“The Crown”, a flagship TV series produced by Netflix, tells the vicissitudes of the English Royal Family from the abdication of Edward VIII to 1997. 

Practically perfect in every way, this series became popular not only for its settings and costumes, but also for the quality of the historical reconstruction of those years and the complexity of their characters, which are interpreted by a phenomenal cast, that reveals the most vulnerable side of each one of the House of Windsors. 

In particular, the figure of Elizabeth II is masterfully interpreted by Claire Foy, Olivia Coleman and Imelda Staunton, who, together with the screenwriters, have been able to masterfully combine reality and dramatization, thus making a figure apparently so distant as that of the Queen close to us, capable of humanly shaping the history of the twentieth century.

One of the striking examples of the truthful reconstruction of historical reality is the transcription of the many speeches that the Queen has made throughout her life, and it is precisely on this topic that our project will focus. 

Through the research of three speeches performed at different times of her life, in fact, we compared the two worlds (fiction and non-ficton) to understand, from a linguistic point of view, what came out of them.

This page will examine some of the most important speeches of Queen Elizabeth II and will compare them to those of the tv series "The Crown".

Official Speeches by Queen Elizabeth II:

- here's the timeline of when the speeches were made;

The Crown Speeches by Netflix:

- here's the timeline of when the speeches were made;

Overall view and comparison here for a wordclouds.com analysis and here for a voyant.com one.

This Digital Humanities project was created by Anna Biffi, Caterina Boccalatte and Federica Dal Zotto as part of the humanities summer school course in Digital Humanities by Dr. April Patrick - Univeristy of Bergamo & Farleigh Dickinson University.