Time for our penultimate recap of The Crown for the season, everyone! It’s time to check in with the jewels and history presented in “Imbroglio.” (Missed any of the earlier recaps? You can find them all here!)

We pick up the action almost exactly where we left off in the previous episode. It’s May 31, 1972, and a Royal Air Force plane is bringing the body of the late Duke of Windsor back to England.

Six days later, on Monday, June 5, 1972, the Duke is buried on the Frogmore estate in Windsor.

We get another glimpse of Geraldine Chaplin as Wallis, who is heavily veiled for the funeral. The costuming is quite accurate. Less accurate, though, is the brooch on the Queen Mother, who’s in the background over Wallis’s right shoulder. Production has put her in their replica of the Teck Emperor of Austria Brooch, which she never owned and never wore. (Go figure.) In reality, the Queen Mum wore one of her favorite jewels, Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Brooch, for the funeral.

The Queen, who is watching Prince Charles warily throughout the scene, is shown wearing a diamond bow brooch. The design of the brooch is similar to that of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Bow Brooches. Close, but no cigar: the Queen really wore the Dorset Bow Brooch for the funeral. Honestly, though, when compared to most of the “jewels” shown this season, I’ll take it.

It wouldn’t be an episode of The Crown without a soapy reflection moment, and this episode goes the distance, showing Charles considering his own reflection in the glass over a photograph of the late Duke of Windsor. (Hey, did you know they were both Princes of Wales, and they both had troubled romantic lives? Did you???)

Wallis chats with Charles at Windsor Castle after the services are over. It’s doubtful that the real Wallis was nearly as composed as she’s presented here; the papers reported that she was in shock after the Duke’s death, and she was accompanied by her American doctor during the funeral. She also apparently went directly from the funeral service to a royal plane and headed straight back home to Paris.

The fictional Wallis, however, chats with Charles, even asking whether Camilla is around. (Gyles Brandreth argues that even Charles’s parents didn’t really know about Camilla, let alone Wallis.)

She gives him a memento from the Duke’s collection: a pocket watch and compass, which had been a gift from her to the Duke in the 1930s.

She also tells him to watch out for his family.

Camilla is waiting outside the castle to see Charles before he leaves for the naval academy at Dartmouth, and she sees Wallis leaving as she arrives. She’s spooked by the whole business. (Did you know that both Camilla and Wallis were divorcees who married Princes of Wales? Did you???)

We switch gears quickly, as the Queen’s attention is turned to a coal miners’ strike. The 1972 strike took place long before the Duke’s death, from early January until the end of February. This particular moment from the strike, the Battle of Saltley Gate, was a mass picket of a fuel depot in Birmingham. The picketing took place from February 3-10.

The Queen, as she always seems to do in this show, sits motionless and silent as she watches the events unfold on television. (Also unfortunately standard on the show this season: the brooch and no pearls accessory depiction.)

As the strike continues, we’re shown some background on Edward Heath. We see him learning to play the piano as a little boy in Kent, and then playing as an adult. Heath really was an accomplished classical musician, even installing a grand piano at 10 Downing Street during his tenure as PM.

The Queen wears her pearls/no brooch combo for an audience with Heath, who isn’t interested in negotiating with the National Union of Mineworkers.

Later, she talks about their conversation with Prince Philip. He’s gotten some dirt on Heath, including the sad story of a childhood romance gone wrong. (Heath never married.)

Speaking of young romances about to go wrong, Prince Charles is busy with his naval training at Dartmouth. (In real life, Charles completed his six weeks of training at Dartmouth in October 1971, months before the death of the Duke of Windsor. As I mentioned in the last recap, he was already serving on the Norfolk off the coast of France when the Queen made her last visit to her uncle.)

He pours his heart out to Camilla over the telephone while they’re apart.

When Lord Mountbatten comes to visit, he’s dismayed to see how lovesick and distracted Charles seems.

