FAQ

The Queen is an original screenplay written by English screenwriter and playwright Peter Morgan.

As depicted in the movie, the young princes and their father were finishing up a holiday of several weeks at Balmoral Castle, the Queen's estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. They were scheduled to return to London to prepare to go back to school for the autumn term (William to Eton, Harry to his prep school, Ludgrove) and to reunite with their mother on the Monday after the weekend she was killed. Charles was with them in Scotland, leaving the next day to fly to Paris to bring Diana's body home in the company of her two sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes. Charles broke the news to his sons and insisted that they all go to church as a family.

It is very close to reality in terms of what could be publicly confirmed. Private conversations and such couldn't be easily verified by filmmakers. The scene involving the stag, however, was fabricated.

There's been much discussion about the symbolism behind the stag. Early in the film when the royal family is watching TV, Prince Phillip (James Cromwell) notes that the stag he saw that day had 14 points, and the Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms) is pleasantly surprised, noting it had been years since the estate had seen a stag that big. Later, when the stag is killed, the Queen (Helen Mirren) expresses concern that it "didn't suffer too much." Many viewers feel that the stag represents Princess Diana or, at least, the Queen's hidden emotions regarding Diana's death. Some see the stag as representing the demise of old English values and traditions in the face of Tony Blair (Michael Sheen)'s "modern" goals and ideals. Another interpretation is that the stag represents the Queen herself—proud and vulnerable. In the DVD audio commentary with Peter Morgan and Stephen Frears, Morgan says that the stag was meant to represent something that had survived, that had lived beyond its expected lifetime.