The British Royal Family’s biographer Penny Junor, who has been covering the Windsors for four decades, has said that Netflix’s The Crown portrays the family as ‘cruel’ and is ‘unfair’. The Crown Season 4 is currently streaming on the OTT platform and highlights the doomed romance between Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
Junor claimed that creator Peter Morgan ‘invented stuff to make expensive and very rich drama.’ Talking to a leading daily, she said, “It’s the most cruel and unfair and horrible portrayal of almost all of them.” She also claimed that Prince Charles’ unfavourable depiction in which the heir apparent is chided by his uncle Lord Mountbatten (who was instrumental in his marriage to Princess Diana) for being obsessed by Camilla Parker Bowles ‘just not historically accurate’. She said, “He adored Mountbatten and he was absolutely devastated by his death.” She also said that Prince Charles would be ‘incredibly upset’ by the show if he sees it.
While talking to a leading British news channel, Junor said the historical drama presents viewers with ‘caricatures’ of the royals. She said, “Every dramatist needs victims and villains, and I feel that what (The Crown’s creator) Peter Morgan has done here, is portray Diana as the victim and just about every member of the royal family as villains.”
Not only, Junor but apparently Prince William is also displeased with the way his parents are depicted in the series. A leading British daily quoted a friend of Duke of Cambridge saying he’s upset that “his parents are being exploited and presented in a false, simplistic way to make money.” The series depicts Charles verbally abusing Diana, and Diana confronting him at their wedding rehearsal about his relationship with Camilla- two encounters “friends of the prince (say are) events that never happened.” However, another daily quoted a source that said, “His Royal Highness (Prince Charles) has absolutely no views about it. He has never watched The Crown.”
(Source: The Times/The Daily Mail/BBC/The Sun)