The highly anticipated fourth season of The Crown does not fail to deliver on the expected contentions and scandals of the decade, most of them wrought by Margaret Thatcher. As for a young Lady Diana Spencer-turned-Princess of Wales, her contentions and scandals would remain locked behind closed doors until the lid came off fully with the advent of the 90s. Luckily, as viewers looking upon history, we’re now privy to them as though it’s all unfolding in real time.
As Gillian Anderson gets across with her acting brilliance, “Maggie” was not amused by much, nor was she one for frivolous amusement–the very pastime the royal family seems to pride itself on, as evidenced by most of its traditions. Like spending a bank holiday at Balmoral, where Thatcher and her husband, Denis (Stephen Boxer), are invited to take part in the festivities. Yet a woman who stated as a child that she could not believe in angels because, from a scientific standpoint, they would need to have a six-foot breastbone in order to support wings, surely does not have any room in her life for emblems of the “festive” or “ceremonial”–everything that Queen Elizabeth II represents. At the same time, their positions as the most powerful women in Britain make them uniquely attuned to the other’s situation in a way that no other person can be. Conservative values, a hard work ethic and being almost exactly the same age would also indicate common ground, and yet, as The Crown demonstrates, there were numerous political moments–from her unfazedness by rampant unemployment to not wanting to sanction South Africa over apartheid–throughout Thatcher’s own separate reign that caused the queen to raise an eyebrow or two. The tensions destined to escalate between them are already established in the second episode, “The Balmoral Test.”
After showing up to this Scottish castle under duress with no indication that she’s prepared in any way for a “good time” (e.g. bringing proper outdoor shoes), Thatcher even manages to offend Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) by sitting in Queen Victoria’s chair. After continuing to endure, Thatcher reaches her threshold at some strange “half-Scottish, half-Germanic” ritual, at which time she asks her husband, “What am I doing here? Miles from Westminster, miles from reality. Wasting precious time… I’m struggling to find any redeeming features in these people at all. They aren’t sophisticated, or cultured, or elegant, or anything close to an ideal.” Her railing against the elites, however, seems something of a dichotomy considering that over the course of the decade, she would fuck over the working class most of all.
A point made with the razor sharp (revisionist) historical use of Michael Fagan in episode five, “Fagan.” With writers Jonathan D. Wilson and Peter Morgan taking the approach of looking at the most illustrious palace break-in from Fagan’s perspective of things in an increasingly bleak and hopeless England rooted in Thatcherism, we see that he’s a man with nothing left to lose–as so many deemed “crazy” are. All he wants is to tell someone at the top who can actually get Thatcher to change her policies that things are right proper shite in England. Thatcher’s obsession with pulling oneself up by their own bootstraps and proving their value to the economy with hard work and determination simply doesn’t apply to a Britain in which all social systems have been summarily stripped and millions of jobs abruptly put on the chopping block. Even the queen, in her Olivia Colman-rendered iteration, can see that–and is forced to acknowledge it when Fagan shows up in her bedroom to declare what’s really going on out there.
So it is that at the next audience with the prime minister, she brings up the problem of unemployment. Thatcher shrugs that it’s a “necessary side effect of the medicine we’re administering to the British economy.” Without missing a beat, Elizabeth returns, “Shouldn’t we be careful that this medicine, like some dreadful chemotherapy, doesn’t kill the very patient it’s intended to heal?” Thatcher, being the cold, empty vessel she is (earning her the nickname the Iron Lady), shrugs it off and says she has to get to her Victory Parade in honor of her “win” of the Falklands War (never officially “declared”). Another move that visibly irritates the queen. In truth, it is only the moments when she goes mano-a-mano with Thatcher that she is allowed to shine beyond the tale of Diana, played with understated grace and coquettish emulation by Emma Corrin.
Diana, who moved to London in 1978 to take on odd jobs, including being a teacher’s aide for kindergarteners, seems to have no concrete drive or path in life when she first meets Charles (Josh O’Connor). He, instead, becomes her “purpose,” despite the fact that she is still a teenager who wants to muck about and have fun while she dances to her pop music (among the songs selected that we see Diana dancing to throughout the series are “Call Me” by Blondie, “Edge of Seventeen” by Stevie Nicks, “Girls On Film” by Duran Duran as she skates like a lost lamb through Buckingham Palace, and “Love Is A Stranger” by Eurythmics during one of her many therapeutic ballet sessions). Indeed, Diana’s affinity for music and dance–as well as pop culture overall–are present in every episode where her narrative is focused upon. It is her appreciation and knowledge of it at a time when it was evolving into a more modern version of itself (ahem, MTV) that speaks to how she herself became such an icon within the pop culture pantheon. This part of her youthful persona serves to accent the intense differences between her and Charles, the latter being too stodgy and snobbish to see much value in a modernized ballet-inspired dance to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” (surprise performed by Diana at the Royal Opera House in honor of Charles’ thirty-seventh birthday–making the princess still just twenty-four). A bittersweet scene of Diana driving William and Harry to their country estate as she sings Queen’s (appropriate) “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” also builds into the notion that, were it not for her sense of fun and relevance during their sons’ upbringing, they could have ended up even worse than Charles.
Yet The Crown does something that most aren’t willing to with regard to the treatment of the Diana “subject matter”: humanize her, debunk the myth that she was a perfect angel–even going so far as to portray her bulimia in a manner that has never been done. There are numerous instances throughout season four that patently negate her innocence, while also maintaining that she did her best considering the loveless, lonely circumstances–paired with the ever-looming shadow of Camilla Parker Bowles (Emerald Fennell). And one walks away with the sense that, ultimately, it was because Charles “got her” when she was so young that she was susceptible to believing her feelings for him were love when, in fact, it was mostly succumbing to the glamor of every girl’s fairytale fantasy about being swept off their feet by a prince. Even a prince as incompetent in romance as Charles.
As Diana makes her instantaneous mark upon the world when she embarks on her first public tour with Charles in Australia in episode six, “Terra Nullius,” it sets the tone for the jealousies and resentments that would continue to rise up within the marriage. After all, Charles, like Philip (Tobias Menzies), was not one for having “the little woman” run the show, for it only served to make him feel smaller and even more inadequate. As Diana was lobbed off by Charles in favor of each of them appearing at their own separate events, it would seem fitting that in addition to being a visible presence in helping to raise AIDS awareness and de-stigmatize the disease, Diana also later took interest in the cause of landmines–after all, she was so accustomed to falling into these metaphorical traps for most of her time spent among the royal family. This is, in point of fact, where the fourth season chooses to end, with Diana set up to be embroiled in a conflict with “the ones who arranged the marriage,” as Charles calls them.
With Thatcher out of the picture for season five, it still leaves 90s-era Diana for the queen to compete with in terms of her expected spotlight in a narrative about her life and rule. And with Diana’s death occurring in this decade, it’s likely that even if Thatcher had remained around to push her isolationist dictatorship for Anderson to continue portraying her, Diana (no matter who’s playing her) would still manage to steal the whole show.
