[imagesource: Netflix]

Major spoilers for The Crown season five are incoming.

The latest season of the Netflix historical drama is set in the 1990s, focusing largely on the endpoint of Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ marriage.

Over the years, Peter Morgan’s drama has been accused of making up facts, with some critics even pleading with the streaming platform to include disclaimers before the episodes play.

For season five, the streaming giant was in fact forced to add a disclaimer to its trailer saying it was a “fictional dramatisation… inspired by real events”.

It is almost impossible to know exactly what happened among the members of the British royal family, though, as many things were said and done behind closed doors.

A Netflix spokesman said that “series five is a fictional dramatisation, imagining what could have happened behind closed doors during a significant decade for the Royal Family – one that has already been scrutinised and well documented by journalists, biographers and historians.”

Hence why The Daily Mail has done an extensive analysis of what the series got right and what has been depicted as false, or unclear.

Let’s take a look at some of the bold claims from the series.

First up, The Crown claims that Prince Philip had an affair with Penny Knatchbull.

The verdict for this is apparently false:

One of the boldest insinuations in episode 6 is the suggestion that a ‘lonely’ Prince Philip turned to Penny Knatchbull, then known as Penny Romsey, for ‘intellectual companionship.’

…The Queen is shocked by this revelation and it is implied she believes the connection between the Duke of Edinburgh is physical as well as intellectual.

Philip stuck to saying that their connection was not physical and just a deep friendship, but this did very little to abate the rumour mill:

In real life too, the closeness between the Duke of Edinburgh and Penny Knatchbull  sparked rumours of an affair over their decades-long friendship, however the pair always strenuously denied the accusation.

Later on, Penny also developed a close relationship with the late Queen Elizabeth II, and the rumours were squashed.

Next, The Crown claimed that Princess Diana’s brakes were tampered with and her telephone was bugged.

The verdict is partly false:

The facts: There is no recorded evidence of Princess Diana’s brakes being tampered with – but one of her telephone calls was recorded.

Diana’s intimate telephone call between her and her ‘close friend’ James Gilbey, in which he nicknamed her ‘Squidgy’, was recorded on New Year’s Eve in 1989, while Diana was staying at Sandringham.

Even though Diana was convinced that someone would interfere with her car, there is no recorded evidence of the late royal’s brakes being tampered with.

The Crown also claimed that the Queen asked John Major to mediate Diana and Charles’ divorce:

The ninth episode of the series focuses on Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ divorce, including the negotiation of their divorce settlement, which is hard fought by both.

John Major discusses the matter with the Queen, revealing that the estranged couple have engaged Anthony Julius and Charles has Fiona Shackleton as their lawyers and don’t plan on giving ground on their respective demands.

It is at this point that the Queen apparently suggested that Major himself conducts the mediation between the pair, saying that he was easy to trust.

The verdict on this is false, however, as nothing indicates that the Queen asked Major to mediate the divorce of her eldest son, which was hard fought over by his and Princess Diana’s lawyers instead.

According to Major’s biographer, Anthony Seldon, Major did offer some advice to the couple, but “any support and guidance Major could offer were to no avail”.

Another claim in The Crown is that Charles and Diana hated each other even after their divorce.

Episode nine ends with Prince Charles travelling to Kensington Palace to speak to Diana after their divorce has been finalised.

While the conversation in the series is cordial at first, it ends with Diana in tears, suggesting there is no chance of the two ever being friendly with one another again.

The verdict is false. Reports from royal experts suggest the estranged couple settled down after the divorce in July 1996:

In fact, Majesty Magazine editor Ingrid Seward said that they ‘wept together’ after signing the divorce papers.

Speaking in the Royal Family At War in 2019, the royal author said: ‘She said that on the day of the divorce, she and Charles sat down together on the sofa and they both cried. It was this crazy separation but by the time the divorce was finalized, they were on much better terms.’

Last but not least, The Crown claimed that Dodi took cocaine casually.

During an episode, Dodi is shown taking cocaine while flying back on a private jet with his girlfriend Kelly Fisher. The verdict on this one is true:

According to the memoir Inside Studio 54, Dodi always had ‘amazing coke’ when he set off on his jaunts to ‘dangerous’ parties in abandoned buildings.

The playboy was a regular at Manhattan’s Studio 54, where supermodels, pop stars and Hollywood legends got high on drugs and often had sex in hidden corners of the sprawling club, according to Mark Fleischman.

‘Dodi loved Quaaludes, good quality coke and hot women and he always had plenty of those,’ writes Fleischman, who owned the club between 1981 and ’84.

There are other wild claims and fact-shattering verdicts in the write-up, many of which are about that controversial Panorama interview with Diana.

I guess you’ll just need to take The Crown season five with a pinch of salt, then.

[source:dailymail]