Prince Charles to avoid ‘The Crown’s new season featuring Diana, tells friends he's 'never seen' Netflix show
It seems Prince Charles is not a fan of ‘The Crown’ -- which depicts the life of Queen Elizabeth II from the 1940s to modern times -- as the 72-year-old royal has told his friends that he has "never seen" the Netflix series and has no plans to see the latest installment that dropped on November 15. The fourth season of the drama dropped amid various criticisms that it showed “fiction as fact” and claims that it was nothing but “trolling on a Hollywood budget”. After setting up an ageing Queen and a young Charles in previous seasons, the latest introduces Lady Diana, Prince William and Prince Harry in the narrative. It presents the wedding of Charles and Diana, and their tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983. Diana’s eating disorder and Charles’ affair with his current wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, are also navigated.
Speaking about Charles' thoughts on the series, an insider close to him told The Sun, “His Royal Highness has absolutely no views about it. He has never watched The Crown. I shouldn’t think he knows it’s coming out.” Another source called the series as “drama and entertainment for commercial ends . . . with no regard to the actual people involved who are having their lives hijacked and exploited”. They added the show has presented the Prince of Wales in “a very unflattering light”.
The source stated, “The public shouldn’t be fooled into thinking this is an accurate portrayal. This is trolling with a Hollywood budget.” They also explained that Charles’ elder son, Prince William, believes the Netflix-original painted his father and mother, Lady Diana, in a “false, simplistic way”. Meanwhile, showrunner Peter Morgan, claimed that the storyline of the series was discussed with senior royal members. Buckingham Palace has refuted any such claims.
This comes weeks after an earlier report stated that Charles was forced to marry Diana by Prince Philip. Royal biographer Ingrid Seward said: “He told some of his friends that he felt pressurized into marrying Diana because Philip said, ‘You’ve either got to marry her or let her go. You can’t string a … young girl [along]. She’s only 19. You can’t string her along.’ And all the press is saying, ‘Oh, this is going to be the next queen.’ You’ve got to take a stand and say that this is not going to work, or you marry her.” The biographer added, “Charles … he was frightened of his father and he probably thought, ‘Well, OK. I’ll marry her if that’s what you want me to do.’”
Seward also revealed that before Charles, Andrew was thought a better fit for her. "I think some of Diana’s friends thought that Andrew would be more fun for her than Charles, because he was very much her age and he was full of fun and everything else. But Diana wasn’t interested in Andrew. It was Charles she was interested in. She had been around the royal family ever since she was a little girl because her father and her family lived on the Sandringham Estate and her father was what’s called an inquiry to the queen. So, he sort of was in the royal household,” he mentioned.
Charles and Diana exchanged vows in 1981 and shared two sons - 38-year-old William and Prince Harry, 36. But they got separated in 1992 before divorcing each other in 1996. In 1997, Diana died in a car accident and eight years later, in 2005, Charles married Duchess Camilla.