The Crown S6: Real History & True

Stories Behind The Drama

www.historyextra.com

The final season brings viewers into the 21st-century story

of the Windsor dynasty, with the plotlines expected to end
around 2005.

What historical events will The Crown S6 cover?

The final moments dramatised in season 5 saw Charles,

Prince of Wales, and Diana, both suffering the after-effects
of the so-called War of the Waleses, which played out in
the British tabloids during the 1990s between the couple’s
formal separation (announced by Prime Minister John
Major in 1992) and eventual divorce in August 1996.

“The marriage collapsed like a house of cards. Every detail

was subject to insatiable scrutiny by the press,” writes
historian Tracy Borman.

During their PR battles, both royals had given primetime

interviews that divulged personal struggles and intimate
details about their marriage, and by 1997 tabloid interest
in the divorced couple – and particularly Diana – was at
fever pitch.
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The paparazzi interest in Diana – particularly in the

summer months of 1997, before her death, aged 36, in a
car crash in Paris – is the central subject of The Crown’s
opening episodes.

The paparazzi interest in Diana (played by Elizabeth

Debicki) is expected to be the central subject of The
Crown’s opening episodes. (Image by Netflix)

Previous seasons of the drama have traced and

foreshadowed this escalating paparazzi interest, from the
press ‘discovering’ Princess Margaret’s relationship with
Group Captain Peter Townsend in season one, to Charles
and Diana’s 1983 royal tour of Australia and the start of
‘Dianamania’ in season four.

Diana’s final months can be characterised by the fraught

balancing act of managing very public demands of royalty
with the need for privacy and intimacy, in an age when
royal life was being redefined by the clamour of mass
media.

Diana’s relationship with Dodi Fayed

The early episodes of season 6 cover Princess Diana’s trip

to Saint-Tropez in July 1997, to stay on a yacht owned by
Mohamed Al-Fayed (who was then most well known as
the owner of Harrods, among other business ventures).

The divorce agreement of the royal couple reached in

August 1996 had specified that the couple would share
custody of Prince William and Prince Harry. Due to Diana
not being an official member of the royal family, she
relinquished her title of ‘Her Royal Highness’ but was
allowed to keep the title ‘Princess of Wales’.

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Netflix’s The Crown: the real history behind the royal drama

Diana stayed on the Al-Fayeds’ new luxury yacht, the

Jonkial, in Saint-Tropez. She also stayed in the family’s 30-
bedroom estate, Castle St Therese, with her sons Princes
William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12.

“There was much laughter, horseplay, the norm whenever

Mummy and Willy and I were together, though even more
so on that holiday,” wrote Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex in
his 2023 autobiography Spare. “Everything about that trip
to Saint-Tropez was heaven. The weather was sublime, the
food was tasty, Mummy was smiling," he writes.
Khalid Abdalla as Dodi Fayed, and Elizabeth Debicki as
Diana in 'The Crown'.(Image by Daniel Escale/Netflix)

Sometime during the Saint-Tropez trip, it’s believed that

Diana began a relationship with Mohamed’s eldest son,
Dodi Fayed (though as shown in The Crown season 5, the
press of the time reported that Dodi was engaged to
American model Kelly Fisher when his relationship with
Diana began).

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On being introduced to Fayed, Prince Harry wrote that he

was "cheeky," but "nice enough."

Following the press’ discovery of Diana’s relationship with

Fayed, journalist and author David Barnett noted in 2017
that “there was an obsession with Diana, her every move
was checked and documented and filed”.

Paparazzi interest soon escalated to unforeseen heights.

“In the months before [her death],” writes Barnett, “she had
appeared with almost exhausting regularity on the front
pages of the newspapers, and indeed had a profile that
today we rarely see among the royals”.

Diana’s campaign against landmines

Diana’s year as a divorced woman “witnessed

controversial relationships with surgeon Hasnat Khan and
Harrods heir Dodi Fayed,” writes royal historian Sarah
Gristwood, “but it also saw the anti-landmines campaign
which stands as her lasting memorial.”

In the year following her divorce, Diana began a prominent

campaign for HALO Trust, which was first formed in 1988
to combat the devastation caused by landmines and other
explosive remnants of war in Afghanistan, which had
caused many civilian deaths.

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Elizabeth Debicki portrays Diana, Princess of Wales's anti-
landmines campaign in 'The Crown'. (Image by Des
Willie/Netflix)

In January 1997, Diana was pictured touring an Angolan

minefield in a ballistic helmet and flak jacket, during a Red
Cross visit to the country, when she participated in a much
publicised walk across a minefield. The drama chooses to
focus on her visit to Bosnia in August 1997.

In reality, Diana was criticised by some for her calls for an

international ban on landmines, and branded by then
Junior Defence Minister, Earl Howe, as a "loose cannon"
(he felt her comments were out of step with government
policy).
But National Archives documents released in 2020 show
that the princess herself dismissed the criticism of her
campaign, and also spoke of future plans for a world tour
to other heavily mined countries, including Vietnam,
Cambodia and Kuwait.

There’s no doubting the profile that Diana brought to the

cause. “Shortly after her visit,” reports the Trust’s website,
“the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty was signed, calling for all
countries to unite to rid the world of landmines.”

Queen Elizabeth II and Tony Blair

As has been the case with every season of The Crown, the
new episodes also see a new prime minister. In the final
episode of season five, viewers saw Tony Blair elected in a
landslide victory for Labour in May 1997.