Dickie heads straight to Clarence House, where he and the Queen Mother discuss Charles and Camilla’s romance. Neither of them are happy about the situation, and they decide that it’s time to break them up. Dickie will engineer a naval posting for Charles, and the Queen Mother will handle Camilla. (It’s worth mentioning that all of this plotting is fictional.)

Meanwhile, the talks between the government and the miners’ union are going absolutely terribly.

Since no agreement has been reached, the nation is facing real problems with their power supply. Charteris briefs Elizabeth and Philip on the governments’ plan for intermittent power cuts.

The Queen, in — guess what? — pearls and no brooch, gives Martin this concerned face. It’s so fascinating to me that the show has almost totally stopped offering a perspective on her inner thoughts and feelings this season. Surely the whole premise of this show is to reveal (fictional) insights into how she feels? She’s often just as much of a cypher here as she is in real life.

Speaking of characters who have been left behind by this show, here’s the Queen Mother, holding court in candlelight in the middle of a power cut. It’s nearly impossible to see, but she’s actually wearing some sort of brooch pinned to her jacket here. Leave it to The Crown to find a way to make their poorly lit scenes even darker!

Hidden in the shadows here are Bruce and Rosalind Shand and Derek and Ann Parker Bowles, who have been summoned to Clarence House so that the Queen Mum can tell them that their children have to get married. It’s both completely fictional and the most interesting thing that her character has done all season.

At Dartmouth, Charles is informed that he’s passed his exams, and even though he’s not done with training, he’s being sent to the Caribbean. He is immediately suspicious that strings have been pulled.

(Historical reality check: Charles’s first official posting, a nine-month stint aboard the missile destroyer Norfolk, was publicly announced in August 1971, weeks before he even arrived at Dartmouth for training. It was always part of the plan, not a plot engineered by Mountbatten. I feel like that last sentence should be a disclaimer on every episode of the show, really.)

But in the world of The Crown, Charles knows that someone’s trying to send him off to keep him away from Camilla. He heads straight to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen what’s up.

The Queen (in pearls and — wait for it — no brooch) wasn’t aware of the string-pulling, but she immediately knows who to ask about it.

She calls in Dickie and the Queen Mum for a meeting, and they spill the beans about their (fictional) meddling. But, they explain, it’s all for a good reason.

And then we cut to perhaps my favorite scene of this entire season: Princess Anne, driving to Buckingham Palace, belting out David Bowie’s “Starman” at the top of her lungs in her very posh accent. It’s fantastic. (For what it’s worth historically, the song was released on April 28, 1972, and it climbed the charts in Britain that summer.)

Anne’s been summoned to the palace to tell everyone about Camilla, Charles, and Andrew Parker Bowles. She’s convinced that Camilla’s mostly still in love with Andrew.

She also tells them about her own fling with Andrew, leading the broochless Queen to make this face.

The Queen Mum gives her daughter this “see???” expression. She also explains that Camilla and Andrew’s wedding date has been set. Now someone just needs to tell Charles.

Mountbatten gets that job.

Meanwhile, the Queen watches even more television footage of Britons suffering because of the strike.

And Charles calls Camilla, who tells him that she really does love him, but she does love Andrew, too.

(Okay. Nobody really knows all the ins and outs of the end of Charles and Camilla’s early romance, but the facts seem to go like this: just before Christmas in 1972, they spent time together at Broadlands, Lord Mountbatten’s country estate. He didn’t propose, and he went back to his naval duties. Family members told Gyles Brandreth that that weekend in December, Charles had had his chance to win Camilla once and for all — but didn’t take it. There wasn’t a plot to separate them; Charles just didn’t ask her to marry him. Andrew Parker Bowles did, and their engagement was announced on March 15, 1973. Charles reportedly wrote to Mountbatten that he was upset by the news, but “the feeling of emptiness will pass eventually.”)

Back at Buckingham Palace, Heath reports once again that the miners aren’t budging in their negotiations.

