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00:01Turns to the crown today as something fair and pray that heaven bless her till she dies.
00:09Births, marriages and deaths, these are the defining moments for every family.
00:19Britain has had a monarchy for centuries.
00:26This power is passed down by line of succession.
00:35The birth of Prince Archie was historic.
00:38He's part black, he's part American, he's transatlantic.
00:43Henry was absolutely over the moon.
00:46Bonfires were lit, celebrations were had across the city.
00:50Rumour has it that he was stopped by customs and he said, I've got 10,000 pearls for Princess Elizabeth's wedding dress.
01:02The prince was drunk, crying, why am I marrying this woman?
01:09Lord Dawson took a syringe and he injected morphine into the king's neck.
01:18This was regicide.
01:21The historian's archives are a living theatre of the past.
01:31We can hear these voices, we can see these people.
01:35We can feel them, their jealousy, their pain.
01:39We can feel them come alive.
01:42This blessed plot.
01:46This earth.
01:48This realm.
01:50For every bride-to-be, a wedding day is the stuff of fairy tales.
02:03And when the dashing Prince Philip proposed to the 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth in July 1947,
02:09even though she already had her very own glass carriage and a real-life palace, it was no different.
02:16This was a post-war wedding taking place in 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War.
02:23It was a love match.
02:24So Princess Elizabeth was marrying someone that she was definitely in love with.
02:29And I think there is a sense that there was a real kind of investment in that relationship from the public.
02:36People could tell that she was young, that she was in love.
02:39And there was a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about this relationship and about this wedding.
02:46And just two years after a gruelling war with Germany, this was the happy ever after that Britain desperately needed.
02:54The war had come to an end in Europe in May 1945, but Britain was still very much on rations
03:01and London really looked like a bomb site, which it was.
03:04And there hadn't been that much to cheer about.
03:07And finally along came this great bit of news that, you know, this glamorous princess had found her Prince charming
03:14and everything about it was that sort of, you know, fairytale, romantic.
03:19It was just a story everyone wanted to hear.
03:22It came after a really challenging time for people.
03:25But also the royal family had been really at the centre of that war effort.
03:30So Princess Elizabeth had served in the military herself and she had appeared on that Buckingham Palace balcony on VE Day,
03:37along with her parents who had stayed at Buckingham Palace to show solidarity throughout the war.
03:43So there was this real feeling of the family providing that focal point and providing a reason to celebrate after really tough times.
03:55And the people of Britain were united in wanting this royal wedding to be a moment where no expense was spared.
04:02You would have expected people to be saying, you know, we don't want her getting any special treatment.
04:08Actually, it was a deputation of Labour MPs who said our constituents want to see a proper royal wedding.
04:14Please don't stint on it.
04:16We don't want to see a sort of, you know, turning up on a double-decker bus wearing a sort of second-hand dress.
04:21This seems to look proper. This is Britain back on its feet.
04:24But whilst there was a collective will, in 1947, the country had scarce resources.
04:30So the challenge was finding a way. And one of the biggest hurdles was the dress.
04:37Throughout the war, the royal family had been very keen to be seen to be in solidarity with the people.
04:42And so Queen Elizabeth's wedding dress, in a time when rationing was still going on,
04:47it was decided that she needed to buy the dress with ration coupons and that was what was decided.
04:53The government contributed an extra 200 coupons towards the dress.
04:58But the public also wanted to help make sure this would be a gown to remember.
05:03So people really wanted it to look great.
05:05And a number of people started sending in their ration coupons so that the princess could have an extra special dress.
05:12And actually, Buckingham Palace very correctly said, no, no, I'm afraid that's actually illegal.
05:17And it fell to one of England's most renowned designers, Norman Hartnell, to come up with a dress fit for a princess.
05:24Norman Hartnell, a very, very highly respected British couturier, designed this gorgeous dress and it was to include 10,000 seed pearls.
05:37War-torn England didn't have a ready supply of pearls, so a special mission was planned to track them down.
05:45And apparently, because of rationing, these seed pearls weren't available in the UK.
05:50And his manager was dispatched to the US to go and source enough seed pearls.
05:58But when Hartnell's envoy returned, the unusual import caused a commotion.
06:04Rumour has it that on returning to the UK, he was stopped by customs and asked if he had anything to declare.