“There are moments in history when you can feel a nation

changing course, and the summer of 1997 felt like one of
them,” writes historian Dominic Sandbrook.

“On the first day of May, the British electorate had

unceremoniously slammed the door on 18 years of
Conservative government, handing Tony Blair’s Labour
party the biggest landslide in postwar history. When, in the
small hours of the morning, Blair addressed Labour’s
election-night party at the Royal Festival Hall, he began
with the words: ‘A new dawn has broken, has it not?’”
Recalling his first audience with Queen Elizabeth II, Blair
described the late queen as “direct”, and the monarch
reportedly denied the invite to call him ‘Tony’.

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Queen Elizabeth II, played by Imelda Staunton in 'The

Crown'. (Image by Justin Downing/Netflix)

Blair “was a man of a new generation,” writes historian

Francis Beckett, “and his advice on the Queen’s family
problems was less appreciated than his predecessor John
Major’s had been.”

The Queen also reportedly reminded him of her longevity,

remarking that “You are my 10th prime minister. The first
was Winston. That was before you were born.”
On Sunday 31 August, three months after his election, Blair
was in his constituency home in the northeast of England
when he heard the terrible news that Princess Diana had
been killed in a car crash in Paris.

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales

Diana’s death in Paris prompted an extraordinary

outpouring of public grief.

“Outside her London home, Kensington Palace, well-

wishers left more than a million bouquets,” writes
Sandbrook. “At the family home, Althorp, so many people
tried to bring flowers that the police begged them to stay
away because the traffic chaos was endangering public
safety.”
The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in August 1997,
prompted an extraordinary outpouring of public grief.
(Image by Getty Images)

Press attention at the time also focused on the reaction of

the royal family – a subject that Peter Morgan has tackled
in his other work, including the 2006 film The Queen.

In reality, the royal family expected to grieve privately at

Balmoral, but in the week between her death and her
funeral there was an increasing clamour for public
involvement in the family’s grief. “Show Us You Care,”
demanded one tabloid headline.

The Crown dramatises the tension between the private

experiences of leading royals, and the public perceptions
of their reaction.

“In the febrile climate of blame – the tears in the street,

the mounds of flowers outside her Kensington Palace
home, the funeral in Westminster Abbey,” writes Sarah
Gristwood, “it was prime minister Tony Blair who found the
popular tribute. Diana had been, he said, ‘the people’s
princess’.”

When Diana’s funeral was held at Westminster Abbey on 6

September, more than one million people poured into the
streets of London, while a further 2.5 billion people
watched the worldwide television coverage.
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On the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death, Sandbrook wrote

for BBC History Magazine how the tragic event “remains an
obvious landmark in our recent history.”

“Yet the passions that surrounded it – the fury at the

popular press, which was thought to have hounded her to
her grave; the outcry at the royal family, who were
criticised for their reluctance to mourn more publicly; even
the enthusiasm for Tony Blair, who saw his public
satisfaction rating rise to a record high – have now faded
to the point when many feel almost embarrassed to recall
them.”

What will happen in the second part of The

Crown S6?

The next instalment of The Crown will follow the young

princes, William and Harry, and the challenges they faced
in the heightened spotlight following the death of their
mother.
Rufus Kampa as Prince William in 'The Crown'. (Image by
Netflix)

The latter episodes of season 6 will also no doubt

dramatise the death of Princess Margaret, whom the show
has chosen to provide many touchstones in its portrayal of
the struggles between duty and personal desire.

“The princess was last seen in public before Christmas

2001 at the 100th birthday party of Princess Alice, the
dowager duchess of Gloucester,” writes Anne de Courcy.
“Her final years were a sad contrast with the lovely young
woman remembered by so many and, by the Queen, as ‘my
beloved sister’.”
The events dramatised in The Crown will end in 2005, a
year that saw the future King Charles III marry Camilla,
now Queen Consort.

The show has confirmed that the final series will include
the royal wedding in April 2005.

Olivia Williams, who plays the future Queen Camilla in the

drama’s final season, explained how she and Dominic
West, who portrays Charles, managed their roles: “That
was a challenge for us, to actually keep finding the joy
between the two of them and to try and work out what the
magical thing is between them that clearly makes them
such a happy and successful and supportive and
humorous couple now, in this very successful marriage.”

Catch up on the real the history behind each episode of The

Crown season 5, with our episode guides:

The Crown S5 E1: ‘Queen Victoria Syndrome’ and a

second honeymoon
The Crown S5 E2: Prince Philip’s ‘keeper of secrets’
and Andrew Norton’s book on Princess Diana
The Crown S5 E3: exiled royals and the al-Fayeds
The Crown S5 E4: the Queen’s “annus horribilis” and
Princess Margaret’s relationship with Peter
Townsend
 The Crown S5 E5 real history: ‘Camillagate’ tapes and
a “war council” for the monarchy’s survival
The Crown S5 E6 real history: the Romanovs’ murder,
and Philip’s “spiritual companionship”
The Crown S5 E7 real history: the introduction of
Martin Bashir, and a royal
The Crown S5 E8 real history: Diana’s Panorama
interview causes fireworks
The Crown S5 E9 real history: the divorce settlement
between Charles and Diana
The Crown S5 E10 real history: the HMY Britannia's
final voyage, and a political landslide

How to watch The Crown Season 6 Part 1

Season 6 Part 1 of The Crown will be available to watch on

Netflix from 16 November 2023.