The last chapter of The Crown will be landing on Netflix in under a month. And this is the big one. The landmark show will focus on the period between 1997 and 2005, which was, until the recent Harry and Meghan debacle, undoubtedly the most dramatic period in modern royal history.
It's a time that saw the fame of Princess Diana reach its climax, resulting in disaster. On the last day of August 1997, she died in a Paris hospital after a horrific crash caused by her car going out of control while being chased by paparazzi.
Not only did the world mourn the death of the 36-year-old princess, but her children were left bereft without their mother, and the royal family – who had all but rejected Diana after her breakup from Charles – misjudged the public mood and managed the fallout so badly that wild rumours circulated that the collision was, somehow, an inside job, ordered by the Queen no less.
Everything that followed has been coloured by that awful event, giving new layers of complexity to every big royal moment since, and giving the programme-makers a tricky line to tread. With the Emmy-winning show's leading cast, Elizabeth Debicki, Imelda Staunton, Jonathan Pryce and Dominic West reprising their roles one last time, the final season is going to be extremely highly anticipated, and closely watched. Ahead of the upcoming series, here we look at the big storylines that are likely to crop up in season six.
What have the programme-makers said?
The upcoming series’ logline has set the scene: “A relationship blossoms between Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed before a fateful car journey has devastating consequences. Prince William tries to integrate back into life at Eton in the wake of his mother’s death as the monarchy has to ride the wave of public opinion. As she reaches her Golden Jubilee, the Queen reflects on the future of the monarchy with the marriage of Charles and Camilla and the beginnings of a new Royal fairytale in William and Kate."
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's relationship
Princess Diana and Prince Charles separated in 1992, in a year famously described by the Queen as an "annus horribilis". In the following years, media scrutiny of Diana intensified rather than cooled down. Charles and Diana officially divorced in 1996.
"It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this – a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age," said her brother, Earl Spencer, at her funeral.
After the split, Princess Diana had several high-profile relationships. The longest of these was with British-Pakistani heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan, between 1995 and July 1997, and the relationship was featured in The Crown season five. It was loving and serious – Diana reportedly described Khan as "love of her life", and according to the surgeon, the couple had spoken about the possibility of marriage. The relationship ended because of the intensity of Diana's fame and the attention that came with it: in a statement written in 2008, Khan explained that he feared that marrying Diana would attract diabolical levels of media attention.
So, in what could be described as a rebound, Diana ran from Khan into the arms of Dodi Fayed – meeting him in July 1997. But whatever Diana's frame of mind, and of course we have no idea, the pair hit it offy. Fayed was the son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, who owned both The Ritz Paris and Harrods at various points (Al-Fayed died in August this year, aged 94).
Dodi Fayed was born in Alexandria, Egypt, was educated in Switzerland and briefly attended the prestigious British military academy Sandhurst. At one point he worked as an attaché at the United Arab Emirates Embassy in London, but later turned to film production. His father had allegedly been trying to gain acceptance in British high society for years, and, as would be explored in The Crown in season five, some believed that the relationship between Dodi and Diana had somehow been orchestrated by Mohamed.
Their love affair will, predictably, be one of the central storylines of season six part one. The media frenzy around the short romance made sense: the duo were glamorous, travelled to exotic locations and stayed at the world's most luxurious properties. But it ended catastrophically, after one late-night drive in Paris on August 31, 1997.
The crash
Season six is going to dramatise the crash that killed Diana. It will be interesting to see how Peter Morgan and his team go about this – how they will attempt to remain respectful while recreating the deeply upsetting scene.
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed had arrived in France on the morning of August 30, having spent nine days together on Mohamed Al-Fayed's yacht travelling around the French and Italian Riviera. They planned to stay in Paris for one night before moving on to London.
It's not entirely clear why the duo left the hotel that night, but the couple were heading for Al-Fayed's apartment on Rue Arsène Houssaye – a 16-minute drive from The Ritz – so it's assumed that they were looking for more peace and privacy. There were reportedly over 30 paparazzi standing outside the front of the hotel.
One car was used as a decoy and drove away from the front of the hotel. Dodi and Diana slipped out the back. But their attempt to elude the press did not work. They were chased by both cars and motorcycles, and it was as they were travelling at a relatively high speed (65 mph) through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in the centre of the French capital, that their driver, Henri Paul, lost control of the car. It smashed into a huge concrete pillar. Their bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, made it out of the accident alive, but Diana, Dodi and Henri did not.
