The Crown: Royals whose reputation has been boosted by the Netflix show - and those who haven’t

Netflix’s The Crown is coming to an end. Photo / Netflix

The time has finally come. After five seasons of controversial, headline-provoking plots and casting choices, Netflix’s The Crown is coming to an end. Its sixth and final season (which begins tomorrow) will cover contentious events including the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al-Fayed in that fateful Paris car crash, before later portraying the early years of Prince William and Kate’s relationship.

But which members of the Firm have benefited thus far from their portrayal in the royal drama? We round up the biggest winners and losers below.

Winners

Prince Charles

Weedy and needy is how our now-King first appears in The Crown (played by Josh O’Connor). But as the series has progressed, his character has become more stately and empathetic. Under Dominic West, Charles has been humanised to a degree few might have foreseen. Occasionally grumpy? Of course. But there’s abundant compassion there. The scene in series five in which he visits Diana and expresses regret over their divorce – even apologising at one point – is a tour de force of nuance and self-reflection. Obviously, it ends in an argument. He’s not that saintly. He is, however, deeply human. A good quality in a monarch. He even comes out of the ghastly “tampon-gate” pretty well, the old romantic.

Princess Diana was played as neither a victim nor a villain. Photo / Netflix

Princess Diana

Ironically, given the above, Diana – whether played by Emma Corrin or Elizabeth Debicki – also comes across well. She’s played as neither victim nor villain, but rather she’s a fish out of water battling the royal blob. Quick-witted, gently rebellious and disarmingly eccentric, Diana comes across as a complicated and once-cosseted soul who’s remarkably frank about the situation she finds herself in. When she tells Philip that she feels trapped in a “frozen tundra… an icy, dark, loveless cave with no light or hope anywhere”, it doesn’t come across as overblown. It’s just Diana. “I never stood a chance,” she says. She is still the TV Queen of our hearts.

Princess Margaret

National treasure alert! Margaret is the party-loving princess whose happiness is thwarted by her mean older sister’s tedious adherence to “the rules”. Whether she’s bashing out Red Hot Mama at a piano in a feather boa and top hat, riding pillion around London on the back of Tony Armstrong-Jones’s motorbike or dancing around her bedroom in drunken torment to Ella Fitzgerald’s Angel Eyes, Margaret is the semi-tragic royal we’d all love to knock back an Old Fashioned with. She’s played brilliantly across the decades, whether by Vanessa Kirby, Helena Bonham Carter or Lesley Manville. Proof that we all love a party animal who stays true to themselves (take note, Harry).

Mohamed al-Fayed

Morphing from Egyptian street vendor to member of the British establishment in just 52 minutes, Mohamed al-Fayed was portrayed as a heroic immigrant in the series five episode Mou Mou. Infatuated by the Duke of Windsor, al-Fayed yearns to become “a British gentleman”. And, boy, does he succeed, by financing the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, buying Harrods and renovating the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s former villa in Paris. Played with vim by Israeli actor Salim Daw, al-Fayed is the bruised outsider who finds a kindred spirit in Diana. No phoney pharaoh here – few have been humanised more by the show.

Portrait of Prime Minister Winston Churchill showing his victory sign, circa 1941. Photo / Fotosearch / Getty Images

Winston Churchill

When Winston Churchill first meets the young Queen in the opening series, he condescendingly tells her how to do her job. Bumptious and imperious, John Lithgow’s Prime Minister still thinks he’s the father of the nation. By the time of his death two series later, he and the Queen have developed a strong relationship and the initially bizarre casting of Lithgow turned out to be a masterstroke. He admits to having been a “terrible bully”; she calls him “the greatest Briton”. As he fades away she kisses him on the forehead. It’s TV’s most touching kiss-on-forehead since Kevin Whately’s Sergeant Lewis bid adieu to John Thaw’s Inspector Morse back in 2000. And the saga of Graham Sutherland’s portrait in series one is a true heartbreaker.

