‘The Crown’ Season 4 Episode 2: What is the Balmoral Test? The truth behind Diana and Prince Philip's trip
A deer is seen in the far sight as a gun is aimed at it. “Adjust the sight to 100 yards. And we release the lock and gently squeeze the trigger,” a young lad is taught. The second episode of ‘The Crown’ titled ‘The Balmoral Test’ begins with a game of deer hunting. As the episode moves ahead, we see Prince Charles (Josh O'Connor) and Princess Diana (Emma Corin) stealing a conversation.
The season puts the spotlight on safeguarding the line of succession by finding an appropriate bride for Prince Charles who is still unmarried at 30. How will the royal family decide she is ‘the one’ for Prince Charles? The episode begins with Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) and her husband Denis Thatcher (Stephen Boxer) pay their first visit to holiday with the royal family in Balmoral. Before stepping in, Denis tells Thatcher about a warning from Malcolm Muggeridge [English journalist and satirist] to watch out for the “infamous Balmoral tests” through which the royals routinely subject all their guests “to find out if someone is acceptable or not acceptable”.
What is the Balmoral Test?
An excerpt from ‘A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II’ sheds light on those times.
“In the autumn of 1946, Philip was invited to Balmoral... In a sense, he, too, was waiting to see what would happen. He has given the impression that the understanding between them gradually deepened into certainty, and perhaps the whole Household was in suspense awaiting the news. The purpose of his stay there was, at least partly, to give him a final and thorough vetting as to his suitability for life in the Royal Family. It has been speculated that there is what is called ‘the Balmoral test’. Any prospective spouse who fails to enjoy the spartan surroundings, or the tiring days spent tramping the hills in the rain, will not do. One who immediately passed this had been Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, while a conspicuous failure was her sister-in-law, Wallis Simpson (on first glimpsing the tartan carpets, she had exclaimed: ‘Those will have to go!’). If there is such a test, there was little danger that Philip would be found wanting. As a schoolboy at Gordonstoun, he was already accustomed to living in northern Scotland. He was keen on outdoor pursuits, and adapted without difficulty to the shooting-and-stalking culture of Deeside.”
So, what really was the Balmoral Test? In simpler words, it is a trip for a girlfriend or boyfriend — or even a relative, a new friend or close associate — to go to Balmoral to spend time with the family and to see if they fit in.
Former royal butler Grant Harrold, who worked for the royal family for seven years and met many guests of the Queen, told the Daily Record: “Balmoral, like Sandringham, is the Queen’s private family home. It is a great place to be around the royal family and for them to get to know you. It can be a bit of a test to make sure you pass the muster. You are going to want to dress the part, speak the part and behave the part. For Princess Diana that was easy [because] she came from a similar background. But that’s not true of all the guests who are invited to Balmoral.”
What happens at Balmoral Castle?
Queen Elizabeth II’s private Scottish estate, Balmoral Castle is a large estate house in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland by the River Dee in Aberdeenshire. It is there that the Queen spends the summer break and enjoys hunting, fishing, hiking and exploring the grounds on horseback along with her family. According to several historians, Balmoral is considered to be the Queen’s favorite residence.
On the show, Prince Charles, meanwhile, continues in earnest to court Lady Diana Spencer however still hesitant about the match, he seeks guidance from Camilla who persuades him to invite Diana to Balmoral. Facing opposition in her cabinet to the speed and severity of her policies, Margaret Thatcher struggles with the concept of taking a ‘holiday’ and finds herself a fish out of water in the rarefied world of the royal court.
Having started her premiership on a positive footing with the Queen, cracks start to appear in the relationship as the weekend exposes their stark differences and the Prime Minister leaves Scotland galvanized to sweep aside the old establishment within her own cabinet. But while Thatcher fails the Balmoral Tests, Diana passes with flying colors and the Duke of Edinburgh urges Prince Charles to propose.
Did Princess Diana really go with Prince Philip?
In the show, Princess Diana heads out on an early morning stag hunt with Prince Philip and turns out to be a “triumph”. As per royal biographer Penny Junor, Diana really went to stay at Balmoral in the summer of 1980 and “went down a storm.” Junor added how she “seemed to be the perfect girl. She was funny, she was fun, everybody seemed to love her – she made everyone laugh and she seemed to adore Charles.”
“Diana grew up in a family that hunted, shot and fished, they were real country people. Her father held shoots at the Spencer estate, Althorp, which of course is where she first met Charles in 1977. I think she would have been very knowledgeable about stalking – as the daughter of an Earl, that would have been part of her education,” she says.
In fact, in the episode, Princess Diana says, “I’m a country girl at heart!” Was that really true? “When Charles and Diana first met, she gave the impression that she loved the countryside, loved horses, loved long walks in the heather and the mud. But the reality was actually she didn’t – she wasn’t interested in dogs and she didn’t like horses; she loved girly lunches at San Lorenzo and shopping in Harrods. She was a city girl at heart, she much preferred London. Even as a child she would have spent a lot of time in the city because her mother had a house there [Diana’s parents separated when she was just six years old], and after they left school, her elder sisters also had flats in London that she used to visit,” Junor reveals.
Catch all ten episodes of ‘The Crown’ Season 4 once they drop on November 15, 2020, on Netflix.