No member of the royal family has existed in pop culture with such a successful blend of novelty, patriotism and playful self-mockery like Queen Elizabeth II.
She officially launched the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics by "parachuting" out of a helicopter with Daniel Craig's James Bond as the 007 theme music played.
Ten years later, her Platinum Jubilee saw her take tea with another British icon, Paddington Bear, where she surprised and delighted audiences by pulling a marmalade sandwich out of her purse.
But fictional portrayals of the Queen on screen have arguably played the biggest role in shaping the public's view of her, including Netflix's The Crown.
The show has won 21 Emmys and been nominated for dozens more, although it isn't in the running for more accolades at Tuesday morning's ceremony.
Filming of its upcoming season was paused as a "mark of respect" on Friday — but it's not the only film or TV series to have captured the imagination and tapped into our collective hunger for a peek behind the royal curtain.
A cinematic retelling
The Queen (2006), written by Peter Morgan and directed by Stephen Frears, took audiences behind palace walls to display a side of the Queen the world had never seen before.
The film, starring Helen Mirren in the title role, chronicled the immediate aftermath of Princess Diana's death, and charted the struggle between the Queen and then-prime minister Tony Blair as they tried to reach a compromise on how the royal family should respond to the tragedy.
The family's need for privacy and the public's demand for an outward show of mourning sees Mr Blair's approval rating skyrocket when, thanks to his speechwriter, he coins the phrase "the people's Princess".
Meanwhile, the Queen's commitment to put "duty before self" results in her popularity plummeting to a historic low.
Giselle Bastin, an associate professor of English at Flinders University, says before The Queen, portrayals of Elizabeth II had been limited to "small walk-on roles in low-budget biopics about other royals, especially made-for-TV productions about Charles and Diana, and Andrew and Fergie".
"It wasn't until the early-mid 20th century that the Lord Chamberlain's office relaxed the rules about living monarchs being allowed to be depicted on screen or stage," she says.
For most of the 20th century, filmmakers respected this and were reticent to portray her in "fictionalised depictions", she adds.
Frears's film changed that, according to Dr Bastin, with his big-budget biopic treated with gravity and respectability.
"In some ways, this suited the Windsors' PR agenda in the late 1990s-early 2000s: to re-position the Queen at the centre of royal narratives in the space that had been occupied primarily by Princess Diana in the 1980s and early 90s," she says.
Reflecting on the role in a 2022 interview with Town and Country magazine, Mirren recalled: "At the time, it had never been done before, playing the Queen."
"It was quite nerve-racking because I didn't know — no-one knew — how the public would receive it, let alone the establishment in Britain."
Initial uncertainty aside, The Queen was a critical hit.
Mirren's performance not only won her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2007, but the Queen reportedly invited Mirren to dinner — an offer she had to decline due to filming overseas.
"Palace politics keep the film zipping along, but the crowning achievement is Mirren's," Rolling Stone wrote in its review.
"With subtle humour and innate class, she shows us a side of the Queen long hidden from the world: her humanity."
As the film broke new ground in its human depiction of the monarch, the public even began to merge Mirren's "queen" with her real-life counterpart.
"I remember in the months following the film's release that Mirren was occasionally called on by the press to make comments about royal events of the day; it was as if she'd become some kind of avatar for the real Queen," Dr Bastin says.
But with The Queen, Morgan had only scratched the surface.
Streaming a national symbol
A decade and a £100m ($169m) Netflix deal later, Morgan went right back to the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's record-breaking reign with The Crown.
The historical drama made the genre of the royal biopic even more accessible by being available to stream, with millions able to watch the Queen's life story told like never before.
The first two seasons of The Crown explored the early years of Elizabeth II's reign, with Claire Foy playing a fresh-faced "Lilibet" as she deals with her sudden accession to the throne at just 25 years of age.
The New York Times wrote: "Foy showed us a vibrant young woman being transformed, and flattened, into a national symbol."
Dr Bastin says the first few seasons of The Crown covered "a period where very little was known of the Queen's private life and persona."
"The British public knew the basic facts about her, but stories about her private life and off-duty persona were tightly controlled by the palace."
"Morgan's The Crown, with its mix of made-up detail and creative embellishment, coupled with stories about the political events of the day, seemed to show Queen Elizabeth II in a new light," she says.
