The Crown series is a hit on Netflix for 6 straight years. It is an interesting storyline that is based on true events. However, it is clear that not all of what is shown there is 100% accurate, as people might think. This created a great controversy which ended up with putting a disclaimer at the beginning of each episode, to remind people of its fictional character.
There are reports that young people are referring to the series as a reliable source for historical events. And that is doing some damage to the royals. Especially to King Charles, as he is depicted in a negative light, while his late ex-wife Princess Diana is rising to become a true cultural icon.
The Crown Series Influences Young People To Hate King Charles And Makes A Cultural Icon From Princess Diana
Professor Pauline Maclaren is an expert exactly in this field. She is working at the Centre for the Study of the Modern Monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London. According to her, The Crown series is extremely dangerous to King Charles’ reputation. She says that people born in the ‘90s and afterward, are taking the information shared on the series for granted. They refer to it as to a ‘quasi-documentary’ on the Royal family.
The fifth season of the series that aired just a couple of days ago covers one of the most prominent periods for the British monarchy. The period of Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ divorce. As it is already known, Prince Charles started his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles way before his infamous split from Princess Diana.
The series depicts this as well and provokes a massive reaction from the public. People tend to have negative feelings about King Charles, and start to worship and elevate Princess Diana.
Aside from depicting the juicy phone conversations between King Charles and Camilla Parker, the series will re-make parts of the infamous Princess Diana Panorama Interview with Martin Bashir. Immediately after the interview aired on BBC, King Charles asked the media outlets to never air it again. However, 27 years later, the series reminds us of it.
The monarchy and the royal family are less and less popular to younger generations as time passes by. According to Pauline Maclaren, this image is to be ruined further, due to the series and the controversial topics it covers.
“We already know that the royals are much less popular with this generation. They are likely to understand Diana as the victim of Charles’s treatment of her.” – Maclaren argues.
The series gets into tremendous detail when the situation between Prince Charles and Princess Diana is in question. They re-created the alleged vocal and loud clashes between the two, and they made sure to add on a thing or two to make it more dramatic. All this just further ruined the image of King Charles.
The series also recreate Princess Diana’s ‘revenge dress’. The Princess opted to wear the tight dress and shine in her best light on the same day that Prince Charles confessed to cheating on her in 1992.
According to critics and experts, these scenes will do nothing less, but exalt Diana as a ‘cultural icon’. Young people are likely to connect to what was happening to her. The series is extremely uncensored about Princess Diana’s treatment by the Royals. It is highly likely that people will praise her for her courage.
The Crown creators added the highly requested disclaimer at the beginning of each episode. They finally explained that nobody could be aware of what exactly happens behind closed doors at the Palace. However, polls suggest that people are perceiving this quite differently.
A YouGov poll suggests that people in their 20s are three times more likely than people in their 60s, to believe that The Crown is accurate. This is not the only poll suggesting something like this. Numerous polls on the internet back this up as well. They suggest that the disclaimer is there only to relax the pressure that the series creators had for telling the truth.
The series dramatizes numerous ordinary happenings and add numerous scenes that actually didn’t happen in real life. The ending of Prince Charles’ marriage is not the only event that causes criticism. There are scenes where Prince Charles tries to oust Queen Elizabeth and force her to abdicate in his favor. The series episode shows him speaking to Prime Minister John Major, plotting to lobby his mother into abdication.
A couple of days ago, Peter Morgan, the creator of the series confessed to fabricating the scene. He confessed that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that this really happened. Furthermore, former Prime Minister John Mayor told the Mail that this meeting never happened. He told that the scene was a ‘barrel load of malicious nonsense’.
“All the dialogue is completely fictitious. All the one-to-one conversations you see on screen are utter fiction and some scenes have been entirely created for dramatic and commercial purposes with little regard for the truth. People should be boycotting it.” – another source from Buckingham Palace told the Mail.
Peter Morgan told that the new season of the series most certainly won’t bring back good memories for King Charles. However, he notices that they are a moment of history and he shouldn’t forget them.
“That doesn’t mean that, with the benefit of hindsight, history will be unkind to him, or the monarchy.” – Peter Morgan told the mail. “The show certainly isn’t. I have enormous sympathy for a man in his position — indeed, a family in their position. People are more understanding and compassionate than we expect sometimes.”