Louis Mountbatten

Prince Philip’s uncle – aka “Uncle Dickie” – comes across as the House of Windsor’s de facto agony uncle. Played by Greg Wise then Charles Dance, he emerges as a trusted confidante and mentor to both the Queen and Charles. The Queen speaks to him about her marriage problems, while he advises – and argues with – Charles over his relationship with the then-Camilla Shand. Uncle Dickie’s 1979 murder by the IRA while on a boat trip in County Sligo, Ireland, provides the devastating emotional backbone of series four. In the real world, allegations have swirled for years about his private life. Here, he’s the sanest Windsor in town.

Losers

Queen Elizabeth II

“Well, that’s settled then” isn’t the pithiest of catchphrases. But it’s how we remember the Queen in The Crown – whether as plucky Claire Foy, prim Olivia Colman or dour Imelda Staunton. Shame, as it’s her show. By prioritising duty above all else, she’s too often portrayed as hands-off and distant, particularly when it comes to her children (in one scene, Charles suggests social services would have hauled her off had they been “a normal family”). When she asks her private secretary to draw up briefing documents on her four children’s hobbies – “One would hate to appear remotely remote” – she confirms her remoteness. The Crown portrays her as the one thing society cannot forgive – a bad mother.

Prince Philip

The Duke of Edinburgh is perhaps The Crown’s most ambiguous character. Under Matt Smith, the young Philip comes across as both loyal (to the Queen) and a philanderer (from the Queen). However, he soon finds his feet and, portrayed in the middle years by Tobias Menzies, becomes a general good egg. However, the heavy focus in series five on his relationship with Penny Knatchbull, and some frankly beastly comments to Her Majesty, have besmirched his name. There’s also this veiled warning to Diana when she suggests she might break away from the family: “I wouldn’t do that if I were you…” purrs Philip. “Let’s just say I can’t see it ending well for you.”

Erin Doherty portrayed the young Princess Anne. Photo / Netflix

Princess Anne

A moody, unsmiling, contrary, direct and tough third fiddle. This would sum up how Princess Anne is presented in Peter Morgan’s drama. She feels overlooked and neglected, she hates the press and she’s jealous of her sister-in-law Diana. There are flashes of the human beneath the surface (especially when portrayed in her youth by Erin Doherty) and there are glimpses of humour (“I look like a hydrangea,” she says, wearing a ball gown, to Andrew Parker Bowles). I’d have liked much more of that. In the real world, the Princess Royal is considered a decent sort. Here, particularly in middle age (played by Claudia Harrison), she’s a joyless frump.

Ted Heath

Of the many prime ministers depicted so far in The Crown, Michael Maloney’s Ted Heath comes out the worst. He only gets seven minutes, but in that time he gets strips torn off him by the Queen for loftily mocking Harold Wilson and for failing to sufficiently tackle the crisis caused by the striking miners. Most heinous of all, he’s scared of corgis. Heath gets a reprieve of sorts when he stands up to Arthur Scargill at a meeting in No 10. But it’s too little, too late. Scared of corgis! To the Tower with him. Heath may not ultimately come off as worst, however, as it has been said that a certain Tony Blair was the late Queen’s least favourite PM.

Prince Andrew

Reckless, egotistical, arrogant, entitled. But let’s talk about how he’s perceived in The Crown. Prince Andrew (played by James Murray) is best summed up by the scene where he arrives for lunch with his mother in a Royal Navy helicopter. He’s thin-skinned, particularly when brother Charles calls him a “fringe” member of the family at his own wedding, and one scene featuring his one-time girlfriend Koo Stark foreshadows later controversies. But at least Andrew got this zinger about his wife Fergie over her scandalous affair: “I know people tell me I’m putting my foot in it from time to time – at least I don’t put it in someone’s mouth.” Bang! He’s still a rotter though.

Tommy Lascelles

With a delivery drier than one of Princess Margaret’s Martinis, Pip Torrens’s killjoy enforcer is one of The Crown’s most memorable characters. But he’s still a killjoy enforcer. As Philip puts it, Lascelles is “stuck in the land that time forgot”. An enemy of unbecoming tittle-tattle, the private secretary to both George VI and the Queen could send chills up courtiers at 20 paces. Genuinely terrifying. With a stiff upper lip that could crack concrete, Lascelles is the face of a colder, harder monarchy.