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.

Boule, Diana wasn't vapid and had oodles of emotional intelligence.

Fiction it maybe, but it had me (briefly) feeling sorry for Margaret Thatcher. Which is quite an achievement.

I was 12 when Charles & Di married and remember my parents saying she was too young.

I think if you have emotional intelligence you'd not 'fall in love' with the romantic notion of a man you hardly know. Or marry a man who clearly doesn't love you.

[quote 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?[/quote]
Goodness yes. Blinking mascara flakes into the unfortunate patient's wound.

@TheRubyRedshoes

Boule, Diana wasn't vapid and had oodles of emotional intelligence.

The interviews she did rather indicated that that was not the case. Essentially she learned what played well to the Press, hence the photo opps with hospital patients etc.

One cannot consider a made for binge Viewing salacious & gossipy boxset to be truth
It’s made to provoke a strong response, garner ratings because it generates media,creates viewers,adds interest
It’s not a documentary that’s carefully curated. It’s schlocky tv

Don't watch the crown but did see something on Twitter that amused me about the next series having Di come back from having faked her death to take Kill Bill style revenge on the Royal Family.

I'd deffo watch that!

I think it makes it clear why Harry has cleared off.

The truth is Diana herself claimed she was crying very regularly and was deeply unhappy - worse than shown in The Crown - because her husband was in love with another woman. Team Charles was keen to tell reporters she was imagining things and there was no truth in that. Except who is Charles married to these days? I don’t think Diana was imagining anything. She was being subjected to extreme mental cruelty.

I think that Olivia Colman was cast as the Queen because she won an oscar and is therefore known in the US and here.
It's all about ratings.
If you actually read the Court Circular in the Telegraph (I think it's called, if they still do it) it's the duties the royals are carrying out each day. OMG how boring would the programme be if they bothered to include all the hospital openings/ special school openings/ extremely boring factory openings that the royals do on a very regular basis.

Am not, and never have been much of a fan of either Charles or Di, nothing in The Crown has done anything to alter my feelings as it's impossible to tell exactly how much of it is factual, how much is sensationalised for plot purposes, how much is artistic licence, and whether or not there's any intentional bias toward/against one or any of the parties involved.

Anyway, I thought back in the 90's that neither of them came through the whole episode with much in the way of dignity or credibility remaining, and I can only say that as the years have passed I've probably warmed slightly to Charles, and suspect I probably would have towards Di as well.

@Maireas - that's not true at all. I'm a year younger than her & everyone I knew was very surprised at the time. Most of my friends went to University (state comprehensive, Welsh Valleys).

@MyPersona - I don't think that's true. It wasn't that usual to use that version in 1981. At the time Diana was considered quite ahead of her time. The much more worldly Fergie obeyed as did Sophie Wessex.

It's very exaggerated & the meeting about her 'possibly falling apart ' on her triumphant New York trip never happened a cording to a high ranking Palace 'suit'. ( His name escapes me at moment). Patrick Jephson, her Private Secretary's book is very insightful. It shows her complexity, her insecurities, her good points & bad points & her love/hate relationship with the press . Charles doesn't come out of it well though. Jephson relates some very public put downs to his wife, in front of both their staff & worse, VIP's & Royals in other Countries.

@luckylavender - that's not true at all. In 1981 most people in the UK did not go to university. Look at the stats. Wales must have been atypical. That was not a national picture until the Blair years.

@luckylavender - according to universities UK it used to be in the 5-10% range until the 1990s broadened it. Wales obviously bucked the trend!

Not at all. I think they were both responsible for what happened to be honest. She was an adult noblewoman who made the decision to join that family. It just wasn't a good match and obviously a difficult environment. They got lovely children out of it and the children have always seemed close to their father, even before their mother's death which I think says a lot.

Also agree that everyone needs to remember she was not a commoner plucked from obscurity into this lifestyle. She was landed gentry, her parents' marriage took place in Westminster Abbey and was attended by the royal family. Her family seat is in the middle of the countryside. If she was ignorant of protocol that would have been due to her age not class which was as aristo as they come.

Agree her family should have protected her rather than have supported the match of aristo bloodlines.

Everyone is always so aghast at the queen's alleged behaviour and forget she was a product of her class and times. My own grandmother probably had even more staid, old-fashioned views than the queen.

I think she was duped and used. She has been raised to expect to marry someone important - a sort of grooming, really. She certainly wasn’t going to do anything in her own right - no O-levels, remember. Famously dim but also extremely charismatic and good with people. Her own grandmother basically set it up and Diana fell for the old fairytale lie. Her problems with bulimia all stemmed from the ridiculous situation she was put into. There’s a lot of blaming the press and the attention being too much but the real culprits are the Royal family.

* Princess or not, if your husband is cheating on you throughout your relationship and never loves you it's a horrific thing to deal with.*

This. Whatever Diana's narcissism, her husband was having an affair, sanctioned by his family. And she was told to suck it up. As ever, they assumed the young woman's feelings didn't matter - that she should be powerless and voiceless.

I’ve found it upsetting, also I had never properly thought about just how young she was, so young, like you say she never stood a chance.

the real culprits are the Royal family.

I disagree. Her own family pushed her into it. Her father was overjoyed at the prospect of having a Spencer on the throne.

No because it’s a fictional tv show. We know only snippets of what happened.

One other thing that is often forgotten, is the Spencer family were in financial hell in the 1980's and had been for decades. They'd been flogging off family heirlooms and property left and right, and were still losing money hand over fist.

Far more difficult to go flat broke, lose the entire lot, and end up bumming it on the street, if the most prominent member of your family is married to the Monarch, and essentially has access to a bottomless pit of public money.

I know it’s a fictionalised account but one thing that struck me was the absence of any support from her own family. If your 19 year old daughter was getting married (unwisely) wouldn’t you be there with her the night before the wedding, etc? What it has illuminated for me is the way the upper classes outsourced their children’s upbringing & the horrendous consequences that has had. (And not just the Royals, see also Boris Johnson)