I will be honest guys, the Red portrait of king Charles is gorgeous asdfghjkl
it’s a bad portrait. Like. Objectively. It does the opposite of what’s intended. It looks like the painter is insulting him. If it was in a contemporary gallery with no context you would see it immediately as the ambivalent criticism of Charles’s reign, how he fades into the overwhelming red background as a tiny little figure, small and insignificant, insufficient for the clothes he’s wearing. It reminds my of Goya’s portraits, how they were so ‘realistic’ that they ended up making these great figures look pathetic to the viewer. So these are our rulers?
the sheer novelty. the surprise and shock, the kinda cunt it’s serving for no reason. I. I love it. It’s an incredible portrait by Jonathan Yeo. By the sheer fact that Charles, the man, is impossible to portray as greater than man because he’s just such a nothingburger of a dude. So a portrait made to make him look huge and interesting made him be swallowed in red brushstrokes. The butterfly, that reminded me immediately of “ we will all laugh at guilded butterflies”, draws more attention than him. It looks like an omen. It looks like a warning in all this red. Something is not right here.
This is the best royal portrait ever 10/10
This is a painting of a monarch whose individual personality and even bodily presence are a mere footnote within the legacy of bloodshed that built the throne he occupies. This is the only way it’s possible to depict him. It’s a photograph of his soul
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t give two shits about the English Royal Family, but this PR crisis they’re in right now is just wild. Every time you think they’re done digging themselves deeper, they haul another bucket of shit up from the bottom of the well they’re in.
Is Kate dead? Of course not. Is the PR team still, for some inexplicable reason, acting like they’re covering up her murder? Yes! And I for one find that fucking hilarious.
I love watching The Crown but I don’t remotely take it seriously. Man, this season was just straight-up pro-royal propaganda. Diana returns as a ghost to tell now-King Charles how great he is. The Queen dances with a Black GI to prove that the royal family really aren’t racist, guys, we promise. Saintly Prince William is the only one who protests wicked Prince Harry’s costume party, because he’s not racist either! Kate’s scheming lower-class mother plots to marry her daughter off to a prince but Kate’s love for William is pure and wholesome nevertheless!
It was so funny. I will miss laughing at The Crown.
-Meghan and Harry baptizing their daughter with the title “Princess” which she would have had anyway seeing as she’s a granddaughter of a king?? Royalty is an opt-out system and she’s too young to opt-out. WHY is this news.
-Gary Lineker calling the government out for using Nazi-like rhetoric. There’s calls to get him fired from his job at the BBC, because now the Daily Mail believes in cancel culture all of a sudden, what a surprise.
So I learned the most BEWILDERING thing today, which is that back in 2004 Queen Elizabeth II invited French President Jacques Chirac to a banquet at Windsor Castle and someone (presumably not either of them) got the idea to invite the West End Les Mis cast and have them perform the show’s greatest hits in a room of powerful Europeans.
While a protest was going on outside the castle gates. (Unfortunately it was not a protest in favour of anything good, but that’s another story.)
Someone then made a documentary about it feat. the rageful songs of Les Mis set to the backdrop of banqueting at Windsor Castle, which is accidentally FANTASTIC social commentary, and a very bemused Michael Ball.
(You can watch it here. The non-Les Mis parts are very pro-monarchy and incredibly cloying.)Â
Having watched the Harry-Meghan Netflix doc the other day, and seen oh my GOD practically NOTHING but complaining about it on British Twitter during the days since, I feel the need to post this video.
I would kill it at the Meghan Markle helpline! All I’d have to do is repeat, “no, in that curtsying gif going round she’s making fun of herself, not the Queen” “Queen Elizabeth was 96 years old, sir, I’m pretty sure she’d have died eventually no matter who her grandson married” and “This is the twentieth time you’ve called this number today, Piers Morgan.”
