Anyone watching The Crown and despising them for their behaviour to Diana?

[MyGazeboisLeaking]

Obviously it's not a documentary, but enough truth to reinforce what a poor, poor woman she was and how she never had a chance.

[angstridden2]

I’m enjoying it but to portray her as a wide eyed ingenue who was overwhelmed by the grandeur of her room and didn’t know the protocol, is just wrong.she was an Earl’s daughter brought up in a very grand house and her family had lived amongst the royals since she was a child.

[Maireas]

Yes, she was quite familiar with Sandringham wasn't she? Her grandmother, Lady Fermoy, was good friends with the Queen Mother.

[decoratingnightmare]

Charles was the only one of the three brothers whose wife took "obey" out of the service. 

Five years after Lady Diana's wedding, Sarah Ferguson married Andrew and promised to obey.

In 1999, Prince Edward married and his wife, Sophie, also promised to obey. 

[MiniCooperLover]

If you also watch 'Diana:In her own words' on Netflix you hear where they got a lot of material for The Crown. It's her talking to tape in secret for the Andrew Morton book. It makes for pretty sad listening especially where she talks about how positive she was feeling once she was healthier etc, knowing what was to come for her.

[MoonJelly]

I'm another one who thinks Olivia Coleman's acting is excellent. In many ways, portraying the queen at this age is much more difficult, because you don't have the glamour factor and you do have the fact that everyone who remembers this period thinks they know all about what went on.

[Embracelife]

@ Elspeth

How do you know
Were you close?
Were you there?

"Charles and Camilla weren't shagging throughout the engagement. They didn't start up again until 1986 if I remember correctly.""

[decoratingnightmare]

A_

Princess Diana Tapes (with Peter Settelen 1992)

Interview with Diana worth watching. It's a bit cringe how she discusses her sex-life with Charles. She also tells how spiteful she was with the nannies her father hired to help look after her and her brother. She would put pins in their chairs to hurt them, hid their clothes and when one of the nannies got engaged, she even flung her engagement ring down a drain!

[decoratingnightmare]

@angstridden2

I’m enjoying it but to portray her as a wide eyed ingenue who was overwhelmed by the grandeur of her room and didn’t know the protocol, is just wrong.she was an Earl’s daughter brought up in a very grand house and her family had lived amongst the royals since she was a child.

Absolutely! More facts wouldn't spoil the story which is amazing enough I think.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/30/world/the-royal-newlyweds-she-charms-with-an-easy-grace.htmll_

"This was not her first taste of publicity. The third daughter of Edward, then Viscount Althorp and heir to the seventh Earl Spencer, and Frances Roche, the youngest daughter of the fourth Baron Fermoy, Lady Diana was born on July 1, 1961, at Park House, in Sandringham, on the Queen's royal estate.

The Spencers boast an impeccable lineage, directly descended from the Stuart kings, five times (illegitimately) from King Charles II and once from James I. Earl Spencer was equerry to King George VI and later to Queen Elizabeth II, whom Diana has called ''Aunt Lilibet'' since childhood. Diana's grandmothers were both attendants at court, as were four of her great-aunts. The Times of London noted that at the wedding Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother 'will have as many Spencers around her as the bride.' "

[LadyTiredWinterBottom2]

You have to take it with a large pinch of salt but it's doing them no favours.

PC clearly was having an affair from the off he had no intention of stopping. I wonder if they think Diana was young and quiet and would produce the heir and the spare then quietly put up with it.

[VeryQuaintIrene]

Did anyone else have a "don't do it, Di" badge in 1981? It just seemed so obvious at the time that they had zero in common and were unlikely to make each other happy.

[Maireas]

I remember those badges!
There were also badges in the latter years saying "No Di, please" which were in the event of hospitalisation and you didn't want a Diana visit. Just supposed to be humorous.

[Bouledeneige]

I rather enjoyed the series and think its probably mainly true in terms of their personalities - though I doubt Princess Margaret was any more emotionally literate than the rest. I generally think most people reckon the only one in the immediate family with any character is Anne. And Camilla seems pretty fun.

I wouldn't blame them for it though. Its a ghastly life of duty and function and appearances, formality over spontaneity, being seen to do the right thing rather than living. A shit life. So it shouldn't be a surprise that they are all pretty cold and burdened. And probably fortunate that none of them were too blessed in the brains department - including Diana. I can't understand the fawning over her except for being pretty and hugging people. Which is not usually the cause for deification.
But all are clearly driven by a strong sense of duty to Britain and its people.

From more historically factual stuff that I've read I think its probably true:

• the Queen is quite cold due to the constraints of duty and formality. Now at least, she seems grumpy and humourless (I have met her and can vouch for that)
  
• Princess Margaret disappointed in love and the pointlessness of her role too fond, like her mother, of the booze. Pretty rude to people.
  
