The Crown Final Season Part I review | From the Elizabethan Era to the Camillan Age

The final season of The Crown proves who really reigns over Britain now. Diana was just the People’s Princess; the real Queen is Camilla. De facto and de jure. No wonder the characters of Britain’s current King and Queen—then the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles—have undergone a miraculous metamorphosis. Maybe Netflix wants to hedge its bets as Queen Camilla’s media management skills are proving to be better than the Sussexes. So, suddenly Charles is not the peevish prince anymore but a progressive one, standing up for the British people, shedding copious tears for Diana (never mind that he had cheated on even before they were married), taking on his mother over both his wives. In general, being a real brick—a very solid British virtue—rather than another five-letter word that rhymes with it but means something rather different. And Camilla is his quiet, dignified, loyal, “heroic” helpmate. Charles, in fact, seems almost lovable, with the script even implying that he and Diana had reached a rapprochement and decided to transition from a bitterly feuding couple into amicably divorced parents of two darling little princes. As the scriptwriters could not possibly have inside knowledge of such an entente, it can only be read as a canny way to portray the new (and rather old) King of Britain as a jolly good egg, worthy of the love and admiration of his subjects. The second Elizabethan Era is obviously over and we are in the Carolean—or Camillan—Age now. So the scriptwriters are clear about whom to credit for the late Queen Elizabeth II’s change of heart after seeing the “outpouring of grief” after Diana’s death. The final season would have us believe it was Charles’ impassioned appeal after noticing the emotion of the crowds that did the trick. Britain can rest easy now that it knows their trusty King did his bit for Diana. Even the ghastly insertion of a ghostly Diana exorcising the demons in her former mother-in-law and husband’s minds just gives Charles more screen time to show off his empathetic side with nary a trace of that royal grimace or irascibility which the public is so often treated to now. Diana The Friendly Ghost practically gives Charles her blessings to make an honest woman of Camilla, though there is no evidence she had ever warmed to The Rottweiler. Keeping Camilla as a homely, almost nondescript person—the very antithesis of the ‘most photographed woman in the world’ Diana—with hardly a couple of lines of dialogue in the first four episodes of this season is a brilliant way to soft-pedal the real influence behind the British throne today. Her subtle (re)positioning by Netflix seems to corroborate Harry’s allegation that she has masterminded her ascent to Queen by astutely managing the narrative. However, the sustained vilification of Mohammed al Fayed hews to an older theme: that all ‘furriners’ are basically an oily lot (pun intended), trying to buy their way into British high society. The thing is, they usually succeed: many a British aristocrat’s bacon (and family castle) has been saved in the past by American heiresses. Indeed, even British Kings have married foreign princesses with an eye on the dowries they brought, both in terms of gold and territories. Al Fayed’s only drawback was his Egyptian ethnicity. Had he been an ambitious American billionaire, he would have been portrayed more sympathetically. Instead, he is shown relentlessly pushing his son Dodi and Diana together, a machination that is strictly in the realms of conjecture. That the Princess and the (Egyptian) Playboy may have actually drawn close on their own was evidently too distasteful a possibility for Netflix and its scriptwriters to contemplate! There is also no way that anyone could have known that Diana turned down Dodi’s proposal—unless Harry was a secret advisor to the production and mentioned the supposed phonecall in which she is shown denying that prospect to her sons. But then again, these days Harry’s recollection and interpretation of events are not exactly reliable anyway, given that he seems hellbent on positing his wife Meghan as Diana-like hounded-by-fame figure, which she is not. Harry’s comment in 2021 in a TV show in the US that “My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone that wasn’t white” was meant as a jibe at his relatives’ supposed prejudices. But it actually encapsulates the attitude of The Crown’s producers that both Fayeds are shown with negative attributes—one is domineering and unscrupulous, the other is weak, silly and fickle. And King Charles positively glows in comparison! All the actors are excellently cast, of course, some of them with truly uncanny resemblances to the real personages, none more so than Elizabeth Debicki as Diana. She has that shy look and slightly breathless upper class accent down pat and that empathetic tilt of the head that so endeared Diana to everyone. But, as was also evident in the previous seasons, she lacks Diana’s oomph, that je ne sais quoi quality that most men except her husband found utterly irresistible. Olivia Williams is the perfect Camilla looks-wise but says very little. The presumably explosive sexual chemistry between her and Charles that led to such catastrophic consequences, is not in evidence at all. They could have been siblings; unless of course the scriptwriters are really young and imagine that a couple in their 50s (and later) become totally platonic! As Camilla is reportedly the only senior royal who watches The Crown, it does beg the question whether she conveyed a preference for a lower profile to the serial’s producers! Actually, sparks really do not fly visibly between Diana and Dodi either, despite the beguiling warmth of St Tropez. There may be some truth in the conjecture then that their ‘romance of the ages’ was a figment of Al Fayed’s imagination. In fact, in an article in The Guardian in 2009, an investigative journalist named Jacques Peretti implied that even The Kiss on the Al Fayed yacht clicked by a photographer and printed around the world may not have been a kiss at all! Peretti wrote, “Dodi wasn’t interested in just any girls. He was interested in famous girls. He hired Pat Kingsley, the legendary publicist of Tom Cruise and Madonna, to make sure he was photographed with famous dates…Though Dodi had a reputation for being a playboy, it is far from clear that he was actually dating or even sleeping with any of these women. But he was certainly seen with them. Photographed with them.” So The Kiss could have been staged! After meeting the only woman Dodi ever had a long relationship with (no, not the one he ditched for Diana) Peretti concludes that he was “a man who, in spite of his immense wealth, struggled to make human connections and used famous women to create an image of a playboy.” Dodi’s childhood, as revealed by Peretti’s probe, was astoundingly like Charles’s: rich but distant parents, boarding schools, servants and bodyguards. Is that what drew Diana to him? The Queen played by Imelda Staunton is disappointing considering she is the central character. Her pursed lips and beady eyes do no justice to the late queen, whose smile and eyes were definitely her best features. Visually, she should have been cast as the Queen Mother, perhaps. It does not help that she is mostly shown peering into the distance, maybe contemplating her dysfunctional family. Hopefully she will be allowed to be more animated in the last few episodes. As the final episodes of the season will chart contemporary times, with William and Harry growing up—and away from each other—how Netflix keeps a balance between truth and dramatic licence will be key. After all, it has the predilections of the next king to consider, who is not very well disposed towards the media. And unlike the current Queen, the current Princess of Wales does not seem interested in priming the media to rebrand her husband either. The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. 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