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"The Crown", Meghan and Harry: Skirmishes in the hall of mirrors of the pictures

2021-03-10T16:04:29.811Z


No report on the interview with Meghan and Harry without a mention of "The Crown": What the Netflix series has to do with royal reality - and why that can be dangerous for the royal family.


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The royal family in the series "The Crown": A terribly nice family

Photo: 

Des Willie / Netflix / dpa

A runaway prince, a duchess with suicidal thoughts, an old queen, an interview that pulls the floor from under the feet of the royals - that surpasses everything that has been seen in "The Crown" so far.

It would be the perfect series finale.

But maker Peter Morgan is sticking to his plan to end the series with season six and the death of Princess Diana.

At least that was the case last December when he told the Hollywood Reporter: “Meghan and Harry are on a journey, and I don't know their destination yet.

I much prefer to write about things that were at least 20 years ago. ”On the other hand, Morgan has changed his mind about how“ The Crown ”should end several times.

And his first feature film about the royal family, "The Queen", in which he also dealt with Diana's death, was made ten years after the fatal accident in Paris.

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When will "The Crown" inventor Peter Morgan cast the Meghan affair into a script?

Photo: 

Jim Clarke / AFP

Maybe it's not so important if and when Morgan pours the Meghan and Harry affair into a script.

Because the pictures for it should already haunt the minds of most people who know the series.

Meghan Markle, all alone in the wide hallways of a cold, draughty castle, like the lost Diana in the current fourth season of "The Crown".

William and Harry, who attack each other poisonously, are eaten away by envy and craving for recognition, like Charles, Anne and Edward in the series.

And Charles in general, the tearful tear sac that his mother repeatedly rejected and who rose to become the big bad guy in season four.

Should he have made sure that little Archie is deprived of the prince title because of his skin color?

Ha, those who are familiar with the series whisper: He could be trusted!

The fictional world from "The Crown" gets up close and personal with the breathless scandal unfolding in reality, the images overlap, and in fact hardly a report on the Meghan and Harry interview now comes without a reference to the series.

As if a Netflix production was a suitable yardstick for what is happening in reality.

Was the conservative British culture minister Oliver Dowden right when he recently demanded that Netflix make it clear that "The Crown" was fiction?

At least Prince Harry is more relaxed about it.

He said in an interview that the series reflects the atmosphere and pressure that you are under as a royal quite well.

It is interesting when Dowden made his request.

At the start of the fourth season, namely, in which the unfortunate Diana story begins and Peter Morgan finally leaves no doubt what he thinks of the monarchy: nothing.

The ten episodes seem like a deluxe scrapping bonus for an institution more than a thousand years old that is finding it increasingly difficult to ensure its own inviolability and relevance.

The Queen is a cold-hearted power broker, her sister a drunken intriguer, the heir to the throne a dreamer crushed between want and must, plus an icy silence, the insistence on traditions and rules that are increasingly losing meaning - in "The Crown" the British monarchy wrestles with it, to have long since been left behind by modernity.

While the country it represents is shrinking from a world power to a regional power.

Peter Morgan translates this struggle into a monumental visual language that makes the cracks in the foundation all the more clear.

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Olivia Colman in "The Crown": What should happen if the Queen is no longer there?

Photo: Sophie Mutevelian / Netflix

But in reality, the royal family is waging a similar battle.

Because, of course, the entire institution of the monarchy is nothing more than a fiction.

Does anyone really still believe in the narrative of the coronation liturgy, according to which the queen was anointed by God and put into office?

And what will happen when the very old Queen, who has been holding the store together until now, is no longer there?

The British royal family has been operating in a hall of mirrors made up of images for hundreds of years, from Shakespears' royal dramas to the series world of "The Crown".

But the narrative of their claim to domination has to hold its own in the real world.

It would not be the first time people get rid of a fiction they have created because it no longer fits into their world.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-03-10

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