So, Charles is King now and here’s a show presenting him as a sympathetic, relatable victim of circumstance and the media! A kind man cursed by his love for an ordinary woman, his devotion to his future subjects and his matinee-idol good looks! WHAT A COINCIDENCE.
So yeah, a lot of controversy surrounding this season but King Charles has nothing to worry about. Maybe Tony Blair does, but he’s Tony Blair, so screw him.
To be honest ever since he was first cast I’ve thought Dominic West was an absolutely bizarre choice to play Charles. I actually thought it was a joke when I saw the news. He’s much too handsome. On the other hand, he does have experience of embarrassing cheating scandals, so there’s that. And he does have Charles’ mannerisms down to be fair. (Not to mention his views on extramarital sex.)
The acting in this silly, silly show continues to be its saving grace because the dialogue sure doesn’t remotely cut it. It’s either Knowing Dialogue, Winking Dialogue or Expository Dialogue and it’s excruciating. I swear, every second conversation goes something like –
“Charles, as the Queen, who was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, I implore you to make up with your very much not dead yet wife Diana, the mother of your sons William and Harry, as you have been at odds ever since your wedding day on 29 July 1981. This is in accordance with the Not Telling Your Mistress You Want To Live Inside Her Knickers As A Tampon Act (1993).”
“Yes, mummy.”
All that being said, I think the best moment of acting in this show doesn’t belong to any of the main cast at all. It belongs to the child who played the 13-year-old Alexei Romanov, who appears for less than a minute in a unexpected and horrifically brutal flashback scene depicting the murder of the Russian royal family. Blink and you’ll miss it, but the look of sheer terror that crosses his face as he realises he’s about to be killed really got to me. I can’t even find the child actor’s name, but man. When this show gets it right it really gets it right.
I went on a photo-gathering trip to London yesterday, while preparations for the Queen’s funeral were in full swing.
The train station was warning people not to join The Queue.
Shop windows were full of Queen Elizabeth images/merch, and also Paddingtons. It infuriates me how Paddington has become associated with the Queen but more on that some other time.
This is not just public mourning! This is M&S public mourning!
Flowers and flags popping up in all sorts of places.
The Marble Arch area was packed with people. I did get this nice picture of a bird though.
Onto Hyde Park. People and police everywhere, and a load of screens and portaloos set up for the funeral.
(other crowds, cops, & the odd yelling person not pictured.)
Found a weird beehive type thing and an unbothered raven.
Apparently this also happened in Hyde Park:
The Holocaust Memorial Garden in Hyde Park has now become a makeshift Queen Memorial Garden pic.twitter.com/1UNG54mXLv
and I’m glad I didn’t see that because I would have lost my fucking mind. Just a really, really shitty thing to do. (The part of me that still has a shred of optimism about human nature wonders if some of those flowers, the ones unmarked by any Queen pictures, genuinely were for Holocaust victims but I suspect not. I mean, I hope so, I just suspect not.)
On lighter notes…
I do like this pic of the Union Jacks at half-mast, it came out really well.
This shot of a plane going past a statue isn’t too bad either.
Oh look more Paddingtons, Paddingtons everywhere. Wouldn’t it make SO MUCH more sense for these to be given to refugee kids who arrive in Britain with no toys?
So Buckingham Palace itself was closed off but the area around it was MENTAL.
The tributes from children I suppose are touching in a way, but only in the same sense any children’s drawing left out in the rain is.
Those photos probably don’t give the full scale of everything but hopefully this video does.
Absolute chaos I tell you. So were the surrounding areas.
Piccadilly Circus looked beautiful but police were everywhere.
There was a moment of silence for the Queen on the train! ON THE TRAIN! Madness. A voice came over the tannoy asking for a minute’s silence but most people in the carriage were asleep anyway.
Got home and was informed shortly afterwards that my grandmother had taken a turn for the worse. Apparently, she can’t even recognise her family members now. It absolutely sucks. But the country won’t stand still for her, will it.
