Royal Drama: The Crown Season Four
What do we, ordinary people, have in common with the royal family? An awful lot.
Season four of The Crown began streaming recently on Netflix and I accomplished the incredible labor of finishing the season in one day. I know, that’s a lot of work… but someone had to do it! Even though The Crown started streaming on Netflix about 4 years ago, to be honest, I only began watching the show last year but it certainly caught my attention and has won over my devotion and love. As it turns out, The Crown helps me see that we, humans, are more alike than we like to think, in that we all have to face sooner or later our personal problems and deal with them no matter our differences. The Crown does an incredible job in narrating the lives of the royals through the fictionalization of their lives. The show opens up with season one with Queen Elizabeth assuming the position of Queen of England and along every season, the show presents different decades of the royals’ lives.
Season four has introduced two of the most highly anticipated characters; Princess Diana Spencer and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. To say that these two caused revolt within the lives of the royal family would be an understatement. Both of these women came to revolutionize the way this family deals with their issues. Although the show is fiction, it is based on real-life events. If you are a loyal fan of The Crown, you’ve been aware that the family has quite the reputation of dealing with drama and scandal in a very particular way—they don’t. The royals’ duty is to put the crown above all else, and that includes their personal lives. For instance, Princess Margaret is forced to turn away from her one true love in season one just because he is a divorced man. In season four, we see how her life has turned out after years of being denied love for the sake of attaining royal duties. There’s an emphasis on Princess Margaret’s mental health crisis and how she appears to deteriorate. We come to know later in the episode that her family has a history of mental health issues which was hidden from her. We see how there is also a bit of disdain in treating mental health issues because of the stigma of being seen as crazy. It is true that it was a different time back then. Nonetheless, it is important to this day that there is a representation of an open conversation back then about mental health disorders. However, season four does not only feature that interesting plotline but many others as well that touch on the importance of psychology and mental health awareness.
Princess Diana Spencer throws the family dynamic into a tailspin. I dare to say Lady Di is arguably one of the most interesting, fascinating, and scandalous characters in the Windsor family. Lady Di deserves justice. What I remember from her death is very vague. She was always beloved by my mother and I never really truly understood until I was older. The Crown gives us a special glimpse at understanding what it was like to be an outsider in a royal family. Charles courted Diana when they were younger and was basically forced to marry her because she seemed like a good fit at the time for his family. Charles, however, was deeply in love with another married woman, Camilla Parker Bowles. In season four, we see how Diana is affected by this infidelity and lack of love. I despise Charles and Camilla for putting Diana through all of that, nonetheless, my hot take is that I have to have empathy for and understand them too. Charles would have never had to put Diana through the situations she went through if he was allowed to love the woman he wanted at an earlier time. This only proves that the archaic system that the royal family follows is way more harmful than beneficial to them. Diana craved love every step of the marriage but so did the rest of the family members and the show does a nice job of depicting how each family member is a mirror to the next one. Diana seems to be the one that says it the most out loud, however, you can’t give love if you don’t know what it looks like. And she, unfortunately, married into a family who has twisted ideas of how love should look like due to the balance they have to hold between being public figures and being human beings. The fact that the royal family is in the spotlight is one of the many reasons why we know so much about them but at the same time it is the same reason we know so little about them, too. We only know an idea of them, constructed by the tabloids and fictionalized stories and characters. All of them happen to be human beings, which is why The Crown is the perfect show to watch if you want to be entertained but also delve deeper into a psychological drama. This family is as imperfect as the next one and I think we should remember that when watching the show and when dealing with our families and others as well.
