Showtime's The Reagans and Netflix's The Crown show four different models of female power colliding with history, and with one another

The Atlantic

Queen Elizabeth II, Nancy Reagan, Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher show the different ways women can use their power. "The Queen," says Sophie Gilbert, embodied privilege and notions of hierarchical responsibility that, in a decade defined by capitalist excess, were quickly becoming old hat. (Prime Minister Margaret) Thatcher was pure political power: an antifeminist committed to spreading the gospel of self-interest. Nancy Reagan, crowned the Iron Butterfly by her detractors, was the epitome of soft influence, whispering in her smiling husband’s ear. And Diana, from whom nothing was expected but quiescence and children, became a model for seizing power as a populist. Marrying into a family that had long taken stoicism to the extreme, the 'people’s princess' demonstrated how potent public vulnerability could be."