Maybe it's just me, but if my kids were in bed asleep and I found out their father died (or mother if I was a man), I would just go ahead and let them sleep and tell them in the morning. There's no point in waking them up in the middle of the night and saying "Hey kids, your mom's dead. Go back to sleep now".
I read in The Times a while back that he was concerned that they'd wake up and switch on the TV or radio before he'd had a chance to get to them.
shareIt makes perfect sense that he wouldn't want them hearing about it first from the radio or TV-- even though at that point, the only word they had from Paris was that Diana was badly wounded. It would be a few hours before Diana was declared dead.
When I watched that scene the first time, my first thought was, "why don't they show Elizabeth going into the bedroom to talk to the young princes?"
But in the course of writing this reply, I realized I already know the answers to that question. First, as I just wrote, Diana wasn't officially dead yet.
Secondly, and more importantly, the filmmakers go to great lengths to avoid giving William and Harry much screen time. For reasons that are obvious enough, once one thinks about it a bit.
It's one thing to risk the wrath of the Royal family and their many fans by portraying e.g. Prince Philip as being callously insensitive, perhaps more so than he was in real life. But there was then, and still is to some extent, a sense that the young princes deserve a great deal of privacy on matters concerning their emotions and actions that week. So to show Elizabeth having her first conversation with William and Harry after the wreck-- a conversation that IRL she must have had, at some time-- would be going much farther beyond the fuzzy gray area just this side of outright bad taste, than the filmmakers were willing to go.
"I don't deduce, I observe."
Why would their grandmother give them the news of their mother's death when their father was there? Unless the children were exceedingly distant from him that would definitely be the father's job.
shareI don't think you understood what I was writing about. Yes, of course, their father would most likely be the first one to "give them the news" about both the accident and the first reports of the death that followed.
But because the Queen was living in the same household at the time, we know that her own initial conversations with the young princes about these events are conversations she must have had, acting both as grandmother and as reigning monarch.
...And as audience members, those are conversations we'd rather like to witness from the POV of the proverbial fly on the wall. So, I was describing how that was my initial reaction to the scene with Charles talking to the boys, Elizabeth hovering nearby in the background: now I want to hear what she'll say to them. After all, she is the principal character of the film, and in real life, of the whole apparatus of the monarchy.
I then went on to speculate, almost certainly correctly, that the filmmakers must have decided it would not be in acceptable taste to include such a scene-- not to protect Elizabeth, who certainly takes some lumps in this drama, but to protect William and Harry. Gabisch?
"I don't deduce, I observe."
Lol, it's funny that you went right to I don't think you understood what I was writing about. Maybe you didn't express yourself very well. Ever think of that?
In any case, I did get your meaning. I just disagree with it. The movie isn't about her relationship with her grandchildren or her role as a grandmother, so the scene you wanted to see wasn't relevant. We didn't need to see the princes onscreen because they were irrelevant to the story being told. The film makers handled the scene well.
Capisce?
Um, well, yeah, we certainly do disagree on a thing or two. A central theme in this film is the ever-present potential for conflict between how HM wants and perhaps needs to behave as a human being, and how she's expected to act (by others, but also by herself) as monarch. She isn't just their grandmother, she's also their sovereign, which brings in a whole lot of baggage that worms its way into her relationships with every last person in her life, including her son and her husband. As this film shows, often brilliantly.
In that context, how she behaved towards the young princes is very much fair game-- artistically, that is. Just not "fair game" in the sense of "we'd like to make a movie we can show without a lot of protests from Parliament, threats of lawsuits, etc." It's those other kinds of considerations that aren't always readily apparent to us Americans, which is why my first post was so awkwardly written; it's as if I was thinking out loud.
"I don't deduce, I observe."
You're a real condescending twit.
~ I'm a 21st century man and I don't wanna be here.
Exactly. Apparently the idiot OP didn't put together the fact that the royal family lives a much more public life than he does.
Fine. Show me your face and I'll tell you, again, you're an idiot. How could you not notice the royal family lives a much more public life than you do? LOL!!!
share[deleted]
Then your kids would likely resent you later for assuming they would rather be left to sleep than think or pray about their father in the immediate moments of his death. I would wake my son if anything happened to his mother, a loss of sleep won't hurt him and maybe there would be little extra comfort in knowing that he had not been left to sleep while everyone else had several hours to try and organise their own thoughts.
Grieving is easier if two people are on the same page.
Ya Kirk-loving Spocksucker!
I actually had a similar situation. I let my three sons sleep and let them know in the morning that their grandfather had died about midnight. They each were mad that I had not woken them up to tell them. I now respect their perspective that if something similar happens I'd let them know immediately.
share[deleted]
But what about taking them to " stalk " and the movie didn't even show when they went to church with the Queen and nothing at the service was said about Diana .. nothing .. The royal family is far beyond being heartless .
"A man that wouldn't cheat for a poke don't want one bad enough".