Night and at the end of a road

I came late to the streaming series The Crown on Netflix. And I am right now in the middle of Season 3. It is 1969, and Charles has been sent to Wales to learn the Welsh language. This has been deemed a politically correct gesture. Charles is scheduled to receive investiture as Prince of Wales and the government believes that his attendance at the University of Wales for a semester to learn Welsh will palliate the Welsh nationalist population who are advocating vocally for sovereignty. Charles’ enrollment in the university is thought to be a politically move to palliate the Welsh. He has been used such before: in a previous episode he had been send to Gordonstoun School where his father had been educated and had suffered cruelly and acutely. Charles has called his time there “a nightmare” and “hell,” but Philip had insisted his son follow in his father’s footsteps. Charles’ own wishes are dismissed, disregarded, and deemed irrelevant. When sent to Wales he was contentedly enrolled at Cambridge and happily active in theater.
            When I began viewing the series I had felt a great deal of sympathy for Lillebet who would become Elizabeth II. Neither her father, George VI, nor she had any wish to assume the crown, but circumstances proved their destinies otherwise. Edward VIII had abdicated the throne in 1936 thrusting his brother onto the throne. George’s death in 1953 then left the throne vacant and his eldest daughter, Lizebet was thrust onto the role as monarch. It was a position she neither sought nor desired; she says later that she would have preferred to spend all her time breeding and racing her horses. But when the circumstances fell upon her, she had no option but to assume the throne. Having assumed the throne, she had a great deal to learn in the fulfillment of her duties. She essentially had become a head of state but one who possessed no power: England was a constitutional monarchy and Elizabeth discovered that her position obligated her but to maintain the monarchy. Her role, it was said, was to be elegant and to leave to the government to be efficient. But Elizabeth became overwhelmed by the position and role of crown. As monarch she felt obliged to subsume her personality: she lost Lillebet and became The Crown. Nothing but what protected the monarchy mattered in her actions, and her own wishes and desires were repressed, I would suspect, at great pain, distress and loss. Certainly, her relationship with her husband and children suffered. 
            Now, Charles’ time in Wales confronted him with the oppressive history of the British subjugation and occupation of the country, and that knowledge surprised and alarmed him. He had not ever been apprised of this ignoble past. At his investiture he was required to give a speech and at the time he was handed a speech that had been written by politicians and court officials. Studying the speech he had been given, Charles remarks that the speech had nothing to do with him nor does it represent anything of his character. Certainly, it did not reflect anything of what he had learned about Wales though the speech would be spoken in Welsh. And so, to the text presented to him he adds his own comments to the prepared talk. Speaking at the investiture he acknowledged the injustices the Crown for centuries had inflicted on Wales; he expressed sympathy and concern for the oppression the country has suffered at the hands of the British. His speech was warmly received by the Welsh and by his tutor, Mr. Millward, who at the outset had been hostile to Charles and the requirement that he teach him Welsh. Millward congratulated Charles on his learning and on his courage to speak from his own heart. But when the speech is translated for the Queen, who interestingly does not speak Welsh, she is angered by Charles’ comments. As she scolds him, he has “too much of a voice to my liking. Not having a voice is what we all have to live with. We have all made sacrifices and suppressed who we are. Some portion of ourselves is always lost.” And Charles answers, “That is a choice.” When he says, “I have a voice,” she responds “No one wants to hear it.”
            I have been intrigued by a statement in Jose Saramajo’s novel The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis: “What will you be when you discover it is night and find yourself at the end of the road.” I believe that the sentiment here refers to the end of some effort and when the day is finally done. For Elizabeth that effort has been to say nothing and to be nothing but The Crown. She had been trapped and lost in the role. At night and at the end of the road she is only the crown. The narrator says, “Man must always make an effort, so that he may deserve to be called man, but he is much less master of his own person and destiny than he imagines. Time, not his time, will make him prosper or decline, sometimes for different merits, or because they are judged differently.” For Elizabeth she has succumbed to the role and the effort she has made has required her to say nothing; she is known not as human but as The Crown. 
            We might be less in control of our destinies than we consider; it might be that context makes our attempts succeed or not; that we might not be judged as we might wish. Though at the start I felt sympathy for Lillebet, I have come to dislike Elizabeth: at the end of her day I find Elizabeth and The Crown rather unpleasant and even ugly.
             I do not think I have arrived at night, nor do I feel that I am at the end of any road. The question I daily consider is how I think of myself when it is night and the present road has ended. This consideration need not be the end of my life. It might be, indeed, at any night or day or year.