lead her coronation commission. She’s wearing one of the “inspired by” brooches here.

Nobody but Elizabeth and Philip are excited about his proposed role in the coronation planning. Here’s the Queen Mum’s reaction. (I’m disappointed at how small her role has been in this production so far. I’m also disappointed that we’ve had so few decent close-ups of her jewels. These things go hand in hand.)

As Tommy Lascelles and the Queen Mum decide how to keep the Duke of Windsor away from the coronation, we get a Brooch Continuity flub: the QM wasn’t wearing a brooch during the meeting, but immediately afterward, she has a diamond feather brooch pinned to her dress.

The Duke of Windsor is a pressing issue, because he’s in town to visit Queen Mary. She’s dying. The two of them bond as much as they can, the best way they know how: silently smoking next to each other in her sickbed.

Lascelles and the Archbishop of Canterbury (played by Ronald Pickup) break the news to David that Wallis isn’t going to be invited to the coronation. Predictably, he refuses to attend himself, on the grounds that Wallis should be included — which is exactly what they want him to do.

The meeting is interrupted by a call from Marlborough House. Queen Mary has died. The family gathers at her bedside. We recognize the four figures on the left as Queen Elizabeth II and her family. David stands on the right. We’re not introduced to the others in the frame, but there are several other people who would have been present, including the Princess Royal, the Duchess of Kent, and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.

Immediately after her death, the family is milling about, picking out things they’d like to have. (I find this a little strange, because I’m pretty certain she left virtually everything she owned to Queen Elizabeth II.) David narrates all of this in a letter to Wallis. He hates everyone and everything. (I think that David’s perspective is particularly useful in the later scenes of this episode, but I’m disappointed that we viewed Mary’s death through him. I wanted to see more of the Queen’s perspective, given the close connection that the series has developed between the two. I also wish there had been an acknowledgment that Mary didn’t want her death to delay Elizabeth’s coronation.)

The family gathers for Mary’s funeral; the production appears to have combined her state funeral in London and her burial service at Windsor for this scene.

Philip whispers to Elizabeth about the funeral’s repetitiveness — it’s just the same as George VI’s funeral. Who needs all this tradition, he whispers, when you can have modernity? They’re standing in the front row, and I can’t believe Elizabeth lets him talk as long as she does before shushing him. Have some respect, Phil.

Philip takes his feelings about change with him to the first meeting of the coronation commission, where he’s seated across from that old symbol of tradition himself, Churchill. Philip also literally has royal tradition looming over his shoulder. Behind him, that’s the Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I.

As Philip begans to outline the changes he wants to make to the traditional coronation service, however, the portrait is obscured behind him, as if he’s blotting out history itself.

Members of the committee are alarmed enough by Philip’s plans to ransack tradition that they send Churchill in to talk to the Queen about her meddling husband. She wears the other “inspired by” brooch to hear his concerns. One of the things they’re most upset about is…

…Philip’s plan to have the coronation televised. People watching the service at home wouldn’t observe the proper respect for the ceremony, they worried. They could eat while watching!

Elizabeth heads to the Abbey, wearing the “inspired by” bow brooch, to try to diffuse the situation.

She and Philip end up rowing in the quire. She finally agrees to have the coronation televised — but only if Philip will kneel and pay homage to her, just as the other peers will. He is extremely unhappy about this prospect, and they have an even bigger fight about husbands and wives and masculinity. Seems like Queen Mary should maybe have addressed that letter about Elizabeth Mountbatten vs. the Queen to Philip instead.

Coronation day dawns, and we’re in Paris with the Duke of Windsor. In our third mirror scene of the episode, David adjusts his outfit in a mirror. He’s the only monarch in the episode who doesn’t wear the St. Edward’s Crown when he looks in the mirror (again, because he wasn’t crowned, so he never wore it).

David and Wallis aren’t going to the coronation, but thanks to Philip and the magic of television, they can host a watch party in their villa for lots of their friends. They get very fancy for the occasion; check out that giant feather brooch on Wallis’s dress.

I like the way that The Crown approached the coronation ceremony. Because it really was televised, we’re pretty familiar with the images of most parts of the service. In this episode, that’s how we see most of the coronation: through cameras and lenses and filters and television screens.

