Each new season of The Crown brings its own controversy and media frenzy. The first part of the sixth and final season, available since Thursday, November 16, is no exception. This time, it's the appearance of Diana's ghost that has divided reviewers. Yet seven years after the release of the first season of the series devoted to the British royal family – from Elizabeth's wedding in 1947 to the accidental death of the Princess of Wales under the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris on August 31, 1997 – the event is no longer making headlines in the United Kingdom.
It has to be said that the reality of the last two years has far outstripped fiction, perhaps limiting the element of surprise for viewers. With the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022, the death of Elizabeth II the following September, her state funeral 10 days later and the coronation of her son Charles III in May, they have been amply served, with a succession of sumptuous and solemn royal events.
The shock departure of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, for California, and their recurrent recriminations concerning the rest of the royal family via interviews or biography (Spare, by Prince Harry, published in January) also provided a breathtaking soap opera script. And that's without mentioning Elizabeth II's youngest son Andrew's highly questionable friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and the accusations made against him by one of the sex criminal's victims (which ended in an out-of-court settlement in early 2022).
Compared to the abundant and often scandalous news and the harshness of the documentary Harry & Meghan, released at the end of 2022 on Netflix, The Crown offers a reality weathered by time and a big-budget production, with polished sets and dialogue. It features members of the royal family in a far more flattering way than the tabloids, which have raged against Meghan Markle, just as they had raged against Catherine Middleton or Camilla Parker Bowles before her.
"Netflix has actually helped the royal family; the series has made its members more endearing, it has humanized them whereas they had been rather distant figures," said Pauline Maclaran, a specialist in consumer culture at London's Royal Holloway University. "Netflix shows Queen Elizabeth II's point of view at the moment of Diana's accidental death, when she was widely criticized at the time for being indifferent. Prince Philip is portrayed as macho, but also as someone who put duty before personal ambition."
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