06:11And he said, I've got 10,000 pearls for Princess Elizabeth's wedding dress.
06:17And it wasn't only the pearls which proved a challenge.
06:21Post-war sensitivities meant that the dress was even discussed in the Houses of Parliament,
06:27after rumours surfaced that one of Britain's greatest enemies had been involved in its production.
06:34Word had got round wrongly, actually.
06:37The silkworms making the silk were Japanese.
06:40And there were sort of complaints, I think it even surfaced in Parliament,
06:43people saying we can't have Japanese silkworms making the wedding dress,
06:47because I'm afraid the suffering of the Forgotten Army in the Far East
06:50was still very much in the public's mind.
06:52But no, actually, these silkworms were not Japanese.
06:55It turned out they were from Kent.
06:58With the silk and pearls sourced, work could finally begin on the dress.
07:03For seven weeks, 350 seamstresses and embroiderers worked tirelessly.
07:08And as the day of the wedding dawned, the world was on tenterhooks,
07:12waiting for the first glimpse of this glamorous royal bride.
07:16Every yard of the route saw the same tremendous salvation,
07:19as thousands were rewarded for hours of patient waiting
07:22by a smile and a wave from our princess.
07:28For those who lined the streets to Westminster Abbey,
07:31it was a moment where the scars of war faded,
07:34and London seemed, temporarily at least,
07:37restored to all its reassuring glory.
07:40For the first time since the start of the Second World War back in 1939,
07:47the household division of the foot guards and the household cavalry
07:50were told they could put back on their ceremonial uniforms,
07:53because up until then, they'd been wearing khaki all through the war.
07:56And you look at the footage of it, and it's remarkable how suddenly,
08:00there's sort of this colour, you know, everything about London and the war
08:04was very black and white and soot-stained and grimy,
08:07and suddenly, here is this sort of vision of the household cavalry
08:11and a princess in a carriage, and it was just magical.
08:14Coming up, Princess Elizabeth's show-stopping wedding didn't end with a dress.
08:24The menu was equally glamorous.
08:27The bon l'essai featured fresh strawberries,
08:30which were almost impossible to get in November,
08:33and the hideous detail of one of the most gruesome deaths in royal history.
08:38The executioner has three goes at chopping off Mary Queen of Scots' head.
08:43Most royal births are moments of public celebration,
08:57but there's one prince-to-be whose arrival was kept very much under wraps.
09:04On a blustery May Day in 2019,
09:07Windsor Castle was preparing for a historic moment,
09:10the first appearance of a much-anticipated new royal baby.
09:15The birth of Prince Archie was very historic for the royal family.
09:20He's part black, he's part American, he's transatlantic.
09:25It was a sign that the royal family were moving into the 21st century.
09:30From a side door in St George's Hall,
09:33Harry and Meghan emerged with their two-day-old son,
09:36Baby Sussex, as he was known,
09:38to introduce him to the waiting press for the first time.
09:42The first time people saw Archie was not coming out of the hospital,
09:48but at Windsor,
09:50which was, you know, a break with what you might call casual royal tradition.
09:54And Meghan and Harry were truly ecstatic to be new parents.
10:00It's magic. It's pretty amazing.
10:03And, I mean, I have the two best guys in the world, so I'm really happy.
10:10But behind the smiles, we now know that in the nine months leading up to the birth of Archie,
10:15what was unfolding was nothing less than the breakdown of a fairy tale.
10:23In October 2018, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were embarking on a Commonwealth tour of Australia.
10:29And as they arrived in Sydney, they chose this moment to reveal to the world that they were expecting their first child.
10:37The announcement that the Duchess of Sussex was pregnant was hugely exciting.
10:43At the time when they announced the birth of what turned out to be Archie,
10:48they were the most popular royal couple.
10:51Their popularity eclipsed that of his elder brother, Prince William, Catherine, Princess of Wales,
10:59and certainly Prince Charles and the Queen.
11:03It looked as though the royal family's newest parents-to-be could do no wrong.
11:07But, in fact, behind the scenes when Meghan and Harry had privately broken their news to the royal family,
11:13their timing provoked criticism.
11:17Three days before Meghan and Harry's trip to Australia,
11:20they'd attended Princess Eugenie's wedding,
11:23and it was there they'd broken their exciting news.
