Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, Princess of Wales in the fifth season of The Crown
(Picture: PA Media)When Queen Elizabeth II died last month, Netflix’s The Crown famously halted production out of respect - for one day.
In February, when £150,000 worth of props were stolen, including a replica Faberge egg bought by the Queen’s grandfather, Netflix refused to postpone production for even one second. You can say what you want about The Crown, but it has tried really hard to get on to our screens this year.
And it’s in high demand. Following the Queen’s death, the series shot straight to first place on Netflix’s coveted top 10 most watched list. Viewership increased by as much as 800 per cent in the UK, according to WhipMedia data obtained by the Guardian.
Season five of The Crown is already sending out shockwaves before its November 9 release. It’s set to cover the Royal Family’s nasty 90s, including the year the Queen famlously referred to as her “annus horribilis” (1992). This is considered to be an undisputed low point for the reputation of the Royals.
We’re going to see increasingly familiar faces - such as Diana, Dodi and Charles. But which scandals will The Crown season five cover, and which will we be left waiting for in season six?
Divorce, divorce, divorce!
Goodness knows how many episodes of this season are going to have to be solely dedicated to the year 1992 because a *lot* happened in 365 days.
For example, Charles and Diana finally threw in the towel in terms of their marriage after years of “trying to make it work”. However, a book released in May 1992, which preceded their separation, made it quite clear that Charles’ efforts in “trying to make it work” were rather limited.
Andrew Morton’s Diana: Her True Story divulged details of Charles and Diana’s relationship, his affair with Camilla, and even used recordings from Diana herself to set the scene.
But the couple stayed together even after the drama of the book’s release - for a couple of more months at least. In November 1992, Charles and Diana headed to South Korea for an official trip and looked so despondent at their public engagements that they were mocked by the press and called “the Glums.” The pair unsurprisingly announced their separation a month later.
Toe-sucking scandal
This year was also witness to two more royal separations, and one of them was pretty scandalous in its own right. The marriage of Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson and Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, broke down - due to revealing photos and a “toe-sucking” scandal.
In August 1992, after Duchess of York had travelled with her “financial adviser” John Bryan to the south of France, compromising images shot with a long lens were leaked to the press. The images showed Fergie topless and embracing Mr Bryan, as well as him kissing and sucking the Duchess’ foot. Fergie was ousted by the Royal Family as a result, and her relationship with Prince Andrew was effectively terminated.
Given that The Crown has so much to work with in 1992 alone, we don’t know if this scandal will feature in season five. However, we do know that a young Fergie briefly appeared in the final scene of season four, and that Emma Laird Craig has been cast to play the Duchess this season and already spotted filming on set.
Anne’s divorce
On to our third and final divorce and we have Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, who separated in 1989 but divorced in - you guessed it - 1992. If you thought toe-sucking was bad, Princess Anne and Phillips called it quits because he secretly fathered a child with another woman in New Zealand in 1985.
It was confirmed by a DNA test in 1991, after the child’s mother, Heather Tonkin, went to the press because Phillips had stalled on child support payments.
But Anne allegedly had a wandering eye of her own, for her personal adviser Commander Timothy Laurence, whom she married the same year that she and Mr Phillips divorced. In 2022, we call that “clear signs of overlap”.
The Windsor Castle fire
As can be seen in The Crown season five trailer, this season will cover the huge fire that engulfed Windsor Castle in November 1992 (I told you it was a rough year). The fire was started by a spotlight hitting a curtain, and became so large it destroyed 115 of the castle’s rooms and blazed for 15 hours in total, eventually being extinguished at 2.30am on November 21. There were no deaths, but six minor injuries.
The Queen visited the castle to see the fire rage, as can be seen in The Crown’s trailer where Imelda Staunton watches in horror as the flames engulf her home. Well, one of her homes.
The castle was fully repaired over the course of five years, but it cost a whopping £36.5 million to do so.
The revenge dress
Speaking of fire, this season of The Crown will feature the most iconic look in British royal history, the Diana revenge dress. We first set eyes on the much imitated dress in 1994, when Diana attended a Vanity Fair party at the Serpentine Gallery in London. The images of her stepping out of her car and shaking hands with partygoers have been burnt into everyone’s retinas since that fateful night. She looked so good that the outfit was officially called her “revenge dress”.
Not only was the dress a big deal on its own, but it was also extremely well timed: this was the same night that Charles would admit to his long-standing affair in a tell-all television interview. This means we may get a very fitting montage of Charles admitting his wrongdoings while Diana looks absolutely fabulous in this season of The Crown. I, for one, cannot wait.
Dodi Fayed and Diana’s death
In 1997, the year of her death, Diana became involved with billionaire Dodi Fayed. The pair were confirmed as a romantic couple through a series of paparazzi shots (including those timeless pictures of Diana wistfully looking away as she sits on the diving board of Fayed’s yacht).
The same month that Diana was pictured kissing Dodi on the yacht (August 1997), the pair died in a car crash in Paris. Given that Dodi has been cast in The Crown season five and that he has been featured in the trailer, we can assume that Diana’s death will feature in the series. Moreover, season six of The Crown is set to cover the 2000s onwards, so there’s no strong possibility of Diana’s death being held over.
