Initially, I was never interested nor had I planned to watch The Crown. After all, I wasn’t interested in the royal family of England nor had any special interest in sociopolitics.
However, when The Crown Season 6 Part 1 was released on Netflix, my mother insisted that we watch the series together. My mother had always had an interest in the royal family, as she grew up watching them on TV back in Australia, and had been witness to the drama and spectacle of the royal family since Princess Diana.
It took a bit of convincing, but eventually, I sat down to watch the series with my mother completely unaware of the emotional and social turmoil I was about to go through.
In this season, the show deviates from its original protagonist, Queen Elizabeth II, and focuses more on Princess Diana, her influence, and her sudden death.
The season begins with a slightly ominous scene, where an unknown man is seen taking his dog on a midnight stroll through the park. It seems just like another mundane night until in the distance we begin to hear the reeving engine and screeching tires.
As the car flies past the man on his midnight stroll, we watch alongside the unsuspecting man as the car swerves and then disappears behind the bend, to which we hear the undeniable sound of metal meeting concrete; a car crash.
We are given just enough time to see the man pull out his phone and call emergency services before the screen goes black. As the audience is left stunned by that gruesome and tragic scene, the episode continues. The screen flashes the following text, “Eight weeks Before” and we are inexplicably thrust into where we last left off in Season 5.
Throughout the four episodes, we are slowly introduced to the life of Princess Diana after her divorce from the royal family and Prince William. Princess Diana was swamped by millions of people, slandered in scandal after scandal in the media, and chased down by the paparazzi.
Honestly, I found the whole situation eerie and insane. While I’m used to the world of inter-connected media where parasocial relationships are commonplace, Princess Diana’s story feels like an untold cautionary tale of what happens when those relationships are taken to the extreme.
\
For example, in the season, we see Diana get involved with a person named Dodi Fayed, the son of a wealthy businessman whom Diana starts having a relationship with. At this point, Princess Diana had been divorced from her previous husband for a year, and taking on a new partner shouldn’t seem terrible.
However, when a rogue photographer manages to get a picture of them together kissing, the media blows up to an almost frivolous degree. Photographers begin to swarm Diana and Dodi constantly, any charity events Diana holds are overtaken by noisy reporters, and rumors start to swirl about their relationship.
It all culminates into an extreme hurricane of emotional stress, manipulation, and frustration eventually leading to the scene at the beginning of the first episode.
Although some complain Season 6 of The Crown strayed from its purpose as the series focused on Queen Elizabeth II, I would argue that this season adds a lot more depth to the idea of the modern monarchy and the role of the present royal family.
It feels like this season is setting up some serious topics and bringing forward evidence that could play into the further development of the series, its characters, and how we view the royal family of the present day.