11:27The immediate royal family were told that Meghan was expecting,
11:31in quiet conversations, at Princess Eugenie's wedding.
11:35But their decision to share such important news that someone else's big day wasn't universally popular.
11:42We know from Finding Freedom, the book by royal correspondent Omid Scobie,
11:48that Eugenie understandably felt that Harry and Meghan had stolen her thunder
11:54in a very royal housewives kind of way.
11:59And as the pregnancy went on,
12:01it seemed the presser's love affair with the Duke and Duchess was also wearing thin.
12:06Events of the last few months were raked over, analysed, and criticised.
12:10She was labelled Duchess difficult.
12:13There were reports of her falling out with her own aides.
12:16She may even have made Kate cry.
12:20From being the royal golden girl,
12:22Meghan was now facing an almost daily barrage of negative press.
12:27Meghan's pregnancy was difficult.
12:29She found it physically demanding, but also mentally tough.
12:34And she felt quite suicidal, as she admitted herself.
12:38Things came to a head on a night when she and Harry were due to attend a glamorous London premiere.
12:45As she chatted to the cast, no one had any idea that only that morning for the first time
12:51she'd revealed to Harry her feelings of despair.
12:54On the day that they were due to the Cirque du Soleil for a charity event,
12:59she finally confessed her inner turmoil to her husband.
13:03He was shocked and said,
13:05well, you don't need to go to this engagement.
13:09And we need to get help.
13:11And she said, if I don't go, if I stay at home,
13:14it will create more further turmoil and speculation.
13:17But also, I don't know if I can be left on my own.
13:21So they duly went to the performance that evening,
13:24made the usual small talk.
13:27But as the lights went down, you could see the fact that she was gripping Harry's hand very intently.
13:34And this inner turmoil was something which came as a profound shock to Harry,
13:41and also to the immediate royal family once they discovered it.
13:46After nine months of intense scrutiny,
13:48it was perhaps no surprise that as the day of the new baby's arrival grew nearer,
13:53the details of his birth weren't made public.
13:56For the birth of Archie, the media was assembled in Windsor.
14:01That's where the couple's home was.
14:03It was the only place to be, really,
14:05because we didn't have any information about where the birth was taking place.
14:09The couple wanted to keep that private.
14:11So there wasn't a location to wait outside for an announcement.
14:15But as the nation eagerly awaited the news, it soon became evident that information emerging about the birth wasn't entirely clear.
14:24I was in a car, and the radio was just extraordinary.
14:28They said, she's having it at home.
14:30Oh, no, it's not.
14:31She's gone to the hospital.
14:32Oh, no, it's over.
14:34She's already home.
14:36It was incredible muddle.
14:38And it soon transpired that the news from the palace didn't reflect what was actually happening.
14:45What was particularly unusual about this birth was that the baby had been born, and the couple had left the hospital and were actually back at home,
14:53while the palace were putting out a statement saying that the Duchess had gone into labour.
14:57So, technically speaking, the palace was not, shall we say, telling the whole truth.
15:02And that's not a situation that the palace likes to be in.
15:05It was a situation which undermined the Duke and Duchess's already strained relationship with the press.
15:12No-one likes being given false information.
15:16It just means that the media then think, well, if you're not being straight with us about X, maybe you're not going to be straight with us about Y.
15:24The End
15:35Throughout British history, monarchs have faced some grisly ends.
15:39But when Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced to abdicate in 1568 after a defeat in battle,
15:46she couldn't have imagined her own brutal end at the bequest of her cousin.
15:51When Mary, Queen of Scots, was 25, she fled into England, hoping that Elizabeth I could help her get back her throne of Scotland.
16:01Instead, she was imprisoned in various castles, accused of killing her husband, Lord Darnley.
16:08Spoiler, Mary did not kill her husband.
16:11But the reason why she was locked up is because for Elizabeth's advisers, not so much Elizabeth,
16:17Mary, Queen of Scots, was public enemy number one.
16:20The most dangerous threat to Elizabeth's throne.
16:23Mary, as Elizabeth's cousin, is next in line to the throne.
16:28Elizabeth is a Protestant and Mary is a Catholic.
16:32And they feared her doing a Catholic takeover.
16:36So they lock her up.
16:37And what they want is Mary to agree to a plot against Elizabeth.
16:42Mary doesn't agree to anything.
