The Crown’s new season will include ‘painful’ details about Charles and Diana’s crumbling marriage
The upcoming season of The Crown is set to dredge up painful details from Charles’ marriage to Princess Diana.
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The upcoming season of The Crown, Netflix’s drama about the British royal family, is set to dredge up every painful detail of King Charles’ marriage to the late Princess Diana just as the United Kingdom is rallying around the new monarch.
Season five rakes over some of the most intimate aspects of their crumbling marriage in the early 1990s, and portrays the then-Prince of Wales as petty, cold and deceitful.
The new series, which starts next month, is also likely upset Prince William who is seen, along with his brother Prince Harry, being caught in a psychological tug of war between their royal parents.
“This couldn’t have come at a more delicate time for the new King and his Queen Consort, particularly as they’re riding high in the minds of the public,” a TV insider told The Sun.
“There’s a sense that Netflix are muckraking over events that took place 30 to 40 years ago, but are still raw for those involved.
“The worst element for the royals is that millions of people around the world will view this series, and view it less as a drama and more as a documentary. And attention on the Windsors could be higher, as it’s been just a few weeks since Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and is in the run-up to the King’s coronation.”
Netflix had considered delaying the launch date of the fifth season out of respect for the Queen following her death last month, but ultimately decided to press ahead.
It covers the years 1990 to 1997. The show’s final season is being filmed now and is due to stream next year.
Season five will see Princess Diana, played by Elizabeth Debicki, divulging details of her rocky marriage to Charles. She does so via tape recordings, which featured in the tell-all book on her life by Andrew Morton, Diana: Her True Story.
The author sent her a series of questions and her responses formed the basis of the biography, which shocked the UK when it was published in 1992.
Diana and Charles separated in the same year, and they divorced in 1996. A year later, she was killed in a car crash in Paris with her lover Dodi Al Fayed.
The Crown will be uncomfortable viewing for the whole royal family, as it paints the late Queen in a cold light and sees William and Harry as collateral between their warring parents Charles and Diana.
William has already said he believes the controversial Panorama interview featuring his late mother in 1995 should never be aired again, but Netflix has devoted an entire episode to it.
News of the bombshell scenes featuring Diana and Charles comes after The Sun revealed that the show will suggest Prince Philip pursued an affair behind the Queen’s back.
In one of season five’s scenes, Philip touches hands with high society friend Penny Knatchbull as they go carriage riding together.
Philip, who died 18 months ago, shares intimate details of his marriage with her, saying that he and the Queen had problems and had “grown in separate directions”.
The claims have been dismissed by royal experts, who insisted Philip and Penny were just close friends and said the insinuations in The Crown were “cruel and distasteful”.
The new season’s treatment of Charles, played by Dominic West, is a continuation of the broadly negative light in which he was shown during season four, which covered most of the late 1970s and 1980s.
The then-Prince of Wales was seen continuing his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles even after they had married other people.
And as Diana’s fame and popularity grew, he became wildly jealous and resentful, and she fell deeper into despair.
The scenes sparked warnings that the royal family was at risk of being smeared by a drama presenting itself as a documentary.
TV presenter and royal biographer Andrew Marr previously said: “If they announced, ‘This is drama, it’s fiction, it’s entertainment,’ you would say it’s brilliant. But when you start to say, ‘This is the truth about these people’s lives,’ it’s grossly unfair and really quite sadistic.
“It’s so convincingly acted that people may think it’s the truth, and it isn’t.”
Six scenes that will be uneasy viewing for the family
1. Bulimia before the wedding
On July 29, 1981, Charles and Diana appeared to have a fairytale wedding.
But The Crown suggests she knew what horrors awaited her in the crowded marriage with Charles, and suggests she had a bulimia attack partly as a result.
The revelation only emerged when Diana supplied details for Morton’s book a decade after the wedding.
2. Continuing the Camilla affair
In the early 1990s, Charles was still seeing Camilla Parker Bowles behind Diana’s back. But the Princess was well aware of it.
The Netflix drama depicts Diana claiming Charles is cold to her, a fact all the more painful because she knows he is warm towards his mistress.
She says: “I’d overhear him on the phone to her and he used a voice I’d never heard him use with me. Tender, caring, adoring.”
3. A slur on the Queen’s image
In scenes from the previous season, the Queen told Charles he would learn to love Diana. But in season five, Her Majesty becomes harsher as the marriage starts to crumble.
In a shock moment, she is heard saying: “While it is expected of the monarch to be married and produce an heir, being happily married is a preference rather than a requirement.”
4. Princes in a tug of war
One scene shows a family dinner on a holiday becoming tense.
When Diana says she wants to go shopping, an unimpressed Charles asks William and Harry: “Does anyone else want to go shopping?”
The boys side with their mother, leaving Charles unhappy.
In another scene, the Princess is seen crying while William comforts her, clearly suggesting they are at odds with Charles.
5. Honeymoon cut short
Charles and Diana are seen on a yacht in Italy – clearly inspired by their 1991 trip that aimed to show them united.
But in The Crown, Charles is unhappy and eventually cuts the second honeymoon short.
Diana tells him: “I even agreed to do the photocall today so the lie could be prepared for the world’s media about what an adoring husband you are, on one condition: that you actually are one.”
6. Diana’s desperation
One of the most shocking revelations in Morton’s book was that Diana threw herself down the stairs while she was four months pregnant with William.
The act, in the presence of Charles and the Queen, was said to be a cry for help.
Although we don’t see the fall in The Crown, Diana states explicitly: “When I was pregnant with William I threw myself down the stairs at Sandringham.”
This article first appeared on The Sun and has been republished with permission.
Originally published as The Crown’s new season will include ‘painful’ details about Charles and Diana’s crumbling marriage
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