The Queen begins with a familiar epigraph "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" - Henry IV, Part II. The action of the film takes place during the week following the death, on August 31, 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales. One of its accomplishments, courtesy of adroit use of newsreel and other contemporary footage, is to remind viewers of the deep sadness that surrounded that event. It is also about the divergent and potentially ruinous ways the monarch and Prime Minister Tony Blair responded to the resulting torrent of national grief.