'The Crown' Season 4 Episode 1: Who is Sarah Spencer? Prince Charles dated Princess Diana's sister before her
Spoilers for 'The Crown' Season 4
The fourth season of Netflix's 'The Crown' is now streaming on the platform and picks up almost directly from where the last season left off. Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) has been appointed the new Prime Minister of England and Prince Charles (Josh O'Connor), who was forced to stop seeing Camilla Shand (Emerald Fennell) by his family is now single, and a source of concern for the royal family. Since he is the next in line to the British throne, his mother, Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Coleman) would like him to settle down, however, he has only had a string of romances, while still seeing Camilla, who is now Camilla Parker-Bowles.
As the season begins, the woman Charles is seeing is Sarah Spencer (Isobel Eadie). If that name seems strikingly familiar to the name of Charles's first wife, it is because it is. When Charles goes to meet Sarah at her home to go riding he meets a young girl all dressed up in a costume for a school play on William Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. While the young girl tries to sneak across the room unseen, Charles does notice her and in fact, seems quite enamored by her. We learn later that this girl is Diana Spencer, who would go on to become Charles's first wife.
Later, after Charles's great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten (Charles Dance) is assassinated by the Irish Republican Army, he decides to stop seeing Camilla after reading a letter written by Mountbatten just before he died. When he later runs into Diana, who offers him her condolences on Mountbatten's death, it would seem that she has made an impact on him. We then see him calling Sarah later to ask her more about Diana, whether she is fun and about her character and tells Sarah that he plans to ask Diana out.
Of course, this leads many to wonder whether Charles did date Diana's sister before he dated her. Sarah is the daughter of the eighth Earl Spencer and elder sister to the late Princess Diana. She acquired the courtesy title "Lady" in 1975 when her grandfather died and her father became the 8th Earl Spencer.
It was Sarah's brief fling with Charles in 1977 that led to the meeting of Charles and Diana. However, things didn’t work out between the two of them because Sarah allegedly gossiped about their relationship, which was frowned upon by the royal family. According to reports, she declared that she would not marry Charles "if he were the dustman or the King of England," which made Charles furious.
She later commented on her sister's marriage saying: "I introduced them. I'm Cupid." However, some have stated the relationship between her and Diana was strained, because of her long resentment of the prince marrying Diana and not her, though others (including Diana's biographer Andrew Morton) have said she was one of the few people Diana trusted. Later in their lives, she often accompanied Diana on official visits as one of her ladies-in-waiting.
In 1980, Sarah married Neil Edmund McCorquodale and has three children with him -- Emily Jane McCorquodale, George Edmund McCorquodale and Celia Rose McCorquodale.
'The Crown' Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.