July 9, 1982. Morning, Buckingham Palace. In the bedroom of Elizabeth II, a man appears – not a guard, not a servant, but an outsider. Michael Fagan, an unemployed Englishman, went around the guard and entered the very heart of the British monarchy. Why did he do it? Love, despair or madness?
Michael Fagan, an ordinary Englishman with a difficult fate, in 1982 became the central figure of one of the most scandalous episodes in the history of the British monarchy. By that time, his life was moving: his wife left, he stayed with four children and lost his job.
For the first time, Fagan penetrated the Buckingham Palace in June – calmly walked along the corridors, drank alcohol from the reserves of Prince Charles, even sat on the throne. Nobody noticed him. He left – also quietly.
But on the morning of July 9, he did it again. He climbed over the fence, climbed through the pipe, broke the window and ended up in the queen's bedroom at about seven in the morning. There was no guard – the post was empty. Elizabeth II was left alone with a stranger. According to legend, she restrainedly told him to leave. While they called the police, she managed to bring Fegan to another room. The police arrived six minutes later.
Why did he do it? The explanations changed: either he wanted to talk to the queen, or fell in love, or just needed to have heard him. In the series “Crown” all this was filed as a political action, but Fagan later admitted – there was no politics there, only loneliness and internal scream.
The punishment was unexpectedly soft: penetration into the palace was not considered a criminal offense, he was forgiven for alcohol, and he himself ended up in a psychiatric clinic, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Fagan then more than once came into the field of view of the police – for fights and strange tricks. But the main thing in this story is not only the holes in the royal guard, but the meeting of the two worlds: women on whose shoulders the whole empire, and a person who no longer knew where to go.