• Prince Philip - dashing and athletic, thinking his eldest son should man up with sport and outdoor pursuits. Had many affairs and at odds with having his life and navy aspirations clipped by protocol and walking one step behind his wife. But learnt to buckle under. Lives separately from the Queen - though covid may have changed that. He's usually in a house on the Sandringham estate, she at Windsor.
  
• Charles - unhappy and pretty wet, not very bright (had a degree course designed for him specially at Cambridge that he could pass) but later with rather eclectic 'intellectual' interests. Couldn't marry the woman he loved and forced into an arranged marriage by his father. It was his duty. Didn't he famously declare 'why should I be the only king who didn't have a mistress?' I've met him too and I have to say he discharges his public duties with dedication and hard work.
  
• Diana - inexperienced and vapid, uneducated brood mare making an ambitious marriage (every aristocratic family's dream) and unprepared and too young for the lonely life of a royal bride. Its well known she loathed the country life, horses, hunting shooting and fishing - which is the lifeblood of the Windsors and most aristos.

[ElspethFlashman]

Embracelife

They are two of the most investigated people of the 20th century, who were surrounded by people 24/7. Its common knowledge because an army of staff blabbed about everything to a dizzying array of biographers in turn.

[StillWeRise]

@VeryQuaintIrene

Did anyone else have a "don't do it, Di" badge in 1981? It just seemed so obvious at the time that they had zero in common and were unlikely to make each other happy.

yes! and then modified it when they were getting divorced to
do it Di

[Maireas]

@VeryQuaintIrene - love your user name! My absolute favourite books

[insomnmaniac]

Not sure how true the Crown is but it does portray the reality of how things might have been back then. Diana was young and probably didn't think it through what her life was going turn out to be. I found it very hurtful during any private moment, Charles would report it back to Camilla bad mouthing his wife. I guess this happens in a lot of affairs but it is really heartbreaking for anyone being cheated on like that and watching that makes you realise how unfair any affair is. Also the scene where the Queen and Philip invited Charles and Diana to talk about their marriage and the Queen immediately saying to Diana that she was aware of her breaking her vows. I just felt so angry that the Queen knowing her son is the one who broke his vows first and saying along the lines that she should turn a blind eye just boiled my blood.

Why didn't they just let him marry Camila which could have saved a lot of heartbreak and torment? Diana and Charles wasn't a match. You could see their differences throughout the series. Diana doing the surprise dance etc just clearly shows how they're were in a different wave length but of course if Camila wasn't ever in the scene, especially on Charles' part would have been more different as he would have been more understanding and tolerable towards Diana.

[VeryQuaintIrene]

@Maireas She is my role model!

[MoonJelly]

There were also badges in the latter years saying "No Di, please" which were in the event of hospitalisation and you didn't want a Diana visit

There was also a general view, after they split up, that whenever there was a high profile accident or disaster the Royals would get moving ASAP to ensure they fetched up before Diana and her entourage of cameramen. There were times when her pursuit of photo opportunities with grieving relatives or people in hospital beds became a bit ghoulish.

[Maireas]

@VeryQuaintIrene - are you an artist, too? Have you painted Mr Twystevant?!

[LadyTiredWinterBottom2]

@MoonJelly there is no doubt that she played to the camera and the media from memory. Remember when she went to watch a heart transplant or similar, looking all doe eyed?! Was that the surgeon she shagged?

[ElspethFlashman]

Yes she attended several operations and was filmed at one, at her request.

Everyone was really creeped out at the time. Lord knows what she thought it was meant to portray.

[ancientgran]

Oh yes I remember the operations and people complaining about how inappropriate it was. I'd be furious if a surgeon brought his latest girlfriend in to have a look at my insides.

[Livelovebehappy]

Most of us knew how badly she was treated before we watched the Crown. She was 19years old when she got engaged to Charles and only 20 when she married him. How many of us can look at our own 19 year olds and imagine someone of that age having the maturity to know exactly what they were getting themselves into? She was used then spat out when she started standing up to the situation she found herself in. She was failed by her own family as well as the Royal Family.

[MrsToothyBitch]

I watched it. It did give me a bit more compassion for her- it really drove home her youth, how hard it was for an outsider and how difficult Charles must have been. But it also drove home how pressured and limited he was in his choices and how uncaring they all were to him as well as her, in some ways. Diana, Charles and Camilla were all pawns in a way.

I actually think she got off very lightly- it was written very much in her favour and rather glossed over the fact she was as much of a sinner as she was sinned against, tbh. That utter piece of work Lady Jane Fermoy (granny Di) got off bloody lightly, too.

[VeryQuaintIrene]

@Maireas. Alas, my artistic talents are limited, but I do have aspirations to be a "rude, unsexed girl in shorts" (one of my favorite quotes ever,)