The Crown: Why Charles & Diana’s Marriage Won’t End Until Season 5

The Crown season 4 leaves Charles and Diana’s marriage in limbo. Here’s why the resolution to their problems won’t be depicted until season 5.

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Warning: SPOILERS for The Crown Season 4

The Crown season 4 didn’t resolve Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Princess Diana’s (Emma Corrin) tumultuous marriage, and here’s why it won’t happen until season 5. The Crown season 4’s time frame runs from 1977, when the Princes of Wales met the teenage Diana Spencer, to 1990, when their 9-year marriage was essentially over but Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman) wouldn’t allow them to separate much less divorce.

Prince Charles did his duty in accordance with the Royal Family’s wishes and married Diana on July 29, 1981, creating her as the Princess of Wales. Although they had two children, Prince William and Prince Harry, their marriage was an unhappy one because of the age gap between them, their general incompatibility, and the fact that Charles was in love with Camilla Parker-Bowles (Emerald Fennell). Charles began to have an affair with Camilla in 1986 while the lonely Diana took on lovers of her own. By the end of the 1980s, Charles and Diana were wretchedly unhappy together but they were trapped in their marriage because a divorce would be a public disgrace to the Crown.

The Crown season 4’s ending pointedly feels like limbo for Charles, Diana, and the audience. The story wraps (for now) at the Windsors’ family Christmas in Sandringham where both Charles and Diana try to get an audience with the Queen to plead their cases for divorce. The sovereign does hear her eldest son out and then gives him a tongue lashing about how Charles and Diana are “spoiled and immature” in spite of their privileged positions in life. The Queen forbade them from divorcing, and much of this is fueled by how the younger Elizabeth (Claire Foy) and Prince Philip (Matt Smith) were able to overcome their marriage problems in The Crown seasons 1 and 2. Meanwhile, the elder Philip (Tobias Menzies) privately spoke to Diana and realized her fitting in with the Royal Family is a lost cause because she sees herself and not the Queen as the center of their universe.

The Crown season 4’s sober ending leaves the fate of Charles and Diana hanging but why didn’t producer Peter Morgan push the ending to 1992 and show the Prince and Princess of Wales’ separation in order to offer a resolution? After all, The Crown season 4 already spanned 13 years from 1977-1990, so why not two more years? One reason is that 1992 was a monumental year for the Royal Family. In fact, Queen Elizabeth dubbed 1992 her “annus horriblis,” or “horrible year.”

While 1992 was the Queen’s Ruby Jubilee marking 40 years on the throne, in her speech to Guildhall in November 1992, she said, “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.” It was a year marked by epic disasters for Queen Elizabeth and the Windsors because three royal marriages ended that same year. In 1992, Andrew Morton published the tell-all biography written with Diana’s help called Diana: Her True Story In Her Own Words, detailing the problems in her marriage, her bulimia and self-harm, and Charles’ infidelity with Camilla. As a result, the Queen finally allowed Charles and Diana their separation (and then divorce a few years later).

In addition, Prince Andrew also separated from his wife, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York while Princess Anne divorced her husband Captain Mark Phillips. Topless photos of Sarah Ferguson sunbathing were later published in the tabloids while intimate tape recordings of Diana and one of her lovers, James Gilbey, were leaked to the press. There was also a fire at Windsor Castle. All in all, a shocking number of calamities befell the Royal Family in 1992 and The Crown would have to depict all of it, not just what happened with Charles and Diana in 1992, so it was best to save it all for the next season when there’s ample time to detail it all. The Crown’s solution of stopping at Christmas 1990 is essentially a cliffhanger leaving the audiences gasping for more, but knowing full well that it will all end in tragedy for Princess Diana in The Crown season 5.

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