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Why is the representation of the royal family important in The Crown? Surely everyone knows it’s just fiction – another Netflix TV drama, that California-based ‘dream factory’ that generates £ 12 billion worth of content every year.
But therein lies the brilliance, and real-life cruelty, of The Crown.
Although it is billed as a ‘drama that follows the political rivalries and romance of Elizabeth II’s reign’, the meticulous detail that goes into the set suggests that the producers want to get as close to the truth as possible.
For example, all of the toys displayed in young William’s nursery are exactly those used in the early 1980s. To recreate Diana’s wedding dress, the costume designer went to Paris to buy buttons at a shop. shop used by the queen’s dressmaker, choosing from a collection of over 30,000. The food brands in Margaret Thatcher’s cupboards were selected with impeccable care.
So when Camilla is portrayed as selfish, scheming, and poisonous; Charles as selfish, insensitive and weak, his love story destroying the innocent Diana, viewers are encouraged to believe this to be true.
The Crown Season 4. Picture shows: Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) and Prince Charles (Josh O Connor)
But these are real people, living complex lives, who have been miserably reduced to a dramatic stereotype to excite the paying viewer. No wonder the Royals are angry.
“Never complain” has been one of the queen’s noblest articles of faith. However, over the years, it has been sorely tested.
But never before had he associated members of his own family with those who ‘trolled’ the Monarchy. The unedifying impression is that, having signed a deal with Netflix, Prince Harry and his Hollywood star ex-wife Meghan are seen as profiting handsomely from the company’s distortion of the truth about the royal family.
His $ 100 million (£ 78 million) deal with the US streaming giant will help give Harry financial freedom, but it has surprised at home, particularly among those close to Charles and William.
How can you get money from a company that translates for your family? Does that callously recreate the Irish terrorist bomb that killed Lord Mountbatten and three others? Who chooses like a vulture the corpse of the bitter marital breakdown of Harry and William’s parents?
What’s more, The Mail on Sunday may reveal that the Netflix documentary they’ve talked about goes beyond the ‘inspirational family programming’ they initially promised.
Instead, it will focus on the couple’s first year after parting ways with the Royal Family, their new life in California, and the reasons why they fled Britain.
According to a well-placed source, the couple have video footage of when they left their Windsor home, Frogmore Cottage, for the last time and their ‘farewell tour’ at Buckingham Palace. Their representatives are believed to have presented the images, including personal videos recorded when they moved away from real life, during negotiations with Netflix.
Given the announcer’s critical view of the Royal Family, it doesn’t bode well.
It’s worth remembering that The Crown screenwriter Peter Morgan, once a staunch Republican, has described the queen as a “country woman of limited intelligence who would have preferred to care for her dogs and raise horses to be queen.” . He has also likened the Monarchy to “survival organisms, like a mutant virus.”
But never before had he associated members of his own family with those who ‘trolled’ the Monarchy. The unedifying impression is that, having signed a deal with Netflix, Prince Harry and his Hollywood star ex-wife Meghan are seen as profiting handsomely from the company’s distortion of the truth about the royal family.
Morgan’s latest series from The Crown is riddled with harmful falsehoods and misrepresentations.
In such a company, Harry and Meghan’s promise that their deal with Netflix will deliver ‘powerful storytelling through a truthful and relatable lens’ rings hollow.
However, a positive side effect of the couple’s abrupt departure is that William and Charles, who have not always seen each other face to face, have grown closer.
Father and son are united behind a common goal: to protect the reputation of the Monarchy and to ensure its continuity and relevance.
Indeed, there was a collective sigh of horror when Harry and Meghan released their own curated Remembrance Sunday images last weekend while visiting Los Angeles National Cemetery.
They took their own famous photographer (and possibly a Netflix film crew?) And then distributed the images around the world. Back in Britain, high-ranking royals viewed this public relations stunt as insensitive.
Remembrance Sunday is treated as one of the most important dates on the calendar, an opportunity that is a ‘privilege’ for the living to pay tribute to the dead who sacrificed their lives for the greater good. Memorial services are not about the individual. Harry, as an ex-military man, should have known not to ‘use memory as a weapon’ as part of his little war with the rest of the Windsors.
This episode had further corroded the relationship between William and Harry. William draws inspiration from his grandmother, and after initially struggling to embrace royal duties full time, he now recognizes how good his platform can achieve.
Harry has opted out, with a financial reward, leaving Charles and William to take over.
As for his father, yes, he had a long-standing premarital relationship with Camilla. But it stopped before he married Diana and didn’t start again until around 1986, by which time Diana had her own lovers.
The Crown exploits their unhappiness all the way to the bank.
How the American bosses of Netflix must have enjoyed watching The Crown’s writing team have fun at the expense of the current royal family and turn their lives into a parody of the money-spinning truth.
For those close to Charles, it’s worse than that. They are ‘unbelievable and pernicious lies’.
The great fear is that many around the world will see The Crown as the truth.
In due course, Carlos and Camila will become king and queen. This year they celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary, longer than Charles’s marriage to Diana. The Duchess of Cornwall has worked very hard to help old-fashioned causes such as victims of sexual abuse and violence, literacy and osteoporosis.
She knows that she can never be another fashionable, traffic-curbing Princess of Wales (significantly, she has never used the title), but she has forged her own role as the Prince’s consort. He adores her and depends on her; in fact, she is much stronger of the two mentally. They are well matched, they laugh at the same sense of the absurd, they are motivated by the same ideals.
With her in his life, Charles feels complete.
He has found more certainty in his role as king-in-waiting.
Often ridiculed in the past for his views on genetically modified crops, for “talking to plants” and his environmental concerns, Charles has proven to be a visionary in his campaign to protect the natural world.
Last night, when he landed in Berlin to become the first British royal to commemorate the Germans killed in war, he spoke about “our countries beginning a new chapter in our long history.” He added that all the victims of war, tyranny and persecution should “inspire us to fight for a better tomorrow.”
In other words, we must focus on the future, not the past.
With their jaundiced version of Hollywood from the recent past in British history, Netflix bosses would do well to heed that advice.
But they are probably too busy looking for the most profitable way to bring Princess Diana’s death to the screen of the fifth season of The Crown, which will premiere in 2022.
