“God, I hate this…” he says in a tone that some might call frustration and others a whine. “Oh look, it’s going everywhere,” Camilla adds as help begins to remove the offending object from Her Majesty’s presence. From there Camilla calmly takes over, sitting down to sign the tome as Charles retreats and seethes. “I can’t stand this BLOOD SCREEN,” he spits angrily. “Every stink!” And with that, he walks away from this inhumane battlefront. Our sarcasm is rude, we know. The cameras captured the moment while Britain’s king was still in mourning over the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II. Again, the Queen belonged to the television age. She knew that a camera would always capture one of her angles, so she worked tirelessly to ensure that most would be undiscovered. The public loved her mystery. Charles, on the other hand, came of age in the age of the 24-hour news cycle and celebrity coverage. When he married Diana Spencer, he was already more of a character than a real person, this lunatic with excessively large ears who co-starred in a show known as the British Monarchy, which is sometimes drama and sometimes comedy. Through “The Crown,” series creator Peter Morgan adds extra dimensions by humanizing the royals through dramatic scripts and a carefully selected cast of actors tasked with filling the emotional gaps between public appearances and drops of tabloid gossip. It is the most believable fictional story about people who spend their lives carefully presenting a fictional version of themselves to the world.
By the time Charles married Diana, the public saw him as more of a character than a real person. This was never going to be a problem for Queen Elizabeth, who was played with grace and dignity during her run by Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and, as of this fifth season, Imelda Staunton. Morgan always designed his drama to be a “love letter” to the recently departed monarch, and it plays as such, even in these more terrifying new episodes. Even if that wasn’t the case, Elizabeth had fully embraced her alternate identity as a freewheeling character capable of parachuting out of a helicopter with 007 or hosting Paddington Bear for tea. Charles never did because he couldn’t – he’d already been cast as Diana’s second-in-command while they were married, and as a villain once their union fell apart. Josh O’Connor’s portrayal of Charles in season four lives up to this, empathizing with the future king’s plight as a man who feels suffocated by the lifelong duty to which he was born. Nevertheless, the actor does not hesitate to play Charles’s anger stirred by Diana’s charm and approachability, captured in the same episodes with incredible simplicity by Emma Corinne. We may have felt a little sad for the prince, but that doesn’t come close to the depth of feeling people still have for Diana thanks to documentaries, news specials and television tributes to her over the years. All of these considerations make this new season of “The Crown” hit a little more awkwardly than previous ones. Morgan writes Queen Elizabeth and Philip with an intimacy and knowledge that guides the directions of every character around her and their relationships, something that reminds us of Leslie Manville from her time as Margaret in this cycle. Again, the Queen left a carpet of crumbs for Morgan to shape and reshape into narratives that tell her life story alongside that of the 20th century. Elizabeth Debicki, Will Powell, Senan West and Dominic West in ‘The Crown’ (Netflix/Keith Bernstein) Diana, meanwhile, established her narrative as best she could, first through her secretly recorded testimonies that led to Andrew Morton’s 1992 bestseller Diana: Her True Story, and later through an interview with Martin Bashir , ensuring that it will continue to be accessible for decades after her death. And that decision affects how we see the end of Diana’s marriage to Charles, with Elizabeth Debicki and Dominic West stepping into their parts, respectively. Reddit threads and other social media discussions will likely dissect Debicki’s point, but West’s performance is quite the flash of Charles’ personality. Admittedly this assumes that what little we have seen of his temperament is accurate. according to a former aide who spoke to Reuters, Charles is “known to be fun, but he was also short-tempered and demanding.” That second part is confirmed by the video discussed above and others that don’t exactly show him in the best possible light, along with other unflattering recordings. I guess Morgan’s Charles gives us the fun side. . . if you can call it that. West makes him just a man who wants to modernize the monarchy and make his mark on the world. Sure enough, he’s the man caught on tape telling his lover Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) that he wishes he could live in her underwear. But he’s also founding a charity known as The Prince’s Trust, for which West serves as an ambassador. According to Variety, the actor offered to step down to avoid any conflict of interest, but Charles turned him down. Want a daily digest of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. Apparently, the newly crowned monarch is no fool, because West rewards that decision with a performance that highlights Charles as a man who has long been denied by this family, including choosing to marry Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams ) – an ill-fated story of true love secretly entangled in a fairytale union Charles never wanted, engineered by The Firm. And if that approach doesn’t bruise as deeply as Corrin and O’Connor’s dark and cold duels, that could be a matter of Morgan not quite knowing how to map the emotional ins and outs of this painful relationship in the finale of stage. Or one could blame the unspoken cut of evil edited out after years of coverage that makes Charles look either stupid or annoying or . . . standing there Dominic West in “The Crown” (Netflix/Keith Bernstein) It’s odd that a show is being leniently chastised for being so convincingly vulnerable, considering that in almost any other situation, that would be a plus. It could also be the case that West’s interpretation will align with a version of King Charles III we have yet to meet. Regardless, it brings into sharp relief the strained attraction between the British monarchy romanticized in “The Crown” and the one we know through Charles and Diana’s children, one of whom is determined to live more openly and be more publicly truthful from his grandfather and father. read more about the “Crown” and the monarchy