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- The fourth season of Netflix’s hit The crown It has sparked controversy in Britain.
- The show has been criticized for taking too much artistic license in its characterization of the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
- Actual author Penny Junor said the show “makes Diana a victim and Charles a villain,” while “the truth is that they were both victims.”
The fourth season of Netflix’s hit The crown It has sparked controversy in Britain, where its treatment of the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, has been criticized for taking too much artistic license.
The series on the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II has focused on recent episodes in the doomed marriage between Charles and his first wife, the late Princess Diana.
In the most recent season, British actress Emma Corrin plays the princess from her first meeting with Charles as young Lady Diana Spencer in 1977.
As the show progresses, she is forced to deal with an increasingly unhappy marriage and her husband’s infidelity with his now-wife Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Emerald Fennell as Camilla Parker-Bowles in The Crown.
But despite the great popularity of the series, the show’s creator Peter Morgan has been accused of making up stories without warning viewers that they are actually fiction.
This facet of The crown has left viewers furiously checking the facts after seeing them.
And while writers of real-life drama routinely imagine scenes that could have taken place, for many critics, Morgan has gone too far.
‘They were both victims’
Actual author Penny Junor told AFP that the way the series shows Charles continuing his relationship with Parker-Bowles during their marriage is simply not true.
In fact, “they haven’t seen each other for five years,” said Junor, who has written a biography of Charles.
The show “makes Diana a victim and Charles a villain” while “the truth is that they were both victims,” he said, adding that it was also not true that Diana’s bulimia coincided with the beginning of her relationship with Charles.
Emma Corrin as Princess Diana and Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles in The Crown.
‘Ax work’
Former Buckingham Palace press secretary Dickie Arbiter described the show as “ax work” against Charles.
Meanwhile, royal biographer Hugo Vickers has called him “totally one-sided” in his depiction of Charles and Diana and has also objected to his portrait of the queen’s husband, Prince Philip.
In a scene from the last season, Philip tells Diana that if she separates from the royal family it won’t end well.
“I hope it’s not a threat, sir,” he replies.
The scene, according to Vickers, “supports little credible rumors, still fueled by the Internet, that Diana’s fatal car accident in a tunnel in Paris in 1997 was a murderous ‘hit’.”
Other episodes have seen Felipe refusing to kneel at the queen’s coronation, depicted as a womanizer, and being accused by his own father of being responsible for the death of his sister Cecile in a plane crash.
The stories were described by Vickers, writing in the Daily Mail, as “wrong, wrong, and monstrously wrong.”
Drama not history
Historian and author Ioanis Deroide, however, said he views the description of the relationship between Charles and Diana on the show as “reasonable.”
Deroide said the public’s response was due to the “emotional charge” that still surrounds the events of the series, and the still fresh memories of Diana’s last disappearance.
Junor said he regretted the “hurtful” story about Camilla and Charles, who has spent his life waiting to succeed his mother.
The couple have been largely rehabilitated in public view since their relatively low-key wedding in 2005.
“There are many people in Britain and around the world who will consider The crown as an exact historical record … It is not history. It’s drama, “Junor added.
Disclaimer calls
The Mail on Sunday newspaper has asked Netflix to make it clear The crown it is a work of fiction.
The article was supported by Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, who said he feared that “a generation of viewers who did not experience these events may mistake fiction for reality.”
READ MORE | The success of Netflix the Crown should carry a fictional warning: minister
Oscar-nominated actress Helena Bonham Carter, who plays the queen’s late sister, Princess Margaret, has also said the show has a “moral responsibility” to tell viewers that it is a drama, not a historical fact.
For Deroide, however, despite the “impressive mimicry,” there is no way to mistake the series and its star-studded cast for a documentary.
The crown it is just one of many elements that will allow the British to make their own decisions about the royal family, “he said.
“I don’t think that by himself he can make Charles look like a nice guy or the other way around.”
