I miss you most on Sundays

 

When I watch / listen to the Prince Charles-Princess Diana relationship, in The Crown and in Diana: The Musical (both on Netflix) I involuntarily arrive at a theory that the best way to exist in a marriage to someone like Charles would be to never show true feelings.

...Which is what they say they're supposed to do anyway, as royalty, according to The Crown and Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles and other reading.  Don't show true feelings.  Don't express them in words.  Don't show your true self, don't be "individualistic" -- (Winston Churchill's favorite word with which to bombard his various and sundry targets in The Crown).

        Inexplicable side note:  somehow the actress portraying Camilla in the Diana-musical kind of resembles Tina Brown....

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When I was re-watching The French Lieutenant's Woman recently, it kept comparing to The Crown -- the traditional and beautiful interior décor.  The tea.

The décor being so similar is interesting, because French Lieutenant's Woman is set in the mid-1800s; The Crown is set in the mid-1900s.

        One hundred years apart, and yet the furnishings and decorations in homes and offices are the same, at least to my eye....

        This is partly because in The Crown we're seeing where royalty lives, and they keep tradition.  Tina Brown wrote in The Diana Chronicles that royalty are the last bastion of tradition.  While society changes around them, they are the last to change.

Also -- the tea.  Charles Smithson in The French Lieutenant wakes up in the morning and asks his servant to bring him tea.  In The Crown they are often having tea.

        They press a button and ring for tea.

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------------------------- I've noticed that the word "tea" can mean different things...

In The Crown it's a beverage.

On You Tube, young people type in, "Spill the tea!" and what they mean is, 'give us the gossip' -- 'tell us the lowdown'....

In Raymond Chandler novels of the 1940s, tea is a word for marijuana.

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All reviews of Diana: The Musical are -- like -- just attacking it like mad!

        I watch it and see a very good musical play.

        Then I look at reviews and it's this ubiquitous and savage wall of hate.

        (Am beginning to wonder if Buckingham Palace has planted all this hectically negative verbiage....)

-------------- You know, my courtiers, if you didn't want to see Prince Charles being a jerk in the Musical and an ass in The Crown, then maybe Charles shouldn't have been so

false 

and jealous 

and mean 

in the first place.

(On the other hand, Charles is shown, in more than fair fashion in my view, to have his own humanity and exotic pressures placed on him, in both Crown and Diana-Musical.  The audience can see his stress and no-win situations, too.)

        And I had to say, Diana: The Musical is great because it even had me sympathizing somewhat with Camilla Parker Bowles, and I've always seen her as a villain.

        "I Miss You Most on Sundays"...

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