SERIES 1 EPISODE 3

This episode explores how the Queen has handled some of the greatest trials and tribulations of her reign, from national disasters like Aberfan and Grenfell to personal tragedies like the murder of Lord Mountbatten and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.One of the Queen’s most important tasks is leading the nation in times of sadness and striking the balance between stoicism and emotion, channelling the nation’s grief while comforting those affected. Throughout her reign, she has played the role of healer and conciliator. Some of the greatest conflicts she has had to deal with have been within her own family. In 1972, it fell upon the Queen to end a decades-long family feud with her uncle, the Duke of Windsor, who abdicated in 1936. The Queen Mother had blamed him for the early death of her husband George VI. By visiting the Duke on his death bed, the Queen turned the page on a painful chapter in the history of the Royal Family.In 1979 her family was ripped apart by the IRA’s murder of Lord Mountbatten. Decades later the Queen would have to put duty before her feelings by shaking the hand of Martin McGuinness, an IRA commander at the time of Mountbatten’s assassination – a powerful symbolic act of political reconciliation. But perhaps the most challenging year of the Queen’s reign would be 1992, her so-called ‘Annus Horribilis’, when family scandal, press ridicule and the catastrophic Windsor Castle fire tested her skills as monarch and mother to the limit. Diana’s death in 1997 marked another turning point when the Queen’s slow response to the nation’s grief threatened to destabilise the monarchy, but she turned the tide against her with a heartfelt speech touching on her dual role as Queen and grandmother.