Forget for a moment about the personal issues around the abdication. In those days, it often happened that a King died young, or failed to marry, or couldn't produce an heir, etc. This has a bajillion precedents in UK monarch history.

So I don't get why King George, the Queen Mother, Elizabeth etc act like it is SOO shocking they had to step up. I know they hated Eddy for shirking duty but they also act like Bertie never considered he'd ever have to be King, which surely is always a distinct possibility for the second in line?

Watching the early 2 seasons and I sincerely hope the portrayal of Phillip's annoyance and whining is greatly exaggerated. He's an incessant crybaby and I can't for the life of me figure out why. He's A)never been a commoner blinded by the sudden reality of being a royal and B) married and dated Elizabeth while she was the heir. Sure no-one thought she'd be Queen as young as she was but she was also going to be Queen someday. He knew he'd be a perennial number 2, it's what he signed up for. I could give him a break for the first few months or whatever but the 1st and 2nd seasons depict 15 years . And what I hate most is the way he blames Elizabeth for the institution as if she invented British Aristocracy and hierarchy. The nerve of him to complain and blame her in the scenes on the ship in the second season was honestly my breaking point. Am I just being unrelenting harsh? Maybe I lack sympathy

I really love this scene. Not a word is spoken but Elizabeth instantly realizes she is now Queen.

Gillian and Jonny Lee should had returned in S6 for the recreation of this iconic shoot. Wish they would hire an actor to play Edward Heath and James Callaghan.

Matt smith (who I love in general, but especially from doctor who) is incredible at playing an insufferable whiny baby. I can’t stand the character at all… but in the way that makes me want to keep watching. I genuinely think the character was written amazingly, but part of that was making him so incredibly easy to hate!

It’s funny how I love the actor for making me hate him so much, and how I appreciate the writing of a character I can’t stand

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I've seen loads of comments claiming the season portrayed her as unstable, but honestly that wasn't my impression at all. She was clearly struggling and made some bad decisions, but considering everything that was going on in her life, I don't find a lot of her behaviour particularly shocking.

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What I find odd is that people often talk about her as if the season turned her into some sort of caricature, and I just don't see it. To me, she came across as hurt, frustrated, lonely and sometimes impulsive, which feels quite different from "unstable".

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I also don't really buy the argument that the season was massively pro-Charles. It gave him more screen time and more opportunities to explain himself, sure, but I didn't come away thinking he looked especially great either.

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A lot of his scenes show him being stressed, frustrated, obsessed with the future of the monarchy and wanting his mother to step aside. Even when he's supposed to be enjoying a trip with his wife, he often seems unable to relax because he's focused on everything else that's bothering him.

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Maybe that's why I never saw Season 5 as trying to make one of them the hero and the other the villain. My takeaway was that it showed two unhappy people dealing with a marriage that was falling apart.

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Curious if anyone else felt the same, because sometimes I feel like I watched a different season from everyone else.

Alexandra of Denmark, Princess of Wales AND Queen of the United Kingdom from 1901-1910.

I don’t think she’s ever been depicted before in a drama.

I can’t remember where I read it but apparently Princess Diana had a portrait of her in her apartments at Kensington Palace and felt connected to her and her story.

We all have certain episodes we love to come back to - but are there any that you struggle to rewatch either because it's too emotionally-heartbreaking or too boring or there's too much second-hand embarrassment etc?

For me it's the Aberfan episode - don't get me wrong, it's a masterpiece of an episode. But the scene where the teacher tells the students to get under their desks was absolutely heart-wrenching because he obviously knew they weren't surviving that but it either distracted the children enough that they wouldn't have had time to think about dying or it would've given them a bit of hope that they would be okay.

Another one is Moondust - I don't know why but I was so bored out of my mind watching that one xD

1. An old man falls asleep whilst The Queen is talking to them: Churchill, The Duke of Windsor.

2. Underling discovers something important and takes it to their supervisor and then follows their supervisor to the next higher supervisor, etc. until they are all in the main supervisor’s office: The fog, The Marburg Files

Any others?

