Peter Morgan’s decision to use the death of a child as a plot device is unforgiveable, and makes this episode difficult to sit through
Is Peter Morgan devoid of empathy in general, or for the upper classes in particular? Whichever it is, this episode of The Crown should leave him feeling utterly ashamed.
I do not mean the nudge-nudge, wink-wink inferences about the Duke of Edinburgh’s relationship with Penny Knatchbull. The show has hinted at the Duke’s wandering eye before, so that’s par for the course. I mean Morgan’s unforgivable decision to use, as a plot device to get the pair together on screen, the death of the Mountbattens’ five-year-old daughter, Leonora.
There is no earthly reason why the death of a young child from cancer – a real person, whose parents and siblings are still living – should be shoehorned into this soap opera. But there is Natascha McElhone as Penny, weeping at her daughter’s funeral. Why are we intruding upon this family’s private grief? Because it provides an opportunity in the script for the Queen to suggest that Philip pays a visit to the Mountbattens’ home.
And while there – at Leonora’s grave, no less – Philip takes the opportunity to deliver a speech. While the stability of his marriage to the Queen has been reassuring to someone who had an insecure childhood, he explains, “it doesn’t take into account the one thing human beings do the minute they make a commitment to a life together: grow in separate directions”. In other words, Philip is spinning the old “my wife doesn’t understand me” line.