‘The Crown’ Season 6 Adds Fuel to the Prince Harry and Prince William Feud

By now, the whole world knows that Netflix‘s The Crown Season 6 Part 1 focuses its attention on the final weeks of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki). We watch as she enters a tabloid-y tryst with Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla), begins to panic under the pressure of the paparazzis’s interest, and frets about what it all means for her darling boys. It is how The Crown handles those darling boys — young Prince William (Rufus Kampa) and Prince Harry (Fflyn Edwards) — that might surprise royal watchers. The two boys are portrayed as the best of brothers and friends, but there are subtle nods to the feud that defines them today. Whether we’re talking about Queen Elizabeth II‘s (Imelda Staunton) strict rules on royals being “in” or “out” of the Firm or the way the boys treat their mother’s romantic life, The Crown teases the fissures to come…

One of the magic tricks that Peter Morgan’s award-winning Netflix series The Crown has pulled off over the years is using the royal family’s past to give new emotional context for its present. The rivalry between the young Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy) and glamorous sister Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby) was used to foreshadow the friction between future Season 4 newlyweds Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) as well as the real life feud unfolding in real life between the throne’s heir apparent Prince William and the charismatic celebrity of Prince Harry.

Part of being an American Anglophile is keeping tabs on royal gossip, and part of following royal gossip in 2023 is unfortunately being all too aware of the intense feud between brothers Prince William and Prince Harry. Long story short, Prince Harry decided to leave the royal fold in early 2020 when it seemed that his wife Meghan Markle was being thrown under the tabloid bus to protect the rep of the more senior royals, specifically — if you believe rumors — Prince William. The acrimony only intensified after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex sat for explosive interviews, dropped a tell-all Netflix docuseries, and, in the case of Prince Harry, published an excoriating memoir, Spare.

Hardcore royalists see Harry as an ingrate determined to bring down the institution, while the “Sussex Squad” believe Harry and Meghan were, like Diana, victims of emotional abuse from the royal family. Me? I’m just fascinated that English royals have evolved from medieval warrior kings to tabloid soap opera fare. And The Crown seems to be struggling with that reality in real time in Season 6.

So what exactly pops up in The Crown Season 6 Part 1 that could have Prince William and Prince Harry fans upset, exuberant, or just plain bemused? First there’s the depiction of Prince William as a withdrawn and sullen teen to Prince Harry’s friendly vibe. I’ve seen threads analyzing William’s peevish behavior as a toddler as proof of some dark side energy, so I’m guessing someone’s going to interpret young William’s desire to just hang out alone playing video games as a smoking gun and not an accurate depiction of adolescent ennui.

Elsewhere, we see new Prime Minister Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel) attempting to broker a more formal position for Diana within the royal family with Queen Elizabeth II. She’s not part of the working royal rota, but wants to leverage her celebrity to do good. Elizabeth scoffs at this. “I always say it’s hard to be half in anything,” she tells Blair. “You’re either in or out.” This echoes what a lot of Prince Harry’s critics have lobbed at him since he left the UK. Originally, he and Meghan Markle wanted a sort of half-in arrangement where they could act in a formal capacity for the royals without being subject to the full commitment of life as working royals. In this sequence, Harry gets the shade.

But perhaps the most fascinating nod to the current rancor between the royal brothers comes from the petty ways Prince Charles and Princess Diana use the press in their post-divorce war for attention. After Diana is photographed by a paparazzo canoodling with Dodi Fayed, Charles’s PR mastermind Mark Bolland convinces his boss that he can counterstrike in the war of public opinion by orchestrating a staged photocall with the boys. They’ll be serendipitously caught hiking in Scotland, the portrait of British wholesomeness. William and Harry are reluctant, but they do it. Already they are being indoctrinated in how to wage a war in the press.

The Crown is one writer — Peter Morgan’s — dramatic interpretation of the private lives of some of modern history’s most public figures. He has every right to depict the royals as he sees fit in his fictionalized version of their world. Still, he can’t resist the urge to nod at the bitter battle raging between brothers Prince William and Prince Harry in even the sliest of ways in The Crown Season 6 Part 1.

If anything, it’s probably for the best that The Crown ends with Season 6. The classy charm of the early seasons has been whittled away so all we see now is a funhouse mirror version of the icons we know today.