When “The Crown” returns after a two-year absence, the splintering marriage of Charles and Diana and more woes for Queen Elizabeth II are in the drama’s elegant but intrusive spotlight.
There’s swirling off-stage drama as well for the Netflix series that began with Elizabeth’s marriage in the late 1940s and, in its fifth season, takes on the British royal family’s turbulent 1990s. The queen famously labeled one stretch her “annus horribilis” — Latin for “horrible year.”
The safe distance of history is gone in the 10 new episodes set within recent memory for many and whose stories, sight unseen, have