The Queen (no brooch!) is unhappy — she thinks that Heath’s clearly not giving enough consideration to the union, and she’s upset that the blackouts are still going on.

(The 1972 strike ended on February 28 of that year, when the union accepted an offer that raised miners’ pay. The deal happened shortly after the Battle of Saltley Gate.)

The episode ends with the Queen delivering a speech on the occasion of her 25th wedding anniversary. That celebration happened in November 1972. She really did make a short speech to mark the occasion, but it happened during a luncheon at the Guildhall in London, not during a glittering evening banquet.

The tiaras on display are, well, complete and utter inventions. Not a royal replica to be seen here!

We’ve got some sort of invented diamond scroll tiara on the Queen Mother…

…and a tiara set with rubies (!) on Princess Margaret. (She had diamonds, pearls, sapphires, and turquoises — no ruby tiaras.)

As the Queen waxes poetic about her marriage, we see glimpses into others’ romances. In Paris, Wallis grieves for David…

…and at the Guards Chapel in London, the Queen Mother looks very smug in pearls for a wedding.

Surprise! It’s the marriage of Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles, which happened on July 4, 1973. The ceremony really was attended by the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, and Princess Anne. Charles was invited but had to decline because of a scheduling conflict.

In The Crown‘s fictional version of history, Charles is alone and distraught in the West Indies.

And although she’s saying lots of things about happy marriages, the Queen ends up with this expression, in all of these completely invented jewels. Sigh.

Time for yet another recap of The Crown, Netflix’s royal soap. Here’s the lowdown on the (disappointing) jewelry and the (mixed-up, as always) history of episode eight, “Dangling Man.” (Missed any of our earlier recaps? Catch up here!)

We open with text helpfully telling us that it’s 1970 and we’re in Paris. The Duke of Windsor, now being played by Sir Derek Jacobi, isn’t feeling well at all. Turns out it’s throat cancer, and there’s not much they can do about it. I’m not at all sure why The Crown decided to start with that date stamp, as the Duke was diagnosed with cancer in late 1971. It was the last and most serious in a series of major health crises for the former king, who had undergone several operations in the 1960s, including one at an ophthalmology clinic in London in 1965.

After his diagnosis, David discusses the matter with Wallis, who is now being played by Geraldine Chaplin. (Quite a casting coup, getting these two for the roles — Chaplin in particular is very good in the part.) She wants to throw a party so they can focus on happy times while they still can. David insists that he needs to focus now on rehabbing his reputation while he has the chance.

They go with his plan. First up: a visit from Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako of Japan. This meeting really did take place in October 1971, while the Japanese imperial couple were in Paris for a quick private visit during a foreign tour. The emperor and the foreign king had once played golf together in Tokyo when both were heirs to their respective thrones.

Production did a decent job of replicating the outfits worn by both the empress and the duchess for the half-hour meeting. Both couples leave feeling glad they’re not in the others’ shoes, though David does say, of course, that it wouldn’t be bad at all to be the ruler of an island nation. (Mm-hm.) The show doesn’t mention it, but the visit with the Windsors was just a British royal appetizer for the Emperor and Empress, who headed to London for a grand state visit immediately afterward.

In the world of this show, though, the Queen’s apparently too busy reading about the Windsors’ meeting with the imperial couple to put on a state visit herself. Wearing a microscopic invented gold brooch, she talks to the Queen Mother about the situation.

The Queen Mum, perhaps the character best suited to have an interesting storyline in this episode, mostly just makes this face. SIGH.

Meanwhile, Prince Charles is super curious about the other man who recently inhabited the title of Prince of Wales, and he heads over to Paris to meet with him. Charles, encouraged by Mountbatten, really was pushing at this point in history for more connections between the Windsors and the Windsors. The Duke and Duchess had come to London for brief visits in the 1960s, both medical and ceremonial. According to Jonathan Dimbleby, Charles wanted the Queen to invite David and Wallis for a weekend visit in 1970, but that didn’t happen. Dimbleby suggests that the Queen Mum wasn’t particularly receptive to the plan, though other palace sources have disputed that.