It is said that the paparazzi swarmed around the destroyed vehicle, some trying to help, some taking pictures. Emergency services were called; fire engines and ambulances arrived. Diana did not die at the scene: she reportedly mumbled "Oh my God" and "leave me alone" as she sat in the vehicle. Frederic Mailliez, the man who claimed to be the first witness at the scene said that Diana did not look visibly injured, just fazed. In fact, Diana was badly injured: her collar bone was dislocated and her rib and arm were fractured.
According to The Times in 2007: "The dying Diana, Princess of Wales was so agitated as doctors attended her in the wreckage of her car that she tore out a drip they had inserted, her inquest heard today.
"Shouting incoherently and thrashing her arms, the princess had to be restrained and sedated before it was possible to administer treatment and extract her from the mangled Mercedes, the High Court jury was told."
But things went from bad to worse: Diana had had a heart attack when she was still at the crash site, but her heart had started beating again after a successful CPR attempt. Then, on the way to hospital, it turned out that her heart had been forced out of place during the accident, and parts of it had been torn. She was still alive when she arrived at hospital, but died at 3am after valiant attempts from staff to save her life.
The new series is also likely to cover her September 1997 public funeral and the public's outpouring of grief.
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles' love story
Season six is also likely to focus on the relationship between the then Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. In 1995 Diana uttered the enduring line: “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded”. The third person she was referring to was of course Camilla, who had been romantically involved with Charles before both their first marriages, and engaged in an affair with the prince since 1986 – five years into his marriage with Diana.
In the period The Crown will cover in its final chapter, Camilla and Charles started to legitimise their relationship. In 1998, they appeared together at Charles' 50th birthday party (the Queen reportedly declined her invitation because she did not approve); in January 1999, Charles threw a birthday party for Camilla’s sister, after which the pair very publicly shared a car home; in 2000 the Queen finally accepted an invitation to a party she knew Camilla would be attending; in 2003 Charles and Camilla moved into Clarence House (the residence next to St James's Palace) together; and finally, in April 9, 2005 the couple married – something that The Crown's Netflix account has teased will be shown too.
The Princes' education
As mentioned in the series' logline, season six will also look at how the young princes, who were 12 and 15 years old in 1997, coped with their mother's death while also desperately trying to find some normalcy as students at Eton College.
Over the following eight years, Prince William would attend and graduate from St Andrews, where he read geography, and attend Sandhurst for a year. He graduated as an officer in December 2006. Prince Harry, who earned two A Levels (a B in art and a D in geography) went straight to Sandhurst after his gap year, starting his officer training in 2005.
Prince William would meet his future wife, Kate Middleton, at university; the new season will focus in part on their blossoming relationship. The show is set to recreate the infamous charity fashion show which saw Kate don that sheer dress. Rumour has it that Prince William watched the show agog. The rest truly is history.
Speaking about the upcoming season on The Crown's official podcast, showrunner Peter Morgan said: "In Season six, the arrival of William and Kate and Harry just blows the doors off. You want to see them. It happened in the read-through. You could just see everyone was looking up and looking at each other across the room. And every time William spoke, it was like, 'Oh my God, this is just riveting.'" The pair are being played by new faces Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy.
Big birthdays and major deaths in the family
The period between 1997 and 2005 was also punctuated with several major birthdays and deaths, which will likely be touched upon in the show. Charles turned 50 on November 14, 1998; The Queen's mother, Elizabeth, turned 100 on August 2000; and Prince Anne, the Queen's only daughter, was 50 on August 15, 2000.
In 2002 however, the Queen Mother died on March 30; just under a year later, in February 2003, the Queen's young sister, Princess Margaret, also died. Margaret was just 71 years old but she had been a heavy smoker throughout her life. She had undergone a lung operation in 1985 and had four serious strokes between 1998 and 2002 – she died following the last one.
The Queen's Golden Jubilee
Finally, the Queen celebrated her Golden Jubilee in February 2002, marking 50 years on the throne. During a lunch at Guildhall in June 2002, The Queen said: "It has been a pretty remarkable fifty years by any standards. There have been ups and downs, but anyone who can remember what things were like after those six long years of war, appreciates what immense changes have been achieved since then."
