We’ve known for ages that The Crown Season 6 would tackle one of the most tragic moments in recent royal history: the horrible Parisian car crash that resulted in the deaths of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki), her lover Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla), and driver Henri Paul (Yoann Blanc) on August 31, 1997. We were told that the Netflix series would recreate the scenes leading up to the automobile accident, but not the deaths themselves. Then, rumors leaked that the spirits of Diana and Dodi would “visit” surviving characters like Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton) and the then Prince Charles (Dominic West) in dramatic fashion. However, if you’ve already binged your way through the four climactic episodes in The Crown Season 6, you’ll know that showrunner Peter Morgan left the Royals off easily. He even seems to have shown some empathy — though perhaps not sympathy — for the rabid paparazzi photographers who triggered the events that led to the crash. However, the one person who gets the worst treatment in The Crown Season 6 Part 1 on Netflix is Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw).

**Spoilers for The Crown Season 6 Part 1, now streaming on Netflix**

Dodi Fayed’s billionaire father was understandably grief-stricken after the deaths of his son and Princess Diana. He would go on to erect memorials to their love in Harrod’s department store and told the press they were going to be married. Nevertheless, The Crown stunningly goes out of its way to blame Mohamed Al-Fayed for creating the confluence of events that led to Diana, Dodi’s and their driver’s deaths. According to The Crown, his hubristic desire to marry his son to royalty not only fanned the paparazzi’s fervor for Princess Diana photos, but that he also insisted on Dodi bringing Diana to Paris despite her requests to fly straight from a Mediterranean holiday back to London.

If anyone should be mad at The Crown Season 6, it should probably be the only recently deceased — he literally only passed away in August! — Mohammed Al-Fayed’s estate…

The Crown is Netflix’s splashy, critically-acclaimed look at the lives of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce), and their family behind closed doors during the 20th and early 21st centuries. One of the most beloved installments of The Crown Season 5 shifted the show’s focus to Mohamed Al-Fayed, a self-made Egyptian billionaire whose obsession with Western European high society inspired him to employ the disgraced Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson’s long-time butler Sydney Johnson (Jude Akuwudike). Al-Fayed, or “Mou Mou,” as friends called him, went out of his way to purchase the Duke of Windsor’s French palace, the Ritz Hotel, and the high brow department store, Harrod’s. Why? So he could win the approval of the racist European elite. And no one’s opinion meant more to him than Queen Elizabeth’s…

While Mohamed Al-Fayed never earned the respect of Elizabeth II, he did strike up a friendship with Princess Diana. After her divorce with Prince Charles was finalized, Al-Fayed invited her to holiday on his yacht. The Crown Season 6 Episode 1 “Persona Non Grata” details how Diana brought sons Prince William (Rufus Kampa) and Prince Harry (Fflyn Edwards) on the trip, only to quickly realize that Al-Fayed was attempting to pair her off with his already engaged (!) playboy son, Dodi. Diana and Dodi do form an attachment, although The Crown‘s showrunner Peter Morgan pulls off narrative gymnastics to maintain it wasn’t, as Al-Fayed claimed, true love.

The Crown repeatedly makes pains to show how creepy Mohamed Al-Fayed’s obsession with Dodi landing Diana is. He questions maids on the status of his son’s sheets and tells Dodi he’s finally a success for dating the Princess. The Crown then makes a wild assertion. According to Peter Morgan, paparazzo Mario Brenna was only able to snap the iconic first pic of Di and Dodi canoodling on the Fayed family yacht because Mohamed Al-Fayed tipped him off. The wild paycheck Brenna scores sets off a dangerous game of cat and mouse between Diana and the paparazzi that culminates in death.

If that wasn’t bad enough, The Crown Season 6 Episode 3 “Dis-moi oui!” reveals a Diana ready to call it quits with Dodi all while his father is egging him on to propose. Mohamed’s big plan? Dodi should insist on taking Diana to Paris so he can propose properly with a ring she off-handedly said she liked (just to be polite, in the context of The Crown). Diana is upset when Dodi directs the family’s private plane to Paris. After all, she just wants to get home to Wills and Harry. But Mou Mou insisted that his son do so…and in the world of The Crown, Mou Mou is the man with Diana’s blood on his hands.

While it’s true that Mohamed Al-Fayed had an unhealthy obsession with the British royals, The Crown really goes out of its way to blame him — a Brown man aspiring for acceptance — for the death of Britain’s iconic princess. Not only that, but Morgan does the aforementioned narrative gymnastics to present a version of events where Mohamed Al-Fayed wrongfully believed his son Dodi and Diana were engaged, even though Morgan depicts them on the verge of a breakup. (Thereby severing Diana’s connection to her Egyptian lover.)

Besides the icky racial optics, The Crown Season 6 Part 1’s depiction of Mohamed Al-Fayed feels oddly cruel. The Crown is a show that famously pulls its punches, especially where the royals are involved. Not so for Mohamed Al-Fayed, a man whose only reward was profound grief over the loss of his son.