Charles really did meet with the Duke and Duchess in October 1970 — a full year before the cancer diagnosis and the Japanese meeting — stopping by for a brief, last-minute meeting while on a hunting holiday in France with Christopher Soames (who was British ambassador to France at the time — and, of course, a son-in-law of Churchill).

Meanwhile, back in England, we’re introduced to a couple who will become very important to the storyline going forward: Andrew Parker Bowles and his on-off girlfriend, Camilla Shand.

Camilla, played by Emerald Fennell, isn’t pleased with Andrew’s recent philandering, and she refuses to go with him to a military ball being held that evening.

At the ball, Andrew (played by Andrew Buchan) encounters another interesting woman…

…Princess Anne, who’s apparently had a crush on him for a while and is very receptive to his flirtations. She’s wearing a suite of invented diamond jewelry and a little bejeweled feather in her hair.

Their flirtation turns into a fling. (Anne and Andrew really did date in the early ’70s. In his biographer of Charles and Camilla, Gyles Brandreth says that their relationship began in 1970, when Anne was 19 and Andrew was 30, and that their flirtation turned into “a full-blown affair during the week of Royal Ascot.”)

Andrew soon meets with another member of the royal family, Prince Charles, on the field at Guards Polo Club in Windsor.

The Queen Mother and Lord Mountbatten cheer for Charles on the sidelines…

…as, unexpectedly, does Camilla Shand. The Brandreth biography notes that many have speculated that Camilla set her cap at Charles as a way to get revenge on Andrew for his affair with Anne. He notes that according “to Charles and Camilla, that simply is not true,” but concedes that it’s “most certainly how the story will be told when the movie comes to be made.” Turns out he was right about that! The Crown never comes out and says it directly in this episode, but it hints mightily at Camilla’s motives.

Charles has lunch with Mountbatten after the match. They talk about the Duke of Windsor, who thinks Charles should find a wife. He tells Mountbatten that he’s found a girl he likes — Camilla. Mountbatten advises him that he’s too young for serious relationships, and that he should be “sowing his wild oats.” (The real Mountbatten gave the real Charles that advice in a letter in 1974.)

But Charles is already smitten. In a nod to the way they’d eventually conduct their famous affair, Charles and Camilla chat flirtatiously on the telephone.

He invites her to the palace for dinner, and he also gets in a handy historical time stamp by asking if she’s voted in the general election. (She has.) That means that it’s (at least theoretically) Thursday, June 18, 1970.

The next morning, the Queen wears pearls without a brooch (sigh) for an audience with the winner of said general election.

The new prime minister is Edward Heath (played by Michael Maloney, who coincidentally played Sir Robert Peel in The Young Victoria). Heath’s Conservatives have pulled off a surprise and defeated Harold Wilson’s Labour Party.

Later, in pearls and an invented pearly brooch, the Queen is doing a puzzle when Martin Charteris (who has replaced the retired Michael Adeane) stops by to talk about Heath. They discuss Heath’s desire that she should go to France — he’s passionate about connections with Europe.

Charteris thinks that the Paris visit should include a stop to see the ailing Duke of Windsor.

Philip balks at the idea. (I think it’s odd that they assign Philip the role of the “absolutely not” when it comes to the Windsors in this episode. Shouldn’t that perhaps have gone to the Queen Mother?)

The Queen, in her fake pearly brooch, is torn.

Later that evening, Charles has Camilla over for dinner at the palace apartment he shares with Princess Anne.

Camilla wears her very best strand of royal pearls for the romantic meal, and she’s sympathetic when Charles talks to her about his place (or lack thereof) in the family.

He’s very serious and philosophical, comparing his endless waiting game to the plight of the central character in Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man (hence the title of the episode).

