User Reviews

I am Irish and a student of Irish History and I cannot believe the amount of misinformation in this episode and the review by fabian5.

First off, to call Brian Boru "the last King of Ireland" is wrong. At the time, Ireland was a grouping of territories under various local and provincial kings. The most powerful of these provincial kings was usually acclaimed the High King. This, though, did not guarantee subservience or loyalty from lesser kings. And he was not the last. The last one was Rory O'Connor in the 1160's and that because of the Norman invasion.

The episode furthers its inaccurate take on Irish History by making Boru look like he is in his 30's or 40's when he generally thought to have been in his 70's or 80's at the time of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 (not 1000). His age makes the absence of multiple bodyguards all the more puzzling since Boru would have been too old and distraught over the deaths of his son and heir and his sons eldest son to wield a sword effectively or fight a young and strong enemy soldier. The battle was fought against a coalition of rebellious Irishmen and local Danes allied to foreign invaders. Plus the Irish did not wear 13th or 14th century armour as shown in the episode.

To top of the historical inaccuracies, "Ireland" did not gain independence from Britain in 1922/23. 26 of 32 Irish counties were set up as the Irish Free State while the rest were set up as Northern Ireland. A very limited form of independence for both entities and both were/are very much under Westminsters control.

I found the Irish Crown Affair to be an emotionally raw and powerful episode which was very well written, and almost unforgettable. It had everything: loyalty to a long dead king, betrayal, greed, and family honour and shame. Basically the O'Donnell clan of Ireland were charged with the safekeeping of the bejewelled crown of king Brian Boru, Ireland's last legitimate king who was slain in battle after defeating foreign (English I think) invaders in his homeland in 1000 AD.

The O'Donnells keep their vow to this great king when suddenly out of the blue--centuries later--in the medieval period they built a statue to king Henry II of England (Richard the Lionheart's own father) and symbolically pay allegiance/bow to him. No one knows that they hid Boru's crown in the statue's head! When Ireland finally gains independence from Britain in 1922/1923, the O'Donnells of the 20th century were permitted to keep their landed estates but they were basically denounced as traitors by their fellow Irishmen. And the modern O'Donnell clan have forgotten where their ancestors hid the crown. They only feel decades of painful disgrace and shame for their ancestor's alleged act of allegiance to the English.

This is where a friend of Sydney's (Molly) comes into the picture. Molly tells Sydney that she has come into possession of a medieval era poem which cryptically tells of the location of the missing crown of Ireland's last great king. Amazingly, the crown has been resting hidden away in plain sight for generations. (you know where) The O'Donnell clan in the medieval period probably hid it to keep themselves safe since everyone through the centuries would have threatened them for it. In the end, the crown is recovered but not before one of the 'friends' in Molly's party (and his 2 unscrupulous allies) reveals himself to be a ruthless treasure hunter who has plans to sell the crown for its immeasurable historical value. Sydney and the a surviving son of the O'Donnell clan (Garrett O'Donnell) who have become allies in order to find the crown manage to foil their plans in a brilliantly choreographed hand to hand fight in an Irish museum. The most touching scenes occur when Garrett O'Donnell decides to 'spruce' up the family's old symbols of heraldry and engages in a heart to heart talk with his father after saving both Brian Boru's crown (again as his ancestor has done) and securing the O'Donnells family honour by showing to all of Ireland that their ancestors were merely bowing to Brian Boru and not to the English king Henry II, whose statued head hid the well hidden Irish crown. It was a very emotional but frank father-son discussion.

This was a truly powerful and gripping story. And yet, I can only award it a rating of 9 out of 10. (I would give it 9.5 out of 10 if IMDb permitted this but it doesn't) The costume designer should have been fired for having king Brian Boru wear a uniform bearing 3 lions at the exciting start of the episode. Didn't he/she realize that this was the traditional symbol for England, not Ireland? This was a major memory lapse on the producers part. Every Irish and Englishmen would have a chuckle at this error today.