The Queen goes on an extended overseas trip to research the latest horse breeding techniques. While doing so, she ponders what her life might have been had she not become Queen. Unknown to her, a crisis is brewing back home as Lord Mountbatten is approached to become the figurehead in a plot to overthrow the Wilson government.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Porchey with Elizabeth again. He keeps persuading her to extend their brief trip overseas, looks quite moved after she leaves the room to answer the telephone and disappointed when she returns and states they're going back to England—he of course makes no protest about this.
- Ambition Is Evil: After being forced out as Chief of Defence Staff, Lord Mountbatten seriously considers participating in a coup against the government. He's contrasted with Queen Elizabeth II whom he cites as a potential Caesar, but shares none of his ambition.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking
- Mountbatten's dismissal is recommended because he's refusing to make defence cuts, because he's a symbol of class privilege and a bygone era, and because he's a pompous ass.
- Plan Brutus is described as a declaration of war on "freedom, democracy and capitalism." Inverted when King says they're acting against "amateurism, incompetence and Russian infiltration."
- Artistic Licence – History:
- The show takes considerable licence with Lord Mountbatten’s supposed involvement in Cecil King’s plan for the military to overthrow the Wilson government (with the intention of installing Mountbatten as a figurehead ruler). In the show, Mountbatten takes it seriously enough to approach the Queen for her blessing and is only dissuaded when she tells him in no uncertain terms to knock it off. In reality, most accounts say that while Mountbatten was indeed presented with such a plan by King, he immediately called it treason and said he would have nothing to do with it.
- Mountbatten is given a personal incentive to go along with the plot when the Wilson and his cronies remove him from his post for political reasons. In truth the government first surveyed the forty most senior officials in the Ministry of Defence and only one was in favour of renewing his appointment.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Philip isn't happy that his wife has chosen Porchey as her chief horse breeder, so asserts his love with a lingering kiss. Elizabeth then decides to cut her work short for once and promises to join him in bed forthwith.
- Bathtub Scene: A non-fanservice version with Mountbatten in a standalone tub, scratching the ear of his dog sitting next to him.
- Big "WHAT?!": Mountbatten's reaction to first being told of King's plan to replace the prime minister and his cabinet with an emergency government. It contrasts with the Flat "What" he gives when being sacked by Wilson.
- Call-Back
- In "Olding", Wilson told the Queen he didn't want to devalue the sterling, but is now forced to do so.
- Mountbatten mentions President Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup two years previously, so that foxtrot was all for nothing.
- By "No", I Mean "Yes":
- Mountbatten: Are you kicking me out?Wilson: Well, no, sir, I'm thanking you on behalf of the government, on behalf of the armed forces, on behalf of the whole country, for your many years of remarkable service.Mountbatten: You are. You're kicking me out.
- During his televised speech, Wilson says now is not the time to attribute blame right after blaming the previous government for the deficit.
- The Coup: Lord Mountbatten is approached by a number of bankers and businessmen alarmed at Harold Wilson's socialist policies. Their plan is to overthrow the elected British government, take it over themselves, and install Mountbatten as a figurehead ruler. Despite lecturing them on exactly why such a coup would be impossible in a long-established First World democracy like Britain, he takes the idea seriously enough to approach the Queen for her blessing and is only dissuaded when Elizabeth tells him in no uncertain terms to knock it off.
- Emergency Authority
- Plan Brutus
, cited by the coup plotters in justification, is the emergency plan by the Wilson government to deal with the deficit crisis (fortunately never enacted).Benn: The bankers cannot be allowed to run the show. The Bank of England has known about gold pouring out of the country since Monday and has done nothing to stop it.Wilson: What is our response?Thomson: The imposition of exchange controls, crash cuts in defence expenditure, and the compulsory acquisition of all privately held overseas securities. - Mountbatten says the coup not only isn't plausible, but it would also lack the critical factor of legitimacy unless the Queen could be persuaded to invoke the Emergency Powers Act of 1920. As commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, she would also command the loyalty of far more troops than Mountbatten.
- Plan Brutus
- From a Certain Point of View: King's justification for a coup, unconstitutional in peacetime, is by comparing it to a wartime crisis, a defensive measure against Plan Brutus. In turn we see Wilson and his cabinet approving Brutus due to what they see as the Bank of England's deliberate obstruction.
- Heel Realization: After Elizabeth gives him a verbal spanking over his ideas of a coup, Dickie realizes that his true job now that he's retired shouldn’t be serving the people, but his family, which is emphasized during his talk with his estranged sister.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Elizabeth confides to her friend Porchey that she wishes she had lived her life as a horse breeder and caretaker rather than as Queen.
- Immigrant Patriotism: Although Dickie is second-generation, Princess Alice reminds him that due to history and mixed ancestry, the Battenbergs are neither one thing nor another and belong neither here nor there, calling them "mongrels." Dickie won't hear of it, citing the United Kingdom as the only proper home he's ever known.
- Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: The Wilson government dismisses a £107 million trade gap by claiming the figures are "distorted and meaningless."
- Open Secret: Despite being bedridden Alice knows about what her brother had been up to; she just laughs and point out that there are no secrets in the Palace.
- Pet the Dog: After the Queen remonstrates Dickie for not visiting his bedridden sister, he does make the effort to do so.
- Shame If Something Happened: After catching wind of the plot, the Prime Minister rings up the Queen in the United States and points out that he's been restraining the anti-monarchist element in his Party, but that won't be the case if members of the Royal Family are conspiring to overthrow the legally elected government. The Queen immediately flies back to England to pull Mountbatten in line.
- Shout-Out
- Harold Wilson quotes Lyndon Johnson of all people when he says that it's better for Lord Mountbatten to be on the inside pissing out, than the outside pissing in. Mountbatten in turn riffs on Wilson's famous "white heat" speech.
- Mountbatten is serenaded with Auld Lang Syne by his staff as he leaves the Ministry of Defense.
- Cecil King quotes from Hamlet when he first thinks up the idea of using Mountbatten as a figurehead for the coup.
- At the meeting of Burma veterans, Mountbatten quotes from the poem Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling.
- Squee: A female worker at the American horse breeding ranch has a huge smile when the Queen of England pulls up in her car.
- The Stateless: Alice views herself this way. A proud Briton, her brother Dickie firmly disagrees but jokingly calls her "Princess Alice of Nowhere-At-All."
- We Need a Distraction: The Wilson government sacks Lord Mountbatten from Chief of the Defense Staff so the headlines will be about something other than deficit woes for which the government is being blamed.
- We Used to Be Friends: Cecil King runs a newspaper that has traditionally been pro-Labour.
- Women Are Wiser: Elizabeth, when she refuses to give her blessing to Mountbatten’s proposal for a military coup. Mountbatten's sister also urges him to accept his situation.
