INTERCONTINETAL
THE QUEEN PASSES OVER HER CROWN
18 FEBRUARY 2020
Written by: Federica Troia
Fans have waited for this season for two long years, only to find out that the Crown is not about Queen Elizabeth II anymore, but about other royals more like. The previous seasons had us on the edge of our seats, adding more questions at the end of every episode, most of them still unanswered today, but this season seemed colourless, plain. But on the other side, isn’t this what the real royals seem like in their subjects’ eyes?
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Now that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s marriage seem to have found its peace, in this season we can see the spotlight moving from the young monarch to other characters that were secondary or too young in the first two seasons. We had a preview of a young teen Charles at the end of season two, but now we get a closer view of the adult prince, from falling in love with the woman who he will eventually marry forty years later, to breaking the rules by making his speech at his investiture as Prince of Wales a personal matter, to confronting his family and addressing his feelings.
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On the other side we have Princess Margaret going through her troubled marriage with Antony “Tony” Armstrong-Jones, which ends up in divorce at the end of the season. Plus, the continuous conflict between the two royal sisters continues in this season too, but it gets worse if it’s possible. Moreover, we completely fell in love with Princess Anne (Erin Doherty) and her witty remarks.
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The casting for this series seems to be accurate, although not quite as much as the previous one. Every two seasons, each member of the cast changes as the characters grow old. The Queen is now portrayed by an impeccable Olivia Colman (The Favorite), while Tobias Menzies (Doctor Who) becomes Prince Philip. Despite the production’s efforts to pass the crown over to a depressed Princess Margaret, played by Helena Bonham Carter, the experiment seems to have failed. There’s no doubt Bonham Carter is a magnificent actress in every genre, but for a series like The Crown the results are quite unexpected. The real ruler of this season is Prince Charles, portrayed by Josh O’Connor.
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We already empathized with this character during his young years, watching him growing up in the shadow of a monarch mother and a stern father, moreover he was bullied in a school he didn’t want to go to in the first place. But now the prince is an adult, and we begin to see the resemblance to the real royal, and although not many sympathize with the future king, at least it seems to be clear now where his actions came from, not that they are justified, but we would be lying if we said we did not empathized with him a little bit. Charles is forced to play by a careless mother’s rules, tries to speak his mind despite being a shy young man, but what seems worse, he gets played around by the man he respects the most, Uncle Dickie (Charles Dance), and his grandma, the Queen Mother (Marion Bailey), when he’s forced to give up on the love of his life, Camilla Shand (Emerald Fennell).
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Prince Charles is still waiting to sit on the British throne, and whereas it is clear that he holds now the future of the Netflix series, he still needs to compete with his mother in order to win the real crown. With pictures swirling all over the internet now, we’re already looking forward to see it on Lady Diana Spencer’s head, the People’s Princess, next season, and we know it will be worth the wait.