#Post proelia pramia full#
#Post proelia pramia series#

There is a parallel narrative but you rarely hear it publicly it is as if we are asleep. The object of devotion is sacred, and reluctant of the impact of monarchy on others - on us, still lurking underneath all this gilded misery - you learn nothing. You can get away with anything if people think you are doing it for their sakes). It is the familiar line of the propagandist, whether William Shakespeare or Julian Kitchener-Fellowes. The Crown repeats the myth that Elizabeth II is a selfless, unusually kind woman who would rather not wear the burden of the crown. It is clever propaganda - you pity Elizabeth Mountbatten as she becomes Elizabeth Regina - but the best propaganda is clever: state your allegiance too baldly, and you will not carry your befugged audience with you.

#Post proelia pramia series#

The Crown, for instance, now entering series 3 - the boring years of the Queen’s reign, between creamy ingenue and ancient sorceress - is funded by Netflix and written by Peter Morgan. Kitchener-Fellowes is not alone in polishing the class system others who should know better do it too, and much too well for comfort. Its lesson is - we are children, and we should look to others to take care of us. His angst aside, the lesson of Downton Abbey is that the class system exists for our benefit, even if aristocrats let Labradors emote for them, and that is a tragedy, but only for them, and without it we would become meaningless and tiny in the world. He married his (American) wife for money - that much of Downton Abbey is true - but he had the good manners to fall in love with her afterwards. And so his Lord Crawley - Hugh Bonneville taking avuncular to some sort of awful nadir - is a kindly landlord who, among other nonsensical acts of altruism that would shame his fictional ancestors, saves his cook Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol) from blindness. When Kitchener-Fellowes is not writing, he is scheming for his wife Emma to inherit an earldom so much so, that when Lynn Barber in an interview suggested that Emma become a man to inherit, he appeared to seriously consider it. Battles, as master propagandists have noted, are not fought where they used to be. He was made a real lord for services to costume drama - again I presume - in 2011, with the motto post proelia praemia: After Battle Comes Reward. The creator of Downton Abbey is Julian Kitchener-Fellowes, who once played Lord Kilwillie in Monarch of the Glen, which was an affable Scottish precursor to Downton Abbey. Suggested reading Downton Abbey makes fools of us all He will hold the class system up, by himself if needs be. The butler Mr Carson (Jim Carter) returns from semi-retirement in an idealised tied cottage to save – I am presuming, but I would bet money on it – the royal dinner party. “Welcome your Majesties,” says Lady Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), curtseying low enough to meet the servants on the way back up. (Barry also made the Palace of Westminster, but the Abbey is in rather better shape these days.) There is gay bunting, merry villagers, and servants in silly costumes looking grateful for the opportunity to serve.

There will be a royal visit to Downton Abbey, in case there is not, already, enough nobility inside Charles Barry’s mouldering Highclere Castle, which is Downton Abbey. The trailer rolled out like a dream sequence from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s brain. Dream of a toy feudal state and it might eventually appear to greet you. I wonder, rather, if the programme and its impersonators did not contribute to the miasma of snobbery, nostalgia and brutality that encouraged Brexit, and made parliament a mockery, while the Queen sits inside a 72% approval rating. Marvel at the viewing figures for Downton Abbey – 13m at their height – and you would barely believe it exists at all. We wear social democracy much too lightly here, and that is a problem, for there is no functional hagiography for that.

#Post proelia pramia full#

In Britain we are more subtle but only slightly instead of alien raids and broken cities we imagine a class system we should be happy to see wither return in full pomp: a happy nation under a benevolent aristocrat, who may assume a faint anxiety disorder, should he be seen to be enjoying it too much. It is as if they long for it to happen and cannot stop imagining how exactly they will die, and how they will feel. In the superhero film genre they cannot stop imagining their own mass deaths. It is decadent to watch television that details a nation’s oblivious self-hatred, but Americans do it often.