But then, Charles pranks her with an exploding envelope. The seriousness was all a gag — and Camilla thinks it’s hilarious. The series is being deliberately cagey about Camilla’s characterization here, but if this is a genuine reaction — and it seems it — it’s a sign that the show’s ready to embrace the (apparently true) idea that Charles and Camilla have compatibly weird senses of humor.

After their laughter dies down, an aide comes in to remind Charles that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s BBC interview will be starting soon. The Windsors really did do a famous televised interview with the BBC; it was filmed in Paris in October 1969 and aired in Britain on the night of January 13, 1970. Much of the dialogue in the Crown version of the interview is taken straight from the real thing.

The Crown loves showing the royals watching themselves on television, so naturally we see Charles and Camilla watching…

…and Mountbatten watching, one of his trusty dogs by his side…

…and the Queen Mum watching, with a bowl of ice cream, because the writers have to keep that one-note characterization consistent, blech…

…and finally the Queen and Philip watching, too. He can’t stand to watch the whole interview, so he leaves her to watch the end alone.

The costuming is pretty spot-on, especially where the Duchess is concerned, though in the real interview, they were sort of both dwarfed by the chairs they were sitting in. (You can see an abridged version of the hour-long interview on YouTube.)

Later, Princess Anne drops in to see Charles, who is busily writing Uncle David a letter. She asks about Camilla, and suggests that her affair with Andrew isn’t anything serious. She warns him that they need to be careful to make sure that Camilla and Andrew don’t use them as part of their romantic games.

In Paris, the Duke of Windsor’s health begins failing fast.

The Duchess, in typical oversized jewelry, is terrified when he’s overcome while playing cards with friends.

We get several silent appearances in the episode from one pivotal member of the Duke and Duchess’s household: his valet, Sidney Johnson, who began working for the couple during their stint in the Bahamas in the 1940s. After the deaths of the Windsors, Johnson helped Mohamed Al-Fayed with his restoration of the Windsors’ villa, which is now owned by the city of Paris. Johnson is played by Connie M’Gadzah.

Wearing yet another production-invented brooch, the Queen flies out for a state visit to Paris. That means that it’s May 15, 1972. In reality, the Queen was joined by Prince Philip for the five-day visit. Elizabeth and Philip stayed at the recently-renovated Grand Trianon at Versailles during their trip. In reality, she wore a very different outfit for her arrival in Paris, along with the Cambridge Pearl Pendant Brooch.

She wore a different outfit with some similarities (though it was turquoise) to lay a wreath at the Arc de Triomphe, which doesn’t look anything like this. She wore her modern gold, diamond, and ruby brooch for that part of the visit. (Here’s some newsreel footage of her arrival and the wreath-laying.)

The Queen makes a speech wearing this hat and a little invented gold brooch, and afterward, Charteris tells her that she needs to go see the Duke, who isn’t doing well.

Not doing well is an understatement. The Duke has to be hoisted out of his sick bed to get dressed and get in a wheelchair for the last-minute visit. He’s not well enough to greet her — that’s left to Wallis, who curtseys deeply.

This visit really did take place, on May 18, 1972, but the show is taking significant fictional liberties. Wallis was indeed photographed curtseying to the Queen during this visit, but the Queen wasn’t alone. She was accompanied by both Philip and Charles. In May 1972, Charles was serving on a destroyer off the South of France, and he was able to meet his parents for part of the official trip. The visit was planned from the start, not a last-minute decision; the date was set weeks in advance and reported in the press before the Queen even left for France. The royal party stopped at the Windsors’ villa on their way back from a visit to the races at Longchamps. As always, the show likes to make it seem that the Windsors are struggling deeply with decisions and then making them at the last second; that may be good for drama, but it’s not generally how things go in the royal world.

The clothing and jewelry also don’t match the clothes that the real women wore during the visit. The Queen wore the Dorset Bow Brooch for the meeting, while Wallis wore a dark dress with a big brooch, hoop earrings, and a coordinating bracelet. (Here’s an image from the real visit, though you’ll note that the date on the photograph is incorrect.)