16:44In fact, all she wants during her increasingly painful imprisonment is to meet Elizabeth.
16:49And this makes her dangerous.
16:51She'd been banned from writing letters.
16:54But there's a secret method of correspondence.
16:56She writes coded letters and they put the letters in a beer keg.
17:00And the beer keg goes out of the castle and then goes off to France.
17:04What Mary doesn't know is that this method of correspondence was already planned by Elizabeth's spymaster.
17:12So every time she writes a letter, it is instantly taken, decoded, read, and then folded back up and put back in the beer keg.
17:25Finally, after nearly 20 years, in 1586, when Mary is imprisoned in Chartley Castle,
17:31she receives a letter from an English aristocrat, a Catholic, Anthony Babington, suggesting the plot by which Elizabeth is killed, Mary takes the throne, Spain invades.
17:44Anthony Babington is very silly and naive.
17:46But still, Mary is desperate and she agrees to this plot.
17:51And the moment that Elizabeth's spymaster gets his hand on that letter, he knows he's got a game over for Mary.
18:02On the 11th of August, 1586, Mary Queen of Scots was told out of the blue that she could go out riding on her horse.
18:11And this to her is an incredible privilege.
18:13She's thrilled.
18:14She goes out riding and she sees men coming towards her.
18:18She must have thought they were coming to rescue her, that the plot had succeeded.
18:27But they were not coming to rescue her.
18:31They were coming to arrest her, put her on trial for trying to kill Elizabeth I.
18:38The wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip was a moment that was celebrated across the world.
18:54And with a guest list that included no less than ten kings and queens,
18:59the royal couple had to make sure the dishes served at their reception were a feast to remember.
19:06And we know exactly what the happy couple tucked into at their wedding breakfast from the menu,
19:11which forms part of the royal archives, the papers of the royal family itself.
19:18So this is a royal collection item.
19:22And what it shows us is that the royal collection is a vast treasury of all sorts of items,
19:28including very personal things like this wedding breakfast menu,
19:31which really give us an insight into the intimacies of royal history.
19:36These were the dishes Princess Elizabeth and Philip chose for their 150 guests.
19:42And at first glance, it looks like the height of luxury.
19:46The menu is all written in French.
19:48It sounds très sophistiqué.
19:51Filet de sole at Mountbatten.
19:54Perdureau en casseroles.
19:56Dessert et café.
19:58But behind the sophisticated French names, there was a rather more straightforward meal than you might imagine.
20:06This sounds extremely glamorous.
20:09But what were they actually eating?
20:11Well, they were eating a fairly plain fillet of sole,
20:15a stewed partridge, rolled up balls of fried mashed potato,
20:20some sort of salad and ice cream for pudding.
20:24It's rather less glamorous in English.
20:27In fact, at a time of post-war scarcity,
20:30the couple had been careful to use ingredients that were unrationed
20:34and readily available on British shores.
20:36But there was one dish on the menu aptly named after the princess herself,
20:41Bomme glacée Princess Elizabeth, which was the height of luxury.
20:46The Bomme glacée was by far the most luxurious item on the menu,
20:51because it featured fresh strawberries,
20:53which were almost impossible to get in November at the time.
20:56So the strawberries had been specially grown for the occasion in the hothouses at Windsor Castle.
21:05And the highlight of any wedding breakfast is, of course, the cake.
21:09But this cake was on a rather different scale to the average newlyweds.
21:13Elizabeth and Philip were gifted 12 wedding cakes in total.
21:18However, only one was the official cake of the royal wedding.
21:23That was made by McVitie and Price, Scottish biscuit makers to the nation.
21:28And in 2017, Cordon Bleu chef Julie Walsh was tasked with recreating it for a very special occasion.
21:37We were asked to produce a replica of the wedding cake to celebrate the 70th wedding anniversary of the Queen and Prince Philip's wedding.
21:47It was a process that gave her an unprecedented insight into just how much effort and skill the original cake had taken to make.
21:59And right from the start, recreating it proved a challenge.
22:03The original cake was made by McVitie and Price.
22:06And unfortunately, all of their archive material was destroyed in a fire a few years ago, so there was no recipe.
22:12So to try and work out the quantities of ingredients she'd need, Julie first had to figure out the size of the original cake.
22:21During our initial research, we really didn't have a lot to go on.