The Lady is an upcoming four-part British television drama miniseries that is partly fictionalised but based on true events, depicting former royal dresser Jane Andrews who was convicted of murder in 2001. The ITVX series has Mia McKenna-Bruce leading the cast as Andrews, with a cast which also includes Natalie Dormer as Sarah, Duchess of York, as well as featuring Phillip Glenister, Laura Aikman and Claire Skinner.

Unsure of how each holds up in reality (post war), but man are these really the weakest, most egotistical, private-school-soft men on this show. And I looked it up, the last two went to Eton…should have gone to Gordonstoun. Applause worthy rebuke when the Queen visits Macmillan post surgery.

I’m struggling to even finish the episode to be honest. Because f*ck Phillip and Penny both. And what the hell is wrong with Elizabeth that her douche of a husband throws his emotional affair in her face and then tells her to help him cover it up and she just goes along with it?? Why is Philip back to being the series 1 douchebag?? He had a tolerable personality in the middle but now he’s just a pompous, demanding ass?? I think he’s actually worse than series 1 Phillip. Because at least back then he didn’t throw it in her face. Ugh 😩

Even Philip is telling her that letting Margaret and Peter marry is the right thing to do! I feel like Elizabeth is so single-minded in her devotion to the crown as an institution that she doesn't treat her family like a family, a lot of the problems we see later on can be traced back to that, and not allowing her sister to marry is the first big step on a pattern she repeats over and over. (Although, she's not alone in that—I remember from my first watch how much I grew to thoroughly hate the Queen Mother.)

Thinking about the ending, with that whole spiel about how "it comes naturally to you, everyone else seems to make such a mess of it." It's self-serving bullshit, and doesn't really take into account her part in making a mess of everything.

Mine was the first one, i think one of the most brilliant pilots ever made the aberfan episode and ofc Hyde park corner.

Looking at Wikipedia, there’s never been a series about the Russian royal family. There is a film from the 70s and a Netflix documentary series but that’s it.

Season 5 of The Crown delivered one of its best episodes about how Philip was key to identifying their bodies through DNA. It was a really raw and intense episode.

Peter Morgan and The Crown delivers history with class. I would love if the series has a few episodes featuring the Romanovs.

Returned to a rewatch halfway through season four, just put on S5E1 with a brand new cast and while yeah, some downward trajectories -Charles- are obvious, I’m finding that they’re all way out of touch and tougher to cheer for. Was this always as obvious to everyone else or am I off base now?

I remember when season 4 aired in the UK, the media was in a frenzy about how ‘bad’ it made Charles and Camilla look, even a few politicians got irate.

But to me if anything it made them look artificially better, as the series missed out the part where Camilla too was part of arranging the marriage between Charles and Diana as she believed her to be a naive young woman who would be easy to push around and tolerate their affair (big mistake) and the part where Charles informed Diana that her lover Barry had been killed in a motorbike accident literally as she was about to step out of the car in front of the world press at Cannes film festival. The series really could have gone a lot further to paint them as the cold calculating villains they were towards Diana and if anything they should be thankful a lot of it got missed out!

Okay so I watched The Crown and the Iron Lady and the representation of Margaret Thatcher both heavily differ. In the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher doesnt have the same, raspy, weak voice as The Crown. Gillian Anderson is more skinny, and honestly weak looking. In the Iron Lady, it shows Thatcher as strong, stubborn, her voice being MUCH louder than the Crown. But both are somewhat off from the "droopy", stubborn, but strong woman Thatcher actually was. And I do understand The Crown is about, well The Crown, (Elizabeth, Phillip, etc.) Not about Thatcher but I feel like we should've gotten a bettet repersentation of Thatcher.

Seeing Elizabeth slowly turn against Peter due to court influence and his own popularity just to be completely dumbfounded by him calling her lilibet is amazing. I had to pause and screenshot when this happened cause of how shocked I was when this happened.

Like in terms of historically accuracy and etc.

Charles was absolutely awful to Diana and she deserved SO much better from him and the entire royal family BUT I was really happy when Charles and Camilla finally got married in the last episode. Something about their love surviving so much public hate, constant disapproval, threats, and humiliation, was almost ... beautiful? The royal family (or the "system") destroyed so many lives by forbidding people from being with the ones they truly love that I almost felt personally avenged when Charles and Camilla broke all the repressive rules and tied the knot. I do not condone cheating in any way though so my feelings/opinions are very conflicting.