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24th Nov 2020

Princess Diana’s brother isn’t happy with The Crown’s depiction of his sister’s marriage

Niamh Maher

Have you watched the whole thing? We’ve watched the whole thing.

The latest season of The Crown is currently streaming on Netflix and it’s safe to say, people are hooked.

Season 4 covers 1977 to 1990 of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. A tumultuous period for the British Monarchy; one of the main story arcs is the breakdown of the marriage of Diana Spencer, played to eerily perfection by Emma Corrin, and Prince Charles, portrayed by Josh O’Connor.

Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles and Emma Corrin as Diana Spencer in The Crown – Netflix

The show also depicts Diana’s well-documented eating disorder, and Charles’ growing relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles.

A harrowing watch, the show pulls no punches, and this has not been lost on relatives of those involved.

The brother of the late Princess Diana, Charles Spencer the 9th Earl Spencer, says the show is riddled with historical inaccuracies and is a long way-off what truly happened.

Getty images

Spencer, who was Diana’s younger brother, appeared on ITV’s Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh recently and explained his unease with the show, “The worry for me is that people see a show like that and they forget that it is fiction. They assume, especially foreigners. I find Americans tell me they have watched The Crown as if they have taken a history lesson. Well, they haven’t.”

When further pushed on the accuracies of the historical portrayals he admitted it was a hard question,”There is a lot of conjecture and a lot of invention, isn’t there? You can hang it on fact but the bits in between are not fact.”

Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana – Getty images

Diana’s brother added that he still feels a “duty” to his sister, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997.

Spencer is not alone in his concerns with the show, Royal insiders recently claimed that the Windsors are unhappy with the depiction of themselves during what was a difficult time in their complicated family history.

Speaking to Hello magazine the insider said, “No one knows what goes on behind the closed doors of the palaces and the fact Her Majesty the Queen, arguably the greatest monarch the world has ever seen, and her close descendants are now being viewed through the greasy, slanderous lens of The Crown is as horrific as it is tragic.”

Could we be seeing a disclaimer on the next season of The Crown? We’ll have to wait and see.