22:25We had some media coverage, which obviously 70 years ago is nothing like it is today.
22:31Master bakers and confectioners at a wedding factory have been engaged on a very special order, a wedding cake for Princess Elizabeth.
22:39There were very few pictures, only what appeared in newspapers, and there were no drawings or sketches.
22:48It was literally just the final picture.
22:51So the only height reference we had was the baker standing next to the cake.
22:56After some detective work, Julie managed to track down the baker's family.
23:00The family remembered that he was taller than the other uncles and that that would approximately make him around six foot.
23:08Overall, the cake stood nine feet tall without the top decoration of the flowers.
23:17Having cracked the cake's dimensions, Julie and her team could now start working out exactly how to make it.
23:23Coming up, the perils of transporting a wedding cake fit for a queen.
23:35Royal icing is like porcelain. It's very brittle and the slightest ping can cause it to crack.
23:41And accusations in a shocking interview about a new royal baby lead to tough questions and a furious rebuttal.
23:48Is the royal family a racist family, sir?
23:51No, we're very much not a racist family.
23:53Wedding cakes come in all shapes and sizes, but when Julie Walsh began recreating Elizabeth and Phillips for their 70th anniversary, she hadn't bargained on the colossal amount of ingredients she'd need to make it.
24:16Although the original cake recipe was lost, Julie knew that since the time of Queen Victoria, royal tradition dictated it would be a fruit cake.
24:26And in 1947, making a four-tier extravaganza from ingredients still largely rationed was never going to be straightforward.
24:35But help was on hand, not from the people of Britain, but from the entire world.
24:41Obviously a challenge in a time of rationing is how do you make a royal wedding cake?
24:46And on that score, it was quite handy. Princess Elizabeth was obviously going to be queen of places like Australia and New Zealand and Canada, and those places wanted to be part of it too.
24:57Crates of luxurious supplies from across the planet began to arrive.
25:03Dried fruit had come from Australia, rum had come from Jamaica, flour from Canada.
25:10The girl guides of Australia all pulled their pocket money for a week and sent in things like sugar and flour and crystallized fruit.
25:20Its international ingredients earned the cake its nickname, the 10,000-mile cake, as supplies arrived in colossal quantities from around the Commonwealth.
25:30Supplies which Julie's team now had to source themselves.
25:34We devised a recipe based on the ingredients we knew that were included.
25:39So the butter was around 60 pounds, the sugar was over 55 pounds, and then we had an incredible 750 eggs.
25:50Which, believe me, to crack 750 eggs, we had a lot of student help.
25:56The final stage was quite literally the icing on the cake.
26:01From photographs of this edible work of art, taken in 1947, it's clear that its every tier was adorned with intricate white icing and decorated with very personal designs.
26:14Designs that have played a crucial part in McVitie and Price securing this extraordinary royal commission in the first place.
26:22The original cake was designed by Frederick Schur, who was lead confectioner at McVitie and Price.
26:28He was one of two confectioners that had pitched their ideas to the young couple.
26:33I think eventually he won over because of the stylization and personalized elements that he decided to include in the cake.
26:41The cake was covered with sugar cherubs and hand-painted with crests that reflected the interests of the bride and groom.
26:49And it was the icing which gave Julie an insight into how she believes the cake makers must have transported and assembled this delicate masterpiece.
27:00For us, the biggest issue was the movement because it's made with royal icing.
27:06Royal icing is like porcelain and the slightest ping can cause it to crack.
27:10And so we had to avoid that at all costs.
27:13Most cake decorators, if they have delicate, fragile elements, will put those on in situ, which is what we did.
27:21I would have imagined that McVitie and Price would have done the same thing.
27:25They would have maybe moved the cake iced, but without decoration, and the decoration would have been allowed to be added at the palace.
27:33On November the 20th, 2017, 70 years after the original wedding cake arrived at Buckingham Palace,
27:40Julie's incredible recreation was delivered to mark the Queen and Prince Philip's platinum wedding anniversary.
27:47I think the feeling at the end of it was really awe about how they'd managed to produce a cake of such class and size with the resources they had in those days.
28:01You truly appreciate just how many hours of dedication and precision are required to produce something of this standard.
28:11The intricacies of it, just, it's another era.
28:15The first appearance of a royal baby has always given the nation a reason to celebrate.
