Netflix’s critically acclaimed series “The Crown” takes viewers on a journey with the British royal family during the incredible 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II, and highlights some of the monarch’s highs and lows over the years, ranging from her marriage to Prince Philip to working with a handful of notable prime ministers like Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
The highly anticipated season five of the series shifts from the rocky beginnings of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage, which played out toward the end of season four, to the dissolution of said marriage through one of the royals’s most tumultuous decades: the 1990s. Historically, the time period is categorized by divorces, love affairs, scandals, unrelenting press scrutiny, and an economic recession. Notably, “The Crown” depicts a handful of significant events from the era, including King Charles and Princess Diana’s very public, turbulent divorce.
Apart from the historical events, the show also takes creative liberties to amp up the onscreen drama between characters, which has caused many to question its accuracy, and many to urge the show’s creators to clarify that the series is not entirely based on fact. Just weeks before the season-five premiere on Nov. 9, a spokesperson for Netflix issued a statement to Variety to address the fictionalized content of the series. “‘The Crown’ has always been presented as a drama based on historical events. Series five is a fictional dramatization, imagining what could have happened behind closed doors during a significant decade for the Royal Family — one that has already been scrutinized and well documented by journalists, biographers, and historians,” the spokesperson said.
With endless buzz around the series and viewers taking to Google in search of all the facts, here’s what’s accurate and what’s not accurate about Britain’s most famous family in “The Crown” season five.
