The Crown: these 10 significant events that the Netflix series should address in seasons 5 and…

Queen Elizabeth II passed away on September 8. His character is the heart and soul of The Crown What does Netflix offer? Since the death of the Monarque, the series has been at the top of the most viewed programs on the platform. Subscribers probably want to know more about the one who reigned for 70 years, or to pay her a last tribute. Elizabeth II will once again be at the center of seasons 5 and 6 of The Crown, where she will be played by Imelda Staunton. These new episodes should also address the most difficult years of his reign, which we quote here:

The annus horribilis

In the speech to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of her accession to the throne, Queen Elizabeth II called 1992 “d’annus horribilis” (“horrible year” in Latin)most certainly in reference to theAnnus Mirabilis by the poet John Dryden. It must be said that the year in question did not spare the sovereign with in particular the divorce of her children Anne and Andrew but also the official announcement of the separation of the couple formed by Charles and Diana, which coincides with the publication of the shock work “Diana: in her words” (see below).

Long remembered, the formula has since been taken up by financial experts to describe a bad year from an economic point of view.

Diana’s shocking revelations

In 1992, journalist Andrew Morton published a biography about Diana, titled Diana, Her True Story. This complete and referenced book was adapted the following year into a TV movie of the same name with Serena Scott Thomas in the skin of Diana. Upon Diana’s death, Andrew Morton reissued his book with additional revelations of Diana and titled it Diana Told by Herself. The book caused a scandal at the time, as did Diana’s explosive interview given to Martin Bashir on the BBC in November 1995.

In her living room at Kensington Palace, the Princess of Wales confides frankly and settles accounts with her husband Charles, revealing her extramarital affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles, and with the royal family. It is in this interview that she launches this famous sentence: “We were three in this marriage”. Following this interview, Queen Elizabeth II asks the couple to officially separate. These two huge scandals should logically appear in the next episodes of The Crown.

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Windsor Castle fire

“The annus horribilis” mentioned by Elizabeth II also refers to the fire at Windsor Castle, a tragic incident with disastrous consequences for the royal family, mainly economic. The staggering cost of the work also led to a lively controversy across the Channel, with a large part of the British press believing that it was up to the Queen to draw on her personal fortune, and not on public money, to finance the site restoration. It was finally decided to open Buckingham Palace to the public to finance the reconstruction of the castle (estimated at more than 37 million pounds!)

It should be recalled that during the same year, the Conservative Prime Minister John Mayor relaunched the reform project reintroducing income tax subject to the royal family (which had been exempt from it since the reign of George V), a decree officially entered into effective June 6, 1993.

The victory of Tony Blair and the death of Lady Di

The government of John Major in the 1990s being decried, Tony Blair, leader of the Labor Party, easily won the elections in May 1997 and became at 43 the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. Between 1997 and 2007, Tony Blair formed three governments. As with the former Prime Ministers featured in The Crown, Tony Blair should logically appear in the series and be confronted by Queen Elizabeth II during their hearings.

The same year, Lady Di lost her life in a car accident. On the night of August 30-31, 1997, Diana Spencer and her then-companion Dodi Al-Fayed exit the Ritz in Paris and attempt to evade the paparazzi with bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones in their driver’s car , Henri Paul, heavily alcoholic. It was in the tunnel under the Alma bridge that the accident occurred. Dodi Al-Fayed and Henri Paul die instantly while Diana Spencer dies a few hours later in hospital. Only Trevor Rees-Jones escapes unscathed. The death of Diana Spencer was such an international shock that her state funeral in London on September 6, 1997 gathered more than three million people and moved the whole world. Impossible for The Crown to miss this tragic event.

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Nelson Mandela’s election in South Africa

Apartheid was touched on briefly in Season 4 to highlight Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s ideological clashes with the more progressive ideas of Elizabeth II. It would nevertheless seem surprising that the election of Nelson Mandela to the South African presidency was not addressed in The Crown ; especially since the former political prisoner and the sovereign maintained a close friendship, to the point that the latter – great-grandson of a Thembu king – did not hesitate to shake up protocol by addressing himself as an equal equal with the queen. A habit that in no way offended the latter, quite the contrary.

The wave of attacks of the 2000s

On September 11, 2001, the United States was hit by devastating attacks committed by members of Al-Qaeda, which turned the country upside down. The Pentagon is targeted as well as the two towers of the World Trade Center which are hit by two hijacked planes. The twin towers collapse soon after, causing thousands of deaths. These first attacks launched a wave of terrorist attacks in several countries around the world, particularly in the United Kingdom. On July 7, 2005, four explosions affected public transport in London and killed 56 people and injured more than 700.

The suicide bombings, carried out by Islamist terrorists, come on the opening day of the G8 summit in Scotland and the day after London was named host of the 2012 Summer Olympics. The British people have received support from the government and Queen Elizabeth II, all the more protected by the army, declaring: “Such atrocities strengthen our sense of community, our humanity, our faith in the rule of law”.

The meeting between Kate and William

A true waking fairy tale, the story of Kate Middleton and Prince William is above all that of an iconic couple. The future spouses met in 2001 at the University of Saint Andrews; love at first sight was immediate, and their relationship was formalized at the end of 2003. Highly publicized, the couple nevertheless separated to everyone’s surprise, before reforming a few months later. After eight years together, Prince William and Kate Middleton celebrated their union on April 29, 2011 at Westminster Abbey, in the presence of the royal family and an impressive audience of prestigious guests.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee

In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II celebrates 50 years on the throne of the United Kingdom and seven other countries, since the death of her father, King George VI, in 1952. Despite the death of the Queen Mother and his sister, Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II maintained the festivities thus countering the predictions of the media which saw this Golden Jubilee as a non-event. Queen Elizabeth II attended all the official celebrations and toured all the countries where her reign is effective with her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. This important event should feature in future seasons of The Crown, as will all key dates in the reign of Elizabeth II.

Deaths of Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother

Annus horribilis, bis repetita. Ten years after the difficult year 1992, Queen Elizabeth II is going through an equally trying year on a personal level for the fiftieth anniversary of her accession to the throne. On February 9, his sister Princess Margaret succumbed to a series of cerebral vascular accidents, caused by her excesses of alcohol and tobacco; just a few weeks later, the Queen Mother Elizabeth also died at the age of 101, of natural causes.

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Because of his advanced age, the Tay Bridge protocol, the code name given to the plan accompanying the announcement of his death, was kept ready to be triggered at any time for almost two decades! Remember that a protocol exists for each member of the royal family, all named after London bridges (Queen Elizabeth II’s code name is ‘London bridge’).

Prince Harry at the heart of a controversy

Considered the rebel of the royal family with the same spirit and kindness as his late mother Diana, Prince Harry is much loved by the British people. But the young man, in a tumultuous relationship with Chelsy Davy in the early 2000s, found himself at the heart of a scandal in January 2005. Photos of him dressed in a Nazi uniform were revealed in the press. Harry will later apologize for this choice of disguise in very bad taste for a drunken evening. This scandal will bring out the troubled past of Edward VIII, his great-great-uncle, who died in 1972. The latter was indeed very close to the Nazis before and after his abdication to the throne of England in favor of his brother George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II.

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