28:31But the birth of Meghan and Harry's first child, Archie, was a moment shrouded in secrecy and miscommunication.
28:38And two months later, with the announcement of his christening at Windsor, it seemed maintaining their privacy was still the couple's top priority.
28:47Normally, the godparents of a newborn royal are announced.
28:52People then just get a sense of the priorities of the royal couple, the kinds of people that they want to be involved in the baby's life.
29:02Meghan and Harry broke with that tradition by refusing to say who the people were.
29:07News of some of the godparents did eventually emerge, despite the secrecy.
29:13They included Harry's former nanny, Tiggy Pettifer, and two of his childhood friends, figures who weren't usually in the public eye.
29:21The royal couple said that they wanted to keep the christening private because the people they'd chosen to be around them were just friends and family, civilians.
29:31And as non-celebrities, they didn't want their names splashed everywhere or to have undue gossip from the dreaded British tabloid press.
29:41But it was a decision that only increased press curiosity and fuelled family tensions.
29:47William felt, as most people felt, it was unnecessary to have this kind of controversy.
29:53It was not what royalty is about.
29:55Royalty, if it's about anything, is about public life.
29:59And that public life starts from the moment you're born.
30:03And the birth of Archie was a major international event because he was in line to the throne.
30:09And what we now also know is that sometime in the lead-up to the birth, a controversial conversation within the royal family had taken place, which may well have fuelled these increasing divisions within the firm.
30:23And perhaps the most sensational aspect of Archie's birth wasn't really around the time of his birth, but around the time of the interview, which the Deacon Duchess gave Oprah Winfrey in 2021.
30:38The opera interview, which I stayed up for with three other journalists, and we thought we'd all fall asleep because it would be so boring.
30:48But overnight we were, you know, eyes open, mouth open. It was just absolutely unbelievable.
30:55The headline allegation that came out of that interview was when the Duchess said that when she was pregnant, that a member of the royal family had sort of raised the whole issue of what colour the baby is.
31:07And that prompted the famous response from Oprah Winfrey. They said, what?
31:14And that was a really serious charge levelled against an unnamed member of the family.
31:21They didn't say who had said it. And that just fanned the flames of speculation about who it was.
31:28There was no context for anybody else to judge it. So you didn't know whether it was just innocent curiosity.
31:36Or whether it was a racist remark. And that started a kind of snowballing criticism of Meghan and Harry.
31:45Because they weren't putting things into context. And things were being twisted.
31:50The Duchess's revelation and implied suggestion of racism within the royal family itself triggered an extreme reaction.
31:59That was a really very divisive moment, a very painful moment for the whole family.
32:04It had a polarising effect. It meant that, you know, those people who were in sort of Harry and Meghan camp became even more entrenched in Harry and Meghan camp and their critics became even more critical.
32:14And it even prompted a statement from the Queen.
32:17The Queen's response was very genuine and kind.
32:23She said that she realised it was very difficult for them and that she understood that for Archie as well.
32:32But she did say recollections may vary and that they would look into it.
32:39The royal family were distancing themselves from all of these allegations.
32:43But they were also showing that they were very, very serious indeed.
32:48And four days after the controversial interview, when William was asked about the accusations during a royal engagement, it was clear that emotions were running high.
32:58Is the royal family a racist family, sir?
33:01Very much not a racist family.
33:04It was a rare display of barely suppressed royal outrage.
33:08William's response was very defensive.
33:11It's rare to hear anything from William at all.
33:14And he's never been in the position of having to defend himself against an accusation that's coming out of left field.
33:21And Harry and Meghan have already gone public.
33:24So the prospect of going private with your response isn't really there.
33:29There's no way to defend yourself against these accusations.
33:33Perhaps we'll never know exactly what conversations went on behind palace doors during Meghan's pregnancy.
33:40But what is clear is that Archie's birth and its aftermath had produced strong feelings on all sides.
33:49And it had solidified the Duke and Duchess's thoughts about their own royal future.
33:54I think Harry and Meghan talked long and hard about their future together.
33:59Especially as Meghan found it very difficult psychologically and physically to cope with the world that she joined.
34:08Even though she joined it with everybody's good wishes.
34:11And the birth of Archie brought everything into sharp relief.
34:17Privacy, protection, popularity, and in many respects they reflected that this was not a life that they wanted.
