📺 Watched season 6 of The Crown.

This is the final season of this “is it fact or fiction?” drama documentary, which nonetheless will also probably become the primary reference material for royal life in the minds of some of its viewers.

It mainly focuses on the years from somewhere around 1997 to maybe around 2006, although with shoutouts here and there to times longer ago - we are all a product of our past to some extent, even, or perhaps especially, the royals - and perhaps as recently as 2022 in the slightly strange finale.

1997 is of course the year that Princess Diana died, an event that the series focuses on plenty, before and after. These are also the Blair years, her rivalry in terms of public opinion depicted as giving the Queen some very strange dreams.

Focus then moves to teen drama as Prince William tries to win the heart of Kate Middleton, which her mother is pretty enthusiastic about.

Prince Harry is in the midst of his initial Bad Boy phase, dressing up as a Nazi, drugs, partying, all that kind of classic Prince Gone Wild stuff. Although it has to be said that the very idea that he, his brother, and a load of other posh people routinely go to fancy dress “colonials and natives” parties in the first place isn’t wildly reassuring.

The Queen Mother dies, and the final episode then dwells on the preparation of of Operation London Bridge - the planning for the death of the monarch, an operation that had actually existed since the 1960s in one way or another.

Not everyone loved this season. The reviews were bad enough that it made Dominic West, the actor who played Prince Charles in it, stay in bed for two days. TV critic Nick Hilton sees it as a symbol of the Netflix’s ‘decline in popularity and quality’. Even its creator, Peter Morgan, is relieved to see it end. But when you’ve watched the first five series and actually remember some of the events of the sixth actually taking place, it’s hard not to give it a go.