Royal watchers are wondering: Are the royals watching 'The Crown'? (Released in 2020) (2023)

If there were a television show that portrayed your family as a bunch of clueless snobs and womanizers who helped drive a mentally challenged young princess to despair, would you watch it?

"Honestly, think about it," said Valentine Low, who writes about real affairs for the Times of London. (Yes, we're talking The Crown and the British Royal Family here.) "If you were a member of the Royal Family, there's no point in looking. All it will do is annoy you. The idea of ​​them sitting around laughing and watching, nothing convinced me that that was plausible."

The final season of Crown, which charts the origins of the doomed marriage between Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, has the British media (and possibly the British public) concerned, although it's unclear how much is being talked about the British media), another). .cleansing up old confusing controversies and raising new and tantalizing questions.

These questions include: how accurate is it? (Somewhat accurate, but also quite inaccurate.) Is there really oneDonkey drinking game called Ibble DibbleWho may the British upper class love or not? (Yes). And perhaps most undeniably, is the royal family itself a consumer of The Crown?

Anyone who knows the answer to this cannot comment.

"I'm sorry but we never commented on 'The Crown,'" Queen Elizabeth communications secretary Donal McCabe said via email.

What makes The Crown so compelling for viewers, who imagine in vivid detail what members of the pathologically private Windsor family say to each other behind closed doors, is precisely what trying to find out what the family thinks about the series an exercise in vanity.

The royals are so secretive and aggressively secretive about their personal lives, so reluctant to show any hint of public introspection that the idea of ​​them willingly adding oxygen to the conversation about "The Crown" is unthinkable.

Jonny Dymond, the BBC's royal correspondent, said whenever reporters ask royal sources (anonymous officials and family members authorized to speak "to mere mortals", i.e. members of the media) about "The Crown", the answer is always : “No, I don't know, and if I did, I wouldn't tell you.

That didn't stop people from asking. In fact, it's become something of a competitive exercise in royal Kremlinology, tracking down every hint of comments that any Windsor, however small, may or may not have made about "The Crown" at one time or another .

Let's start with Queen Elizabeth, who usually limits her spontaneous public comments to subjects like the weather and is famous for saying when meeting new people at social events, "Have you come a long way?"

"She must have heard of 'The Crown,' but the Queen has never confirmed that she actually sees it," he said.The express reported🇧🇷 However, the newspaper added: "A senior royal source told the Sunday Express in 2017 that the Queen had seen 'The Crown' before."

According to the 2017 report, the Queen's son Edward and his wife Sophie often meet up with the Queen "for a casual dinner while they watch TV or a movie" and are fans of the show. "They have a Netflix account and they asked him to watch it with them," the newspaper said. "Thankfully he really enjoyed it, although there was obviously some reenactment of events that he found overly dramatized."

Actress Vanessa Kirby, who plays Princess Margaret in the first two seasons,vanity fairA few years ago, a friend of hers met “one of Queen Elizabeth's granddaughters: Princess Eugenia, or was it Beatrice? - who said her grandmother loved it.

uh, he saidRichard Palmer,who writes about royalties for The Daily Express. "I'm pretty sure the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles aren't watching The Crown," he said via email.

The arrival of the current season at a time when much of Britain is in lockdown due to the coronavirus means 'The Crown' is an even bigger problem than it otherwise would be. Without much substance to report, many newspapers are churning out conditionally tense articles about what the royals would think if they saw the show.

"If the Duke of Edinburgh were able to see 'The Crown' he would undoubtedly be very shocked at the spectacle of the man posing as a pheasant hunter in August," said Simon Hefferescreveu no The Daily Telegraph, and said the series caused "unintentional hilarity" among insiders. (Another of her quibbles: The Queen would say "field sport," not "blood sport," as she says on the show, to describe the hunt.)

Apparently, some royals are taking action against the "crown" by voicing their opinions (if they have any opinions at all) through a network of "friends." That's especially true for Prince Charles, who spent years trying to get over the blow to his reputation after he and Diana divorced and she died in a car crash shortly thereafter. The current series reminds us that his relationship with his now-wife, the former Camilla Parker-Bowles, coincided with his relationship with Diana, and that Diana wasn't happy about it.

Is Charles watching The Crown? Absolutely not, say your friends or your "friends".

"The Prince of Wales has refused to see The Crown and is deliberately distancing himself," said Victoria Wardescreveu no The Daily Telegraph🇧🇷 He quoted anonymous supporters of Charles as saying it was "appalling" that his name was "pulled through the mud".

Is Prince William, son of Charles and Diana, watching The Crown?

If so, I wouldn't want it either.The Daily Mail reported.

The images of his parents' unhappy marriage "will no doubt upset Prince William as well," the newspaper said, citing "a source".

The "infiltrator" continued: "The Duke of Cambridge is not very happy about this. He feels his parents are being taken advantage of and portrayed in a false and simplistic way to make money.

For what it's worth, Olivia Colman, who plays the Queen, said she once sat next to Prince William at a dinner party, and while he was charming and friendly, their exchange "didn't go very well," as The Crown” arrived. high.

"He asked me what I was doing back then, before quickly adding, 'Actually, I know what you're doing,'" he said.she told an interviewer🇧🇷 I was super excited and asked: 'Did you see it?' His answer was a resounding 'no'.”

And Matt Smith, who played Prince Philip for the first two seasons,said the observerthat he knew a "prominent man in the world of cinema", Prince Philip once asked him, also at a dinner, if he was "involved in this 'Kronen' thing".

No, the man replied.

But after a while, unable to contain his curiosity, the man said: 'Philip, I'm just wondering, because I have some friends who have done The Crown, have you seen any?

Philip stared at him. "Don't be ridiculous," he said.