34:28In the whole of British history, very few monarchs have faced death by execution.
34:41And when they have, the executioners have been swift and merciful.
34:46But for Mary, Queen of Scots, it was a far more brutal story.
34:51Mary is put on trial at Fotheringhay Castle for treason.
34:56She defends herself. She says, you cannot try a queen. I am only answerable to God.
35:01But she is pronounced guilty of treason and she must be executed.
35:07Now, Elizabeth has a problem. Elizabeth is told by her advisers,
35:14Mary is found guilty. You have to sign the execution warrant.
35:18Elizabeth I executed any amount of men who annoyed her, head chopped off.
35:23But Mary, Queen of Scots, she feels quite differently about.
35:26Mary is her relation. She can't execute her cousin.
35:31She's also very concerned that Catholic Philip of Spain is a great supporter of Mary.
35:35And if she executes her, he might invade.
35:38And also, she doesn't want to execute a fellow queen.
35:43She thinks it could undermine majesty, undermine monarchy.
35:47But her advisers compel her.
35:50And so, Elizabeth signs the execution warrant.
35:53And this is when it gets murky.
35:56Elizabeth thinks that she can just sign it and leave Mary on death row for years.
36:02And then eventually, Mary will die.
36:04Instead, as soon as Elizabeth signs that death warrant, her advisers snatch it up.
36:11And without telling her, set about executing Mary, Queen of Scots.
36:16On the 7th of February, just a matter of days after Elizabeth signs the death warrant,
36:22Mary is visited in Fotheringhay Castle.
36:25And she's told, you will die tomorrow.
36:28Mary is in shock.
36:31She's in shock that she's given so little time to ready herself for execution.
36:36She's told late at night that she's going to be executed next day.
36:39She tries to sleep.
36:41How can she sleep?
36:42They're putting up the block in the great hall below.
36:46Next morning, she's ready to be executed.
36:49Because Elizabeth has had no role in planning this execution,
36:53it is very undignified.
36:57Mary is on the block.
36:59And she's gowned in sober colours.
37:02And she must be undressed to receive the axe.
37:06And this is a great moment.
37:08Because Mary's dress is removed.
37:10And under it, she's wearing the scarlet petticoat,
37:14the colour of a Catholic martyr.
37:16Mary may be executed, but she is speaking through her dress.
37:21And she is saying, I am an innocent.
37:24Mary goes to the block with courage.
37:29She kneels for the axe.
37:30But it's a bot job.
37:32But the executioner gets the axe.
37:34And he has three goes at chopping off Mary Queen of Scots head.
37:38Finally, when he's managed it, he holds it up by the hair.
37:44But Mary was wearing a wig.
37:46And the head falls out and rolls on the floor.
37:51After Mary is executed, her belongings are taken and burned.
37:55Her servants are locked up.
37:57Her heart is removed and put in a jar under a hill.
38:01They don't want any part of her to become a relic.
38:06And it seems as if Mary, the great queen who had such power,
38:11the blood of the French, English and Scottish royal families,
38:14in her veins, dies with nothing.
38:18And yet, when they stripped her body after execution,
38:22they found under her skirts, clinging to her legs, her dog.
38:27And so she wasn't alone.
38:31Coming up, it's one disaster after another on Princess Elizabeth's big day.
38:39Princess Elizabeth had forgotten a set of pearl necklaces
38:45that had been gifted to her.
38:47And she left them at St. James's Palace.
38:50The tiara that she was wearing actually snapped.
38:54And it had to be sent to be repaired.
39:01Every wedding has its hiccups.
39:10And that of the young Princess Elizabeth and her dashing Duke was no different.
39:14On the eve of the ceremony,
39:16whilst Elizabeth was no doubt getting an early night at Buckingham Palace,
39:19her husband-to-be was out enjoying the London high life
39:22on his last night as a bachelor.
39:25Prince Philip had a fairly modest stag night by today's standards.
39:31There was dinner at the Dorchester Hotel.
39:33But they also want to have a slightly more raucous knees up as well at a club.
39:40And everyone's in fairly high spirits.
39:42And, of course, the press turned up to capture the moment.
39:46But Philip and his friends weren't about to let the paparazzi record all the evidence of their hijinks.
39:52And I think one of the ushers said,
39:54why don't we take your picture?
