If the royal family ignore The Crown, on their heads be it
Like it or not, Netflix’s dramatisation will help shape a new generation’s view of monarchy
AS the end credits of the last episode of the new season of The Crown rolled, my friend’s daughter – binge watching it on the couch with her mum – had just one question: “Are these people for real?” She wasn’t asking if the cast of characters she’d just watched really existed – a glance at a bank note would tell you that – but rather whether the whole tragic saga and its key players had really acted in the way they did? Was the Queen that aloof? Was Charles that uncaring? Diana so damaged? And had the fairytale story of a prince and princess really descended into this grim, tragic soap opera?
The answer is we’ll never truly know. We weren’t there at Sandringham or on the Royal Yacht. But we all have an opinion.
And here in 2020, for an already beleaguered Royal Family that may present new problems.
On the face of it, the story of the Princess of Wales is a well trodden path. There have been endless books about her, her marriage and her death. Thousands of interviews have been given, magazine articles written and TV dramas broadcast.
You would think there is nowhere different to take the story of a naive teenager who thought she was marrying a dream only to wake up in a nightmare.
But this is
Princess Di. She casts a long shadow even in death.
And now we’re in the age of Netflix. Suddenly, the story of Princess Di has been introduced to a generation too young to remember it at the time but woke enough to be horrified now. The on-screen telling of it has been compelling. Even for those of us who watched it play out in real life, seeing it again on screen has been shocking. Perhaps it’s the times in which we live, when kindness is prized more than ever, but to see so little of it apparently on display reminds us afresh how terrible a price Diana paid to be Princess of Wales. And to add to the TV drama there is controversy in the media over her Panorama interview with Martin Bashir. She has been dead for 23 years and yet Diana is commanding headlines just as she did in the 1980s and ‘90s. Now though, there are new sets of eyes reading. The Royal Family will, I am sure, refrain from commenting on it all. For William and Harry in particular, it must be painful. But The Firm would be foolish to dismiss this renewed interest in the mother of the future king and her time within the Royal Family. It might look like a soap opera but the storyline is damaging. Even now, it appears the Queen of Hearts can still exert influence on people who, if things had turned out differently, would one day have been her subjects.