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According to Flannery O’Connor, “Where there is no belief in the soul there is very little drama.” The episode “Dear Mrs. Kennedy” in the second season of The Crown seems to me to illustrate the validity of O’Connor’s remark. Among other soul-related matters, the conscience’s struggle with feelings of jealousy, inferiority, failure and guilt are convincingly presented in this particular episode:

1) Jealousy

Although Queen Elizabeth may have been the most famous woman in the world at the time of her coronation in 1953, in 1960 that honour passed to Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of the first Catholic president of the United States. The First Lady was not only a fashion icon, but was lauded for having charmed the anti-American French president Charles de Gaulle on a State visit to Paris.

2) Feelings of inferiority

The Queen, although only three years older than Jackie, has begun to feel her age, and women are very sensitive in this respect. Moreover she isn’t nearly as well-educated as Jackie, who has studied at the Sorbonne and, unlike Elizabeth, is interested in literature and the Arts. Somewhat of a polyglot, Jackie is fluent in French and also has some Spanish, Italian and German.

3) Male insensitivity

The Queen’s husband Philip, like everyone else in the palace and the government, is very interested in meeting Mrs. Kennedy when she and the President come to visit Buckingham Palace. This interest, combined with Philip’s insistence on sitting next to the First Lady, Elizabeth finds very irritating. After meeting Jackie he not only praises her to his wife, which is bad enough, but he wants to give her a tour of the palace. That’s too much for Elizabeth; she pulls ranks and tells him “No. It’s my house. So I’ll do it.”

4) A change of heart

The Queen tells her sister Margaret that though she’d been all set to loathe Mrs. Kennedy (for all the obvious reasons), she ended up liking her very much. Elizabeth found herself “utterly charmed” on learning that Jackie is a shy person who hates the limelight and feels most at home with animals—just like the Queen herself.

5) Taking revenge by making mischief

Margaret, still smarting from Elizabeth’s refusal to let her marry the man she loves, informs her that “your new best friend” said some things that “did seem a little unkind.” Her source was Patrick Plunket, a mutual friend who overheard some of Jackie’s unflattering comments at her sister’s private dinner party.

6) The instinctive need many women have to hear what other women have said about them, even when it’s hurtful

Elizabeth forces Patrick, the one who passed on Jackie’s comments to Margaret, to reveal what Jackie said at the dinner party. He reluctantly complies and tells Elizabeth that Jackie compared Buckingham Palace to a neglected provincial hotel. After a pregnant pause, sensing there is worse to come, she asks Patrick, “And did she have anything to say about me?” Even more reluctantly Patrick reports what he overheard Jackie say. Elizabeth is deeply and justifiably hurt.

7) A humiliating experience of failure

Elizabeth, wanting to compete with Jackie’s triumph in Paris, goes to Ghana (against the wishes of the government and without Philip’s support) to try to keep the newly independent African state and member of the Commonwealth in the Western orbit and away from the Russians. She eventually pulls it off by allowing herself to be photographed dancing with Ghana’s socialist leader, Kwame Nkrumah, but not before experiencing the humiliation of apparent failure when Prime Minister Macmillan phones to tell her, “It appears Nkrumah has been playing us all off against one another. I’m afraid you’ve been used, Ma’am. Just as we’d feared.”

8) A sincere apology

When Jackie learns that her disparaging comments about Buckingham Palace and the Queen have got back to Elizabeth, she’s distraught and decides that she has to apologize to the Queen personally. Now how often in film or in popular entertainment do we ever see one person sincerely apologizing to another? Unless it’s a stiff or perfunctory apology, almost never! The apology scene brings out another dramatically interesting phenomenon, namely that it’s also hard for the person receiving the apology to accept it gracefully.

9) Feeling bad afterwards

Elizabeth feels bad because she wasn’t very graceful in accepting Jackie’s apology, despite Philip’s iron insistence that she did exactly the right thing. She also feels guilty because it was the feeling of inadequacy that Jackie inspired in her that provided the motivation that led to her triumph in Ghana. But rather than acknowledging to Jackie the debt she feels she owes her, the Queen keeps her peace.

10) The stress of responsibility compounded by indecision

When President Kennedy is assassinated, the Queen knows that some kind of response from the Monarchy is required. But it’s not clear what the appropriate response to this emotionally shattering event should be. The stress of her indecision, no doubt heightened by a desire to relieve her sense of guilt, is vividly conveyed by Elizabeth’s body language. She eventually decrees, against royal tradition, that there be a week of court mourning, and that the bell in Westminster Abbey is to be rung every minute for one hour from 11:00 in the morning to mid-day. Finally after a brief struggle she sits down to write a condolence letter to Jackie.

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