‘The Crown’ Season 4 Episode 4: Was Prince Edward bullied? Truth behind Queen's quest to find her ‘favorite’ child
Chronicling the life of Queen Elizabeth II and her family, ‘The Crown’ sheds light on little secrets and hidden facts about the royals that no one would have known. In Episode 4 ‘Favourites’, the Queen (Olivia Colman) is sympathetic towards Margaret Thatcher's (Gillian Anderson) preference for her son over her daughter and it leads the monarch to question who her own favorite child is.
To draw a conclusion, she goes on a quest to find the answer and sets up a confidential lunch with each of her children and through their private conversations, we find out a lot about their early lives. “I got a terrible fright when I heard you wanted lunch à deux,” Prince Edward (Angus Imrie) tells her and worriedly asks, “I'm still getting my civil list money?” Sarcastically, the Queen replies, “Yes, all twenty thousand of it.” Instead of being grateful, Edward starts complaining, “Most of it goes on secretarial expenses anyway.” The Queen remarks, “800 pounds go in secretarial expenses. I checked. Which still leaves a small fortune. All safely tucked away in a trust.” Edward then comments upon poached salmon for lunch and jokes how he had a bet with his protection officer that's what will be on the menu.
The mother-son duo's candid catch up session reveals many secrets. “Weren't you almost caught smoking?” she asks, to which he unapologetically says, “Yes, but I was clever to get away with it.” When the Queen points out his privileged life, he says it doesn't come without challenges and then reveals how he might have been bullied a bit as normal Eddie Windsor, but as Prince Edward, third in line to the throne... it's on a new level.
When the Queen is persistent to find out how he was bullied, Edward begins his sordid saga. “Uh, they call me Jaws, for my braces. They fill plastic spoons with saliva and flick it at the back of my head. They put superglue on my chair. Gave me a bottle of white wine as a gift which turned out to be — urine. They even went to the trouble of chilling it. One can't help admiring their ingenuity.” Worriedly, the Queen asks if he needs any extra help and he says he wishes to study at Cambridge using the power that comes from being born with a silver spoon. “There has to be some upside for who we are. And some return for what we do for the country,” he says.
That scene makes you turn back the pages of history books and wonder: Was Prince Edward really bullied or was that fictionalized? Named Prince Edward Antony Richard Louis at birth, he was the first of Elizabeth's children to be born with Prince Philip in the delivery room. As The Independent notes, royal biographer Ingrid Seward wrote that the Duke of Edinburgh was “holding his wife's hand” as their youngest was born on March 10, 1964. “The Queen, by then aged 37, had asked him to be there,” Seward wrote in her book ‘My Husband and I: The Inside Story Of 70 Years Of Royal Marriage’. “She'd been keenly reading women's magazines that stressed the importance of involving fathers in childbirth and had become fascinated by the idea.”
Of all four siblings, Edward has been the most interested in the arts. “I love the razzmatazz of show business,” Edward said in 1987, per The Guardian. “It's a wonderful world of fantasy and make-believe.” In her book, Seward also wrote, “Andrew bullied everybody and would constantly swipe his younger brother. If he saw Edward going for a particular cake, Andrew would try and grab it first.” Of the young Edward, she said, “He was a sweet child, whose delicate good looks and permanently flushed cheeks endeared him to the Palace staff.”
At Gordonstoun, the notoriously rigorous boys' public school in north Scotland, he outshone Andrew, becoming the Guardian (Head Boy) and excelling in sport and drama, a BBC report reads. He passed nine O-Levels and three A-Levels at grade C and two Ds. Despite his results, and amid much controversy, the prince was given a place at Cambridge to read history.
Another biography reads: “Edward was a bookish child, who preferred to spend time alone. He studied with a tutor at Buckingham Palace until he was 7 years old, at which time he enrolled in a pre-preparatory school in Kensington called Gibbs School. In 1972, he moved on to Heatherdown Preparatory School in Berkshire. In 1977, Edward started attending his father's alma mater, the Gordonstoun School in Moray, Scotland, where he excelled in sports. He was an active participant in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award program and even took home a Gold Award.”
In the 10-episodic Netflix series, after meeting with each of her children, the Queen finds them all wanting and comes to the painful realization that she has failed as a mother. After flicking through old pages of their photo album, she confesses to Philip, “It's our children who are lost. Edward seems entirely lost, and bullied and vengeful.” As has been widely known, the Queen considers Prince Andrew to be her favorite one. She finds consolation in the fact that she has also had to play mother to the nation and as it appears, Britain is moving closer to war in the Falklands. It is a role she must continue playing without flinching.
Catch all 10 episodes of ‘The Crown’ Season 4 that premiered on November 15, 2020, on Netflix.