Princess Alice

Alice is Prince Philip's mother, a deeply devout woman who has spent decades in a Greek convent, largely estranged from the family she bore into royalty. She arrives quiet, plainly dressed, and unimpressed by pomp, more interested in prayer and simplicity than in palace protocol or the grandeur surrounding her son's marriage.

Lapotaire plays Alice with a stillness that unsettles everyone around her, a woman who has lived through unimaginable difficulty and emerged utterly indifferent to status. The writing uses her as a quiet rebuke to royal vanity, and Lapotaire finds dignity and dry wit in a character who could easily have been played only for pathos.