By having a young actress play the Queen, audiences were able to imagine that they were being shown the 'real' story of what happened to this young woman, who had by tragic circumstance become monarch far earlier than expected or desired, Dr Bastin adds.
Claire Foy said she found the accession one of the most fascinating aspects of the Queen's life when she began her research for the role.
"I just always accepted the fact that she had always been there my entire life," Foy told Vogue in 2016. "Sort of like your grandparents, you sort of accept that they were never young."
"Two of the most seismic things that happened to her happened at the exact same moment in her life. You can't underestimate what that does to someone; that amount of shock and trauma and responsibility.
"I never thought about that as a British citizen. I never considered the personal impact of the job."
Much like The Queen, The Crown has been a success with audiences, with 76 million households streaming the series since it began in 2016, according to Netflix data released in 2020.
The role earned Foy a Golden Globe, an Emmy and two Screen Actor Guild awards, with the show as a whole winning a string of accolades.
"Clearly, Morgan has found his golden goose," Dr Bastin says.
A changing of the guard
In The Crown's third and fourth seasons Olivia Colman portrayed an older Elizabeth wrestling with middle age, motherhood and the pressures of duty.
Colman told The Guardian in 2021 that embodying one of the most recognisable figures in history was "the most pressurised thing I've ever done, because everyone goes, 'That's not right.'"
The third episode of The Crown's third season focused on the Aberfan disaster – the catastrophic collapse of a Welsh coal mining tip in 1966 which killed 116 children and 28 adults – and the impact it had on the Queen.
In real life, the monarch visited the disaster site a day after the final body had been recovered – an entire week after the tragedy.
Her apparently delayed response drew criticism, a moment which would repeat itself decades later following the death of Princess Diana.
In The Crown, the Queen is shown retiring to her bedroom after the funeral, only to finally break her steady demeanour and weep alone in private.
"What Morgan understands implicitly is that viewers of The Crown want to be shown the possibility that — behind the facade — there sits a sovereign who is very different to the one we've been shown in public for decades," Dr Bastin says.
"Our perception of the Queen changes after we view these episodes; we con ourselves into thinking that the veil has been lifted and that we're being given the 'real thing'.
"We haven't; rather, we've been given a representation of the Queen drawn from data that is on the record and hefty doses of royal imaginings."
'A work of fiction'
Some argue that artistic licence was pushed too far in the series' fourth season, which spotlighted the doomed marriage between Princess Diana and Prince Charles, and the infidelity with his now-wife the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Prominent figures, such as Diana's brother Charles Spencer, called for The Crown to add a disclaimer declaring it a work of fiction, a suggestion Netflix rejected, arguing that The Crown has "always" been presented as a drama.
Despite the criticism from royal biographers about the accuracy and fairness of the series, Dr Bastin argues shows like The Crown have ultimately benefited the Windsor brand.
"Prince Harry has defended the program on the grounds that it is no less sensationalist or accurate as most of the tabloid press's coverage of the royals and that he's not fussed by it," she says.
In saying that, "he may have been inclined to give The Crown some good PR, given his own contracts with Netflix."
Embodying the state
The Crown has continued to garner success with each season, with 21 million homes watching the third season in its first month – a 40 per cent increase on the previous season, Netflix data revealed.
Its popularity bodes well for the royal family, especially among younger audiences – despite growing calls for Australia to become a republic.
"I know from my own experience over the last 20 years that many younger Australians haven't been the least interested in the royals, but have suddenly become really interested," Dr Bastin says.
"The Queen has certainly gained in popularity for younger people in the UK and throughout the Commonwealth in recent years and I think Morgan's show is partly responsible for this."
But the royal family will always contend with the desire to be seen as human and the need to remain distanced and, in turn, dignified.
"There is a risk that the Windsors could lose the very thing that has maintained the family's raison d'etre: to embody the state, to symbolise the nation rather than exist as mere mortals," Dr Bastin says.
"By becoming too commercialised, there's a risk that too much daylight has been let in on the magic and mystique of the royals and they are acutely aware that they are constantly having to balance the need to 'be seen', as the Queen has said, alongside the need to be seen in the 'right' ways," she adds.
Even in death, the Queen's legacy will continue to live on as a mainstay in the cultural zeitgeist as audiences continue to seek out the challenges and triumphs of her decades-long reign.
