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When JFK and Jackie Kennedy visited London in 1961, according to The White House Historical Association, the Queen and Prince Philip threw “a splendid dinner in their honor.” Splendid? If you’ve watched Season 2, Episode 8 of The Crown, that may seem like an odd way to describe it (if you haven’t, stay far away from this article—there are spoilers ahead.)
In that episode, the whole thing seemed like a hot mess. First, the president and First Lady address Prince Philip and the Queen incorrectly, and therefore, impolitely. Then Jackie goes off and trash-talks Elizabeth, calling her “a middle-aged woman so incurious, unintelligent, and unremarkable that Britain’s new reduced place in the world was not a surprise but an inevitability,” and Buckingham Palace “second-rate, dilapidated, and sad.” That gets back to the British monarch, and Jackie, tail between her legs, apologizes months later, confiding in the Queen about her husband’s infidelity and their (alleged) drug habits.
Is that all true? The Crown is based on real-life people and real-life events. However, as with all great historical fictions, it does often take creative liberties—for example, Winston Churchill’s secretary didn’t die in the Great Smog. So what actually happened, what may have happened, and what came from the writer’s room when Elizabeth met Jackie?
Those meetings were all real occurrences. Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, John F. Kennedy, and Jackie Kennedy did all dine together at Buckingham Palace in June 1961. And Jackie did visit Queen Elizabeth several months later in March 1962.
As to whether or not Jackie made those incendiary comments, well, that’s murkier. Rumor has it that some shade may have been thrown. According to the The Telegraph, Gore Vidal remembers Jackie Kennedy saying Elizabeth was “pretty heavy going” and that she felt “resented” by her. Cecil Beaton allegedly wrote in his diary that Jackie said she was unimpressed by the monarch and the palace.
But Robert Lacey, historical consultant for The Crown and author of The Crown: The Official Companion, tells Vogue that the comments are “imagined,” yet not unlikely.
“I think that the personal tension between Elizabeth and Jackie is speculative. I’m not saying it didn’t exist—you can’t say it’s false, you can’t say it’s true,” he says. “I think it’s perfectly plausible that the Queen felt upstaged by Jackie,” he says.
However, if she did feel upstaged, and if it inspired her to step up her game a bit, that’s something only she would know.
Says Lacey: “The Queen then goes off to Africa and wows everybody and wows President Nkrumah in particular. Well, that did happen and she was a star but at the time, nobody talked [about it] in terms of competing with Jackie Kennedy.”
No matter what was or wasn't said or done, there’s one thing we don’t have the heart to debunk about the meeting of the two powerful women: Jackie and Queen Elizabeth’s snuggle session with corgi puppies.