The success of The Crown may have its final season somewhat paying the price of its immense popularity. This is because the mega-award-winning Netflix series, which will premiere its final season in November 2023, is dangerously close to the most painful period for the current King, with the climax precisely being the death of Princess Diana. As many thought the series was almost a documentary, it became increasingly complex for the showrunner, Peter Morgan, to explain that it is “fiction”. So, fictional biography? Contradictory, but true.

For anyone who follows the history of the British monarchy, the Windsors’ karma is undeniable. We have reached the fourth generation living the same dilemma of broken marriages, choices between Duty and Heart as well as rivalry between siblings. Therefore, the irony cannot escape the fact that the series was created to contextualize the strength of the Crown with Elizabeth II at the center of the plot but that, like real life, suffered from the shadow of the People’s Princess, Diana Spencer. Ironic that Peter’s first award-winning work on the subject was precisely the film that dealt with the first dilemma of the final season: Diana’s death, the impact and crisis it generated for the Queen’s reign, and how, in the end, she overcame the crisis by becoming more popular than ever. Yes, Peter Morgan was behind the award-winning The Queen, which won an Oscar for Helen Mirren. It will be curious to see if the narrative will be kept the same. I doubt.

In the 2006 film, the Queen, attached to protocol and practicality, is surprised by the popular reaction to Diana’s death, with an aggressively outraged Philip as well. We barely see William or Harry, but Charles is a weak man, realizing that the accident provides an opportunity to recover his image tarnished by Diana’s separation and revelations. From what we’ve seen in The Crown, long gone are the days of The Queen‘s award-winning narrative.

When it premiered in 2016, a decade after the film, the Netflix series re-presented a sovereign who was affectionately called ‘immortal’, already in her late 90s, to generations who did not know her when she was young. Claire Foy gained international stardom as Elizabeth II between the ages of 25 and 40, being replaced by Olivia Colman until we reached Imelda Staunton. The monarch’s life was full of dramas that few remembered, helping to bring her closer to a public that began to adore her. The “experts” knew that the closer it got to the present day, things could be different.

The intention was always to reach Elizabeth II‘s Golden Jubilee in 2002, but with the current drama escalating in newspapers and social media, the expectation was that the series would progress to the Platinum Jubilee, celebrated shortly before the Queen’s death. , in 2022. Peter Morgan smartly didn’t give in and I even imagine that he would have preferred to have stopped where he hadn’t been before. After all, The Queen had already covered this very delicate part of the story and Charles’ accession to the throne only made the expectations worse.

Diana’s version of her story of an armed and failed marriage is the one that prevails, and in it, Charles and Camilla are antagonists. However, the third season of The Crown, which showed Josh O’Connor as a sensitive crown prince in love with an equally friendly Camilla, played by Emerald Fennell, changed the sympathy of the couple who are now on the Throne. Of course, the entry of young Diana, played by the electrifying Emma Corrin, changed this dynamic, precisely because Meghan and Harry’s drama was taking over social media, and the border between interpretation and reality began to become gray for many people. Until Elizabeth Debicki, who is a Diana look-alike, entered, the controversy was already dominating The Crown.

The Royal Family never officially spoke out, but friends and supporters began to worry about the lack of distinction between what was actually fact or fiction. So much so that, in my opinion, the choice of Dominic West to play Charles, far from the refined gestures of Josh O’Connor as the current king, was deliberate to make it clearer that The Crown is not a documentary. He’s fine, don’t get me wrong, but he’s so different from Charles that he leaves us less confused than Elizabeth as Diana.

The sixth season will include three crucial moments in the princess’s life that, whether relatives like it or not, could not be left out of the series. The BBC interview, the romance with Dodi Al Fayed, and, of course, her tragic accident in Paris. These are facts that will be in the first two episodes, without a doubt. But what shocked a lot of people was what was already leaked: there will be some ‘existential’ scenes in The Crown, one of them including Diana’s “ghost”. Metaphorical and real.

In the fifth season, Peter Morgan already imagined a few sweet minutes between Charles and Diana, talking after their separation and her making him scrambled eggs. Now, in the episode of her death, we will have Prince Charles (Dominic West) talking to an “imaginary Diana” (Elizabeth Debicki) and Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) will also have an interaction with her. Risk of becoming tacky? Undoubtedly. But once again, a need to highlight that The Crown is not a documentary.

According to the showrunner, Diana’s memory is almost a royal ghost, because “she continued to live vividly in the minds of those she left behind.” Gone are the days when he even considered not passing as Diana at any age or presence in the series. That’s what he says, I don’t see how he could. And if it will have Diana, Kate Middleton, and the wedding of Camilla and Charles, The Crown will avoid Prince Andrew’s friendship with financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein Not even excessively, Harry. Peter Morgan says that he has not read the book Spare and that the focus of the story has always been who was in the direct line of succession: Elizabeth, Charles, and William. Therefore the spare tire will only appear “in relation to William.” I suspect that in Montecito The Crown will not be in the Top 10.

And to think that the original project for The Crown was a feature film about Elizabeth II, just 25 years old and recently installed on the throne. When he started working on the script, he saw that the story needed more time, something like… ten years and a rotating cast. The plan in the series was also to have Helen Mirren, who worked on The Queen and later on the play The Audience, play the role that won the Oscar, but she turned it down. Of the three actresses, only Imelda has yet to win an Emmy. Will it change now?

But the main discussion is around criticisms about historical accuracy, even though any dramatization must have artistic freedom, which is taken deliberately to balance what is fact and what is fiction and still generate emotion. In any case, the debate exhausted the showrunner so much that today he avoids discussing any topic relating to the Royal Family. For Variety, he resigned himself to concluding that “playwrights are born to write about kings and queens. This is what we do.”

Although there was pressure to advance to the present day, The Crown said goodbye in 2005. “It was cut to keep it historical, not journalistic,” he said in the same interview. “I think stopping almost 20 years before the present day is worthy.” Fans may think otherwise, but as always, this is The Crown.

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