The third episode of The Crown season 6 tells the story of Princess Diana's tragic death and its aftermath, with the show's depiction of her final hours has causing no little controversy.
Diana and her partner Dodi were killed in a car crash in a Paris tunnel on 31 August 1997, minutes after leaving The Ritz Hotel. It's a tragic story everyone is familiar with, yet Peter Morgan's royal drama embellishes it by imagining what their final evening together was like.
The episode of the final season shows Dodi Al-Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) proposing marriage to Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) at the behest of his pushy father, Mohammed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw).
Diana stopped him before he could actually pop the question, telling him it was the wrong time for either of them to be thinking about marriage and that he needed to step out of his dad's shadow.
Yet when Mohammed calls to ask how the evening has gone, Dodi cut the line before revealing the truth, leaving his father believing they had become engaged.
But how much of what we see in The Crown is true? We take a look at the evidence...
Did Dodi propose to Diana?
We saw Dodi buy Diana a ring as a gift in the third episode of this year's final series, but the piece of jewelry wasn't an engagement ring. This mirrors an event we know happened and was described by Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, in one of his books.
Diana's former confidante says the ring — a £3,000 Bulgari yellow gold band with diamonds — was a friendship ring and claims the Princess was not ready to marry.
"She made it clear this was not an engagement ring," wrote Burrell, who also explained how she'd agreed to his advice to wear any ring on her right hand rather than her left, which would have sparked rumors of an engagement. "She said how romantic he had been and giggled with relief that the ring had not been more significant," he explained.
A friend of Diana’s, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, also told the inquest into her death that Diana had no intentions of getting married again and recalls her saying "I would need marriage like a rash on my face.”
These sentiments are reflected in the show, with Diana telling her son Prince William she would"'emphatically" not be marrying Dodi during a phone conversation. However, that doesn't mean that Dodi didn't propose...
In February 1998, Dodi's father Mohamed Al-Fayed told British newspaper, The Mirror, of how the couple were engaged to be married and planned to live at the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s former villa in Paris.
Dodi and Diana really did visit Villa Windsor for half an hour on the day before they died and could well have discussed moving in, as shown in The Crown.
Yet while that scene was rooted in truth, the scene where Dodi starts to pop the question is gently rebuffed and then calls his father to tell him how his proposal went, is pure speculation.
It does suggest a way in which Mohamed Al-Fayed could be sure they were engaged when they died, but if he had planned to propose, it seems more likely that Dodi was going to do it later that evening...
During an inquest into the couple's death, Dodi's butler Rene Delorm also revealed his boss had told him he was planning to propose to on the very night he died. We even get a quick glimpse of Delorm on screen, with Dodi asking him to bring roses to his apartment.
The pair had left The Ritz and were heading to Mohamed Al-Fayed's apartment close to the Champs-Élysées when their car careered off the road and Delorm says Dodi had a surprise lined up for his new girlfriend.
Delorm claims Dodi said: "Rene, have some champagne ready because when I come back I'm going to propose to the Princess," before showing him a ring he'd bought for Diana.
He also says his employer and the Princess were going to set up a home in Malibu, and that he was planning to accompany them, a plan alluded to in the series.
So while it seems Dodi didn't try and pop the question at The Ritz, as shown in The Crown, he may well have planned to do so later that evening.
Would Diana have said yes? We shall never know for sure...
