The Crown: Based on Actual Events
One thing is very obvious watching The Crown on Netflix. It is a very, very good piece of art. Every element is well done, it’s downright cinematographic, and the storytelling is first rate. To watch the now-40 hours of film is to take in a story of high drama with recurrent themes of interest to us all. The fact that there are clear themes, not always easily pulled out of the vagaries of the real lives of so many interconnected people, is one clue this is fiction. The fact that this fiction is based on actual events and real people makes it almost excruciatingly poignant and sad. Nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship between Prince Charles and Princess Diana, which is making the actual royal family so upset.
One thing I’ve noticed in season 4, which takes on the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, is the way the character of Diana is filmed. Those of us inundated over the years with her image recognize the outfits, down to the patterned sweaters, hunting duster, and smart ’90s dresses. And in the series, she is very, very often filmed through a car window. There she is, settling back, or more often looking out the window with her big eyes and golden hair, seemingly stunned by the flashbulbs and attention and nervous about the public appearance to come. Well, of course. That’s the Diana we knew. That’s how we saw her when she was alive. Through the car window or a zoom lens. We saw her clothes, and now The Crown is just filling in the rest — how horribly mistreated she was by the royal family, drawing on the Morton biography to which she contributed most of the material (i.e., her side of the story). We sympathize. We believe in the truth of it.
What also comes across, however, is how unbelievably mismatched Charles and Diana were. If you’ve been watching the series from the beginning, you know that the number one theme is: You Must Inhabit the Role. And no one has a starring role except the Queen Herself. Prince Philip brings this home to Diana in the final episode of the season. The rest of the roles, in fact, are stultifying and confusing and often lacking in purpose. There’s no room for “personalities” either. The Crown doesn’t ignore the theme of roles this season, but there’s something about Diana that makes us engage with her personal story, her personal tragedy, and forget for a while what the story is actually about, the privileging of roles over individual identity.
Everyone seemed to think Diana would make an excellent wife of the heir apparent, Charles. He would be king after all, and then it would be all about him, and Diana seemed young and pliable enough, one can imagine, to play the supportive role that challenged Philip in the beginning. Everything until Charles’ elevation to king would be about preparing for that role. She seemed like someone who would get along, be likable but not too pushy.
And it is in that role that Diana fails miserably. The audience can be mad at Charles that he is mad that she keeps upstaging him. Things that are supposed to be about him become all about her. She is incapable of stepping back and just serving the queen and her husband. She goes on a solo trip to New York and she is the show. And in her genuineness, she hugs an AIDS patient and changes the world, removes some of the stigma of AIDS. She does exactly the right thing — but it’s not her who is supposed to be doing it. And of course, because the world has been waiting for a celebrity princess, and waiting for some “warmth” from the royal family, someone who would shake their hands with gloves off, the media machine creates “the people’s princess,” at the expense of everyone else. And it is this media machine, these glares through the car window, the relentless pursuit of closeness with Diana and concern for her personal happiness, that leads to her tragic death (to come in Season 5, no doubt).
Ultimately, the series as a whole asks what the royal family is about, and whether it is at all relevant. As the modern world moved to become the contemporary world, individual feelings come forward as a priority. Celebrity comes forward. A tabloid approach to “the truth” comes forward. Charles is an utterly tragic figure because he is constantly pushed into the mold of 20th century modernity, his mother’s world, and not allowed to further reform or advance the identity of the monarchy — he hasn’t yet become monarch, after all, no meetings with the prime minister for him. It has been pointed out that whereas Elizabeth II’s orientation is toward the commonwealth (on which she cannot even advocate openly a position about Apartheid without being harshly shut down), Prince Charles is a man of Europe, making his displeasure with Brexit known. It doesn’t matter, of course, because neither the queen nor Charles govern.
The Crown has shattered the attempts at privacy by the royal family. And has let them know that their story is not their own to tell. I still think it has done an excellent job, over the seasons, of presenting a story where roles and this type of hierarchy (monarch at the top and everyone else in the family far below) eat away at generation after generation. The “heir and spare” problem, for example, is explored quite consciously in Margaret’s plot lines, and we see how it completely blew up in the case of Meghan and Harry, the Sussexes. In the end, I think it will make a strong case against the monarchy, arguing that these people should be removed from their public duties and governmental roles and allowed to be ordinary wealthy people with a strong interest in philanthropy, able to support themselves and pursue their own causes, like royals in other countries.
In that way, the making-a-case way, it is more than fiction. It is shaping public opinion about an institution that persists in the world today. And that’s probably what the royal family should be more worried about than the image of particular family members.
