National Post (National Edition)
ROYAL LICENCE
`COMPELLING' NEW SEASON OF THE CROWN HAS INACCURATE `MEET CUTE' AND OTHER ALTERNATIVE FACTS.
Millions around the world have watched Netflix's The Crown, the fourth season of which began on Netflix on Sunday. Those who have carped at the lack of facts have seen pushback by others who say it is drama and need not be accurate.
When one reads surveys that show many young people believe Margaret Thatcher led Britain during the Second World War, you understand why the people who make these shows feel they can create dialogue and scenarios as they wish. Some who watch the series will imagine that what they are seeing is an accurate representation of history. It isn't.
The new season has been described as “compelling” because of two new characters: Lady Diana Spencer and Margaret Thatcher.
According to The Crown, the first time Prince Charles met Diana, she was dressed as a “mad tree” from a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Charles, calling on the Spencer family ancestral estate, Althorp, has another love interest, Diana's sister Sarah.
When Charles is alone in the grand entrance of the home, a 16-year-old Diana appears from behind a tree, saying she was instructed to “remain out of sight,” but must get to “that room over there.”
Having promised that “I haven't seen a thing,” Charles begins a discussion about their mutual love of Shakespeare's play. All the while, Diana is dashing between shrubbery, inching closer to him.
“I'm Sarah's younger sister by the way,” Diana says.
Their first meeting actually came when Charles visited Althorp in November 1977 for a grouse hunt. What did she think of him? “Pretty amazing,” Diana said.
Asked the same question, Prince Charles said: “I remember thinking, what a very jolly and amusing and attractive 16-year-old she was. And great fun and bouncy and full of life and everything.”
For the fictional Diana, Charles is no longer “pretty amazing,” instead she says, “Oh, he was simply marvellous.”
The closing line is true to history. After a reporter remarks that the pair look very much in love, Charles replies, “Whatever `in love' means.”
Diana later revealed that although she giggled at her fiancé's answer during the interview (in The Crown she looks taken aback) she was actually “traumatized.”
“(It) threw me completely,” she said in a recording that was used in the 2017 documentary Diana: In Her Own Words.
“I thought, ` What a strange question — uh, answer.' God, absolutely traumatized me.”
From what one knows — and enough has been written about it and little denied — the kicking Charles later gets for his behaviour toward his young bride is richly deserved.
The treatment of Thatcher is more disturbing.
Gillian Anderson plays her as a caricature.
Anyone who knew Thatcher — and I did for 25 years — will recognize the performance as entirely lacking in insight — quite unlike that of Emma Corrin, who appears to be the Princess of Wales.
In the lectures Thatcher gives the Queen, she appears motivated by class hatred — of the “privileged” and, to use a word not current in English at that time in this sense, those with a sense of “entitlement.”
She was nothing of the sort.
It is little surprise that “royal insiders” have been quoted on Britain's front pages conveying the Royal family's fury at the show.
Peter Morgan, its writer, cannot know what went on in any of the private conversations.
Some, such as between the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales shortly before Lord Mountbatten's funeral, are simply preposterous.
And some are downright awful: the conversations between the Prince of Wales and his then-wife, and between him and his then-mistress, are depressing.
All of the above is damage enough, but the issues accumulate, such as:
❚ The Duke of Edinburgh shooting pheasants in August
❚ Ministers at cabinet meetings would only have addressed each other by their official titles
Thatcher was not so unworldly that she would have thought dinner was at 6 p.m. rather than drinks
❚ The Queen and Thatcher did know each other before the prime minister assumed office, as Thatcher had been in top political ranks for eight years
❚ The Queen would never have referred to “blood sports” — a term of Leftist opprobrium — but to “field sports”
Her prime minister would not spring a cabinet reshuffle on her
❚ As a young journalist, I accompanied Thatcher on two tours of African Commonwealth countries where she did not, even in private, express the views she unleashes about them in this travesty.
And when the Queen asks two courtiers whether it would be a bad thing if word got out that she disapproved of aspects of Thatcher's policies and personality, disbelief is stretched to breaking point.
I recall Thatcher and the Queen touring the room together at the former's 80th birthday party in 2005: the fact that Her Majesty even attended the party, let alone appeared so delighted to be there, said more about her true relationship with Thatcher than does any of this fiction.