39:55And they take the cameras off the photographers to take their picture
39:58and then smash their flashbulbs.
40:00In those days, you had to have a flashbulb to take pictures at night.
40:03With no flashbulb, there would be no further photographs.
40:06So it was sort of hijinks, but rather a disappointing evening for the paparazzi.
40:11As Philip retired to Kensington Palace, having outfoxed the press,
40:16the day dawned on the wedding the nation had been waiting for.
40:20The day is November 20th, 1947.
40:23The time, 11 o'clock.
40:25A nation and a world once.
40:28Crowds were gathered, and Buckingham Palace was a hive of activity.
40:33But not everything was going quite to plan.
40:36Just because she was a royal bride, she wasn't immune to mishaps on the morning of the wedding.
40:43A very notable one that occurred was that the tiara that she was wearing actually snapped.
40:49It was made out of existing piece of jewelry, but it was made to also be a necklace.
40:54And so it had a catch in it.
40:56So on the morning of the wedding, the frame collapsed, and it had to be sent to be repaired.
41:03Fortunately, there was enough time for an assistant to be whisked back to the garage workroom,
41:11for it to be fixed and to be returned in time for her to have the tiara put back on.
41:17She really wanted to wear this tiara on this day, but you can actually see in most of the wedding photographs,
41:25if you look closely, you can tell where it broke.
41:28There's imperfection at the centre of the tiara.
41:31So even a future queen will get everything completely perfect.
41:36But the calamities were far from over.
41:39Another mishap was Princess Elizabeth had forgotten a set of pearl necklaces that had been gifted to her,
41:49and she left them at St. James's Palace.
41:52St. James's Palace, just over two miles away, was the site of a public exhibition of the 2,000 wedding gifts Elizabeth and Philip had received.
42:01The missing pearls were a present from the princess's parents, and so had been included in the display.
42:09The cry went up, where is the string of pearls that the king and queen have given the princess as a wedding present?
42:14It's like, oh hell, we're in the exhibition.
42:16So the private secretary had to rush round to St. James's Palace, which was being guarded by policemen,
42:21and said, I need those pearls.
42:23And it's like, yeah, and who are you?
42:24And it's like, I'm the princess's private secretary.
42:26I need those pearls.
42:27Oh, no, you don't.
42:28So there was a sort of row going on about trying to liberate the pearls from the display cabinet.
42:33And finally, Chuck Colwell, her private secretary, managed to persuade someone in authority to let him have these pearls.
42:39After a morning of high drama, Elizabeth finally made her way to the abbey.
42:44And when the happy couple emerged as man and wife, the delight of a nation overflowed.
42:50If you saw Elizabeth II on her wedding day, waving serenely from the balcony of Buckingham Palace,
42:56you never would have thought she'd had such a chaotic morning.
43:01But there was one final twist in the tale, a twist which would cause the prince and princess to resort to extreme measures
43:09to make sure they got the wedding photos they wanted.
43:13On returning to the palace, the bridal bouquet had gone missing.
43:18I suspect maybe someone thought, that's a nice souvenir, I'll take that.
43:22Anyway, they didn't have it.
43:24So the first round of wedding photographs, there was no bouquet in the picture.
43:29It was a mishap that meant Philip and Elizabeth's romantic honeymoon had to be interrupted for a hasty reshoot, this time with an exact replica of the original flowers.
43:42After a week's honeymoon, the couple came back for more formal photographs, dressed up all over again in their full bridal kit.
43:51And miraculously, there's a bouquet in the princess's hands.
43:54So when you see the photograph of her with no bouquet, that's on a wedding day.
43:58The one where she's holding him again is actually a week later.
44:05Throughout the centuries, royal births, deaths and marriages are the events which have defined us as a nation.
44:12From the incredible royal wedding which lifted war-weary spirits to the criticism around the news of a royal baby's birth, these private family moments played out in public have formed the backdrop of our lives.
44:27Royal births, marriages and deaths, it's the staging posts of the story of Britain.
44:34They are when the national story shifts and a new chapter begins.
44:43Discover more key royal moments brand new next Saturday at five past eight.
44:48From scandalous stories to opulent homes, uncover secrets of the royal palaces streaming now on five.
44:55And tonight, with the future of the monarchy resting on his shoulders, how will William reshape the royal family when he becomes king?
45:03Is Brandi next?
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