Warning at the beginning of The Crown to prevent viewers from accepting attacks on the Royals, writes WILLIAM SHAWCROSS

It’s hard not to admire The Crown’s superb production values ​​- the beautiful costumes, fabulous locations, meticulous research, and most of all the seemingly knowledgeable access it gives us to the thoughts, words and motives of the most famous. family in the world.

TV critics certainly seem to approve of it, lavishing even more praise on this new fourth season of the drama, which covers the period from 1977 to 1990, including the arrival of our prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the beginning of Prince’s relationship. Charles and Diana.

Millions of people around the world will see it, no doubt accepting Netflix’s version of events as something close to the truth of the gospel.

However, the reality is this: the Crown is a cruel and lying attack against public servants who cannot defend themselves: the Royal Family.

For all the millions who participated in the production, at the bottom lies falsehood and, in my opinion, a deliberate attempt to undermine our constitutional monarchy, towards which the show’s writer, Peter Morgan, seems deeply antagonistic.

But first, I will acknowledge my own biases. They are the opposite of Morgan’s.

I have been very interested in the Monarchy since I did a BBC series about it in the 1990s and another for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.

In 2003, I was fortunate that the Queen invited me to write the official biography of the Queen Mother. Its 100 years of life took six to investigate.

I have written three books on the British crown.

I have met many of the leading members of the family and seen them not only as real figures, but as hardworking, patriotic human beings.

All of this has led me to agree with the French philosopher Simone Weil that our Constitutional Monarchy is the main guarantor of British freedoms.

It is the second oldest institution in Europe after the Papacy and helps define the nation.

At least since Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, she has provided this country with unrivaled leadership – symbolic, yet real and understanding.

In the real world, unlike the creditable television drama, the royal family softens the state and is seen as providing a bulwark against arbitrary power.

So how are the Windsors rewarded in the latest series of The Crown? From the beginning, we see the Queen as petty and snobbish to her new Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher.

Meanwhile, Prince Charles is portrayed in a deeply unflattering light, and he seems to continue a relationship with his lover Camilla Parker Bowles even as he marries 19-year-old Diana Spencer.

These are just two of many things that are simply not true, and the consequences of such lies are dire.

They help to shape, color, and in some cases misrepresent the public’s view of their Royal Family, rendering them snobs at best, monsters at worst.

Morgan has made no secret of his dislike for the institution and those who represent it.

Republicanism is a minority stance, held by only a fifth of the British people, but it is perfectly defensible.

It is more difficult to defend a political position mixed with cruelty and contempt for others.

In an astonishing interview with The Sunday Times in October 2017, Morgan stated that the Queen was a woman of ‘limited intelligence’.

She and her family, she said, could be described less as human beings than as “survival organisms, like a mutant virus.”

The Monarchy itself, he concluded, is clearly “insane … and I am blessed that the system it is in is so ridiculous and illogical that even unraveling it from the point of view of reason or logic is a joy.”

I still have a hard time understanding how anyone could believe, much less say, those things. I even checked with The Sunday Times to see if Morgan had complained that he had been misquoted. He did not have.

It’s true that in the early episodes, the series was kind to young Princess Elizabeth, as she was shown growing up in the 1930s and during WWII.

The description of her mourning the premature death of her beloved father in 1952 could not be more than poignant.

But from the moment of accession onward, Morgan began sharpening his knives.

One of the first victims was Prince Philip, with whom Princess Elizabeth fell in love during the war.

Last week they celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary. Seventy-three years!

The Crown portrayed Philip in the 1950s as a nasty and scathing serial womanizer.

That was bad enough, but those who know the prince well say the most painful lies came in the episode Paterfamilias, which alleged that, being a schoolboy in Gordonstoun in the 1930s, he was personally to blame for his sister’s death. , Cecile. .

In The Crown’s version of events, Philip’s misbehavior at school led to him being ‘closed’ and unable to travel.

Cecile had therefore flown from Germany to Great Britain to see him. His plane crashed and he died, along with everyone else on board.

The film says that when Philip went to his funeral in Germany, his father yelled at him: ‘That’s true, right, boy? You are the reason we are all here burying my favorite son.

This is all an invention. Cecile had been flying to London for a wedding. Philip had nothing to do with her death.

What kind of person prefers melodramatic lies to the truth, especially when they are likely to be so hurtful?

Some of The Crown’s ‘mistakes’ are trivial, some stem from ignorance or careless research. But to me, many feel vindictive.

In this fourth season, Morgan’s spirits turn against Prince Charles.

“Remove the bark,” he told a historian whom he was interviewing as a potential consultant for the series.

She declined the position and he sought assistants more receptive to her views on the Monarchy.

I am not the only person who is appalled by the poison that runs through the series. Penny Junor, a distinguished royal biographer, most recently to the Duchess of Cornwall, wrote in this newspaper last weekend that the Royals in The Crown “are savage and cruel distortions.” I agree.

Sally Bedell Smith, America’s leading royal biographer, believes the new series includes “extreme and egregious misrepresentations.”

Hugo Vickers, a preeminent royal historian, concludes that the last series “is even more subtly divisive than the previous seasons.”

For many viewers, these events will be part of the recent past, still alive in memory as the action draws ever closer to the present.

It’s even more regrettable, then, that Netflix hasn’t provided even the slightest health warning at the beginning of each episode, the kind of warning that’s common today.

“This is a work of fiction based on real events” might suffice. It is the least an honorable company should do.

One might think that an honorable writer might want such a disclaimer before a work in which mendacity is hidden by glamorous verisimilitude.

But Morgan doesn’t have that interest. The crown, after all, is a wonderful vehicle for promoting your own worldview.

Hereditary monarchy is not, as Morgan asserts, “crazy, ridiculous, and illogical.” But it is certainly a lottery. I believe that your country has been an incredibly lucky winner in that game of chance since Queen Victoria came to the throne.

Times change and in a much less respectful society, the Royal Family is subject to unique pressures.

Other large or wealthy families can defend their privacy or control their images through the law.

The only reason we got to see the movie The Assassination of Gianni Versace, for example, was because his family authorized it. Despite their influence, the Royal Family does not have that power.

The Queen could never go to court to protest because a movie or book misrepresents her. The same goes for Prince Charles and all the other members of his family.

That is not to say that the Royal Family should be above criticism. Of course, no. We have a strong democracy and each and every part of the government, including the Monarchy and members of the Royal Family, must be subject to public scrutiny.

But is it fair to turn living people into the subject of expensive ‘factions’, half fact and half fiction, especially when they can’t respond?

For almost 70 years, Elizabeth II has presided over tumultuous and continuous changes in British society.

As the eminent constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor has pointed out, that the head of state, the living symbol of the nation, is above all political controversy is “something of inestimable value.”

You would never understand watching The Crown. Morgan shows almost nothing of the constitutional role of the Monarchy or the immense work that the Queen and other members of the family put into it.

Not the family’s commitment to philanthropy.

Since the reign of King George III, all monarchs have supported charities and, as a result, Britain has one of the most generous and vibrant charitable sectors in the world.

The Queen Mother, unrecognizable for her unsavory caricature in The Crown, was one of the family’s largest charity patrons in the 20th century.

Prince Charles’s Prince’s Trust has helped more than a million vulnerable young people change their lives since it was founded in 1976.

Neither the Queen nor any of the other members of her family are the people who strut and smile through The Crown.

They are humans with weaknesses like all of us. But our Monarchy is the vital core of a fundamentally decent and responsive constitutional system that has served us all, including Morgan, faithfully and very well.

The real Crown deserves better. So does the nation.