Royally Screwed

Charles and Diana are at war, and so is The Crown with itself.

- By Jen Chaney

In the fifth season of The Crown, series creator Peter Morgan doesn’t have to take many creative liberties to illustrate a monarchy in disarray. Unfolding primarily in the bulk of the 1990s, this chapter in the royal saga covers a particularly volatile seven-year period for the family, one that includes the divorces of three high-profile couples, a badly damaging fire at Windsor Castle, the rise of newly elected prime minister Tony Blair’s “Cool Britannia” attitude, and increasing public debate about whether the monarchy should still exist. The show makes sure to drive home those metaphors for an unsturdy House of Windsor with the subtlety of a sledgehammer blasting through drywall. “What happens when the family falls apart? I say the institution falls apart,” says Princess Diana in the first episode, offering what may as well be a bold, italicized, underlined thesis statement for this absorbing but choppy go-round.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that a season featuring so much brokenness feels disconnected from previous ones. Spanning the decades since 1947, when then-Princess Elizabeth wed Philip Mountbatten,