Warning: This post contains spoilers for Season 3 of The Crown.
The long-awaited arrival of Season Three of The Crown has brought with it a kettle of spicy tea.
The behind-the-scenes depiction of the British Royal Family has raised many old dramas that have tangled the monarchy for decades.
The 10 episodes of the meticulously researched Netflix series chronicles the royal events of the 1960s and 70s, including Princess Margaret’s affair with gardener Roddy Llewellyn, Prince Charles meeting his now-wife Camilla Parker Bowles for the first time, and palace coverup after a trusted employee was found to be a Soviet spy.
But, exactly how accurate is the series?
Here, we look at the 4 things The Crown Season 3 got wrong.
The Queen crying in public.
The third episode of Season Three retells the tragedy of Aberfan, the Welsh mining disaster that killed 116 children from the Pantaglas Junior High School and 28 adults.
The episode shows Queen Elizabeth (played by Olivia Colman) deal with the situation in a rather cold-hearted manner. She pretends to wipe away a tear before privately admitting she has to feign her public grief and emotion: “After The Blitz when we visited hospitals, I saw what my parents, the King and Queen, saw. They wept, I couldn’t… When my grandmother, Queen Mary, whom I loved very much, when she died, nothing… I have known for some time there is something wrong with me.”
However, real images suggest the monarch doesn’t fake her emotion. In fact, the Queen has cried many times in public.
Princess Anne's love triangle.
In The Crown, it is depicted that Andrew Parker Bowles' respective romantic relationships with the Queen's daughter, Princess Anne, and Camilla Parker Bowles (then Camilla Shand) overlapped. However, the evidence doesn't exactly support this.
Royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith, author of Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, explained to Vanity Fair: "Anne and Andrew started dating in June 1970. Anne and Andrew enjoyed each other’s company but they could never marry because he was a Catholic."
She continued: "Charles did not meet Camilla until the summer of 1972—long after Andrew and Anne’s romance was over...
"Charles fell madly in love with Camilla but, to her, it was a fling—he was the Prince of Wales. Meanwhile, Andrew was off in Ireland and Cyprus for six months."
The palace conspiracy to break up Camilla and Charles.
The Royal family's secret plot to break up Charles and Camilla was another one of the show's scandalous storylines.
But in reality, “interfering like that is something the Queen would never do,” says Bedell Smith.
“It was highly unlikely that she [the Queen] even knew about Charles and Camilla... They were sort of under the radar. The only one who really knew about it was [Charles’s great-uncle] Lord Mountbatten, and he promoted it.
"He invited them to Broadlands together. But the idea that the Queen and the Queen Mother would conspire like that is laughable."
Prince Margaret's trip to America.
In the second episode, Princess Margaret takes a trip to America in 1965 on the Queen's behalf, supposedly to help secure a financial bailout from U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The Crown shows Princess Margaret effortlessly charm the President (with dirty limericks and an alcohol-fuelled party) and depart successful in her request, leading to a wealth of public support in both countries.
But this is not true. While she did attend a raucous party at the Whitehouse, Princess Margaret's U.S. visit wasn't tied to any financial dispute, and almost all reports say she was not well-received by the public. In fact, according to the Telegraph, she was "barred by British diplomats from making an official visit to America in the early 1970s because of the wild behaviour of her entourage during an earlier visit".
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