But as the service progresses to the anointing — the part that little Elizabeth and her father were rehearsing at the beginning of the episode — the television cameras cut away. This also happened in the real-life broadcast. The anointing was too sacred, it was thought, for television cameras to film it. Only two coronations — 1937 and 1953 — have been documented by either photographic or television cameras, and the anointing was not captured in either case. Only the people who were actually present could see it, and even then, the monarch is covered by a canopy, further shielding the moment from view.

I think it was rather brilliant, then, for the series to bring us inside the coronation at precisely this moment. It gives us a view we’ve never seen before; it also resonates with the Queen’s conversations with her late father and late grandmother about the relationship between the monarch and the divine.

For this sacred encounter, all of the bejeweled splendor of monarchy is removed. It’s just the Queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the holy oil.

The series lets us watch some of the other major players watching the sacred anointing. Here’s our first look at the replicas of the Queen Mother’s and Princess Margaret’s coronation jewels. (See this photo from the coronation for comparison purposes.) The Queen Mother wore the circlet from her crown, which includes the Koh-i-Noor diamond. (The replica here is too tall and too closely-gathered.)

In real life, Princess Margaret wore the Cartier Halo Tiara at the coronation, but the series has substituted a completely different tiara here. I’ve read that there were copyright issues with reproductions of the Halo tiara. It’s understandable, then, that a substitution had to be made, but the difference is really jarring, especially when placed beside the more carefully replicated jewels worn by the Queen Mum.

Clementine Churchill is wearing a sort of diamond floral tiara here; in real life, she wore the Essex Tiara, which was also made by Cartier. Perhaps all Cartier jewel replicas were nixed? Is that why we’ve not seen the Nizam tiara or necklace?

Philip, wearing the collar of the Order of the Garter over his robes, looks a little ill.

For his houseguests, the Duke of Windsor offers various reasons that the anointing is not being shown on television. In the end, it all boils down to perception: an ordinary woman becomes extraordinary when wrapped up in the trappings of monarchy. She becomes more than a human; she becomes a goddess.

As the Archbishop finishes the anointing, he looks at the Queen as if she is exactly that: something new, something changed, something almost divine.

We get to see two more parts of the coronation “in person.” First: the coronation itself. Here, you can see the replica versions of the sceptres and the gold armills.

We’ve seen several different kinds of crowns in the series so far, and we’ve seen two monarchs place the crown on their own heads, but this is the moment when we actually see the crown used to create a monarch.

The peers in attendance replace their coronets, and so does Princess Margaret (with her distracting tiara). A couple of other things here: the production’s version of Queen Victoria’s waterfall brooch, pinned to the Queen Mum’s Garter sash; bored Prince Charles; and the woman standing next to the Queen Mother. She should be the Princess Royal (George VI’s sister), but the tiara isn’t right, and she’s not wearing robes.

The camera slides to the other side of the royal box, where the Mountbattens sit. (For some reason, the production has put Edwina Mountbatten in the Spencer Honeysuckle Tiara?!? Some have suggested that the real tiara she wore at the coronation, the Mountbatten Tiara, might have been made by Cartier. Maybe this substitution is proof of that?) Also: there’s Princess Andrew (Philip’s mother) in her habit, sitting behind her brother. And I think the woman at the far left of the image is wearing a replica of Queen Mary’s Honeysuckle Tiara, so perhaps she’s meant to be the Duchess of Gloucester?

Here’s another view of the production’s replicas of the crown jewels. We get a good look here at the coronation ring, worn on the right hand.

After the Queen is crowned, Philip approaches the dais and kneels before his wife, paying homage to her as his monarch.

Elizabeth is stoic. (I also appreciate that they let her look a little tired in the coronation close-ups.) Note the coronation earrings here.

After Philip rises, he taps the crown, which is part of the homage. (Here’s your friendly reminder that, in real life, at the end of the coronation, Philip went up to Elizabeth, looked at the Imperial State Crown on her head, and coolly asked, “Where did you get that hat?”)

And then we pull back out of the Abbey, viewing the rest of the coronation on television screens. Back in Paris, we get our last “mirror” scene of the episode. The Duke of Windsor is reflected in the glass of the television screen, but he’s also seeing the monarch — someone he used to be and isn’t anymore. Even the grand tale of abdicating for love seems to stick in his craw at this moment.

What’s a former king to do? Play bagpipes and cry. As one does.