In the world of The Crown, the Queen walks into the villa alone and immediately encounters a very strange sight: one of the famous red despatch boxes, which the monarch uses for state papers. This one is labeled with “The King,” but it’s also decorated with the familiar heraldic badge of the Prince of Wales, featuring a trio of feathers and a coronet, as well as the motto “Ich Dien” (I serve). The badge is rendered in heavy gold, like a paperweight, and is situated beside a golden letter opener also featuring the badge. King? Prince of Wales? Neither? Both? Eh.

Upstairs, Uncle David struggles to his feet as he greets his niece and monarch.

The two have a conversation in which she admits that he’s still her favorite uncle, reminds him of his “Shirley Temple” nickname for her, and he says that he underestimated her. He thinks the crown found the right person in the end, and he asks her to forgive him for everything he did.

One note on the framing of this shot: The Crown, being the soap opera that it is, has always used mirrors and reflection to symbolize, well, actual self-reflective moments, especially where the Duke of Windsor is concerned. I’m very interested in the way that Elizabeth and David are rendered here where the mirror is concerned.

David tells her all about his correspondence with Prince Charles and gives her Charles’s letters, telling her to read up. (Would have been tough to do this in reality with Charles literally in the building!) As the Duke falls asleep mid-conversation, the Queen’s mirrored reflection comes sharply into focus.

She was in the middle of admitting that she’s sometimes grateful that he abdicated, but he’s not able to hear it.

On the plane home, she reads Charles’s letters to the Duke, and we’re treated to some flashbacks of that earlier 1970 visit to Paris. Charles tells Uncle David that it’s a shame that he was forced to abdicate to be with the woman he loved. (Apparently Charles missed episode six of last season!)

In London, Charles writes away while the woman he loves lounges in the tub nearby.

And in Paris, Uncle David dies. The time that elapsed between the Queen’s final visit to her uncle and his death really was very short. The duke died on May 28, 1972, ten days after the Queen saw him for the last time. We’ll pick back up with his funeral in Windsor at the beginning of our next recap.

It’s time once again for a recap from the latest season of The Crown! Our series has arrived at episode seven, “Moondust,” which involves a whole lot of angst about aging and — sadly — very little jewelry at all. (Need to catch up on our previous recaps? They’re all here!)

We begin with a date stamp that helpfully tells us it’s July 5, 1969. Prince Philip is at Windsor Castle, watching a televised press conference with the astronauts who are about to head for the moon.

The Queen comes in, wearing pearls and no brooch, and tells Phil that she’s sent a goodwill message to travel to the moon along with the astronauts. She’s pretty excited about it.

The next morning, the whole family goes to church, and the Queen and the Queen Mother both wear little production-invented brooches. The Dean of Windsor gives a sermon that puts almost everyone to sleep, and Phil convinces Liz that it’s time to start shopping for a new priest to fill the office.

(Historical sidenote: this scene is supposed to be set in 1969, but it’s sort of based on events from 1962. That year, the longtime Dean of Windsor, Eric Hamilton, left the office — not because he was too boring, but because he died! Not quite the same, though the Guardian did once describe Hamilton’s tenure as dean as “sleepy.”)

Two weeks or so later, at Buckingham Palace, the entire royal family gathers to watch the Apollo 11 rocket lift off. The scene is kind of amusing, given Princess Margaret’s complaint in an earlier episode that they never watched television in the palace all together. I have no idea whether they really gathered to watch this part of the Apollo mission.

We get glimpses of the actors playing the minor members of the family, including the Duchess of Gloucester in a brooch.

We also see Tony Snowdon with some groovy new sideburns, and Princess Margaret in gold earrings and a rocket-themed party hat…

…which she and Princess Anne then start stacking on the sleeping Queen Mum, who is at least wearing a nice pearl bracelet.

Later, after everyone else has already left, Philip continues watching the Apollo coverage. He gets pretty obsessive about the whole thing.

