The British royal family would like to remind you that The Crown does not reflect real life inside Windsor Castle. Ever since the show’s 2016 debut, royalists and historians have worried that the drama would tarnish the legacy of Queen Elizabeth II and that of her family. In 2020, then U.K. culture secretary Oliver Dowden pleaded with Netflix to include a disclaimer on its Emmy-winning show. The streamer staunchly refused—until this year.
The new season of which debuts on Nov. 9, promises to be its most controversial to date. It will dramatize a particularly dark moment in the newly named King Charles III’s history and the monarchy at large: his divorce from Diana Spencer, and the events leading up to her death. British papers have reported that the royal family has been wringing its hands over how that she fears “a significant number of viewers, particularly overseas, may take its version of history as being wholly true.” John Major, the British Prime Minister played by Jonny Lee Miller this season, called it a “barrel-load of nonsense.” So Netflix finally relented. The streamer added a line to the trailer’s description, calling it a “fictional dramatisation” inspired by true events.