The new Dean of Windsor, Robin Woods, interrupts Philip’s frantic consumption of moon-related news. He wants to know if he can start a new center on the castle grounds for priests having mid-career faith crises. Philip scoffs at the idea, but tells him to do what he wants.

(On The Crown, this scene takes place in July 1969, but in the real world, Robin Woods became Dean of Windsor in 1962. He even baptized Prince Edward in 1964 — a scene that was shown in the last episode of season two. He and Philip started the center in question, St. George’s House, together in 1966. It’s not just a retreat for clergy but also a residential conference center for thoughtful conversations between people from different areas of influence, including the arts, government, and business.)

Back at Windsor Castle, the royals gather to watch the lunar landing. Philip is in complete awe of the achievement of the astronauts. (This is accurate: the Queen really did watch the moon landing with her family at Windsor.)

The Apollo mission remains at the front of his mind, even after he returns to his regular slate of engagements. While flying home after a factory visit, he frightens his co-pilot by pushing the aircraft higher and higher, trying to capture some of the astronauts’ experience.

Meanwhile, Robin Woods is succeeding nicely as Dean. The Queen, wearing a little invented gold brooch, greets him happily after a Sunday service.

But Philip’s stopped going to church completely. Woods tracks him down at the castle and convinces him to visit St. George’s House. While there, he takes part in a therapy-like conversation about faith and middle age, and he says he thinks moments like the moon landing are how society now experiences spirituality.

Later, during dinner, the Queen (pearls, no brooch) tells Philip that the Apollo 11 astronauts will be visiting them during their victory tour. She says she hopes that the news will cheer Philip up. He seems surprised that she thinks he needs cheering up at all.

The Queen is still broochless during the planning meeting for the astronaut visit at Buckingham Palace. Philip asks during the meeting to have a private audience with the three astronauts, and Adeane agrees to make it happen.

We fast-forward to the day of the visit, which really took place in October 1969. The Queen, along with Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward, greets Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin, and their wives. In reality, Philip was present for the official welcome; also in reality, the Queen wore the Duchess of Cambridge’s Pearl Pendant Brooch. (That one would have been very easy to replicate! So frustrating.)

In the world of The Crown, though, Philip is alone with his signet ring, compiling a list of very existential questions to ask the astronauts.

He meets privately with the three of them, who are all sick with colds. He’s disappointed at their lack of reflection and introspection about the philosophical questions he’s written. They’re more excited to ask him questions about what it’s like to live in a royal palace. After their fifteen-minute window has closed, he’s clearly deflated by the experience.

(This private audience didn’t quite happen this way. The Queen and the Duke met with the astronauts for 45 minutes, and afterward, they told the press that the Queen was very well-versed in the specifics of their mission. They didn’t mention Philip’s part of the conversation.)

The astronauts and their wives pose for pictures in the palace before leaving. The wardrobe department missed yet another good jewelry moment here: Janet Armstrong wore her Van Cleef and Arpels lunar brooch during the royal visit! Sigh.

Afterward, Liz ‘n Phil talk through his disappointment over the astronauts. He’d imagined them to be giants, but they were just normal young men. Whatever he was hoping to get from the meeting, it didn’t happen.

Afterward, Philip visits his mother’s room, and we realize that the funk he’s been experiencing over the course of the episode has a very specific cause: his mother, Princess Alice, has died.

(The episode’s timeline doesn’t work at all, unfortunately. Alice died in December 1969, several months after the moon landing, and several weeks after the astronauts’ palace visit.)

He goes back to St. George’s House for help, talking about his mother’s death and his crisis of faith. The talking seems to help. The timeline of the episode doesn’t fit at all with the real history of Philip’s life in the late ’60s, but at least Tobias Menzies does the best he can with the script he’s given.

Afterward, the Queen spots Philip walked with Robin Woods, and she’s clearly pleased with the connection they’ve made. And that’s where we leave things this episode.