The “Iron Lady” Years: Season 4 of Netflix’s “The Crown.”
The Queen during a consultation with her private secretary Martin Charteris.
Based on an award-winning play ("The Audience") by showrunner Peter Morgan, this lavish, Netflix-original drama chronicles the life of Queen Elizabeth II from the 1940s to modern times. The series begins with an inside look at the early reign of the queen, who ascended the throne at age 25 after the death of her father, King George VI. As the decades pass, personal intrigues, romances, and political rivalries are revealed that played a big role in events that shaped the later years of the 20th century.
Season 4 of The Crown has proven to be one of its best seasons yet. The earlier seasons really romanticized the concept of The Crown but this most recent season did a good job of revealing the humanity in each character, for better or worse.
The Crown captured the shackles of responsibility and the importance reputation all within the overbearing image of The Crown. The show exposes the immense wealth enjoyed by the members of the royal family, however, it comes at a cost as all family members have to make sacrifices to protect the image of The Crown’s legitimacy and sanctity. This of course, leads to the members of the royal family finding loopholes and decisions to circumvent the rules of The Crown.
This season out of all 4 did the best job of unfortunately showing the characters worst sides. The poor treatment of outsiders (Diane) as well as between family members. Without being able to pursue any entrepreneurial or private interests in business ventures, the family must resort to using hobbies, gossip, and other activities to fill their time
This season really dived into the relationship between Princess Diane and Prince Charles, played by Josh O'Connor a British actor, originally from Cheltenham, England. He trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He has become known to a wide audience for portraying Prince Charles in the Netflix series The Crown, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA.
The season also did a very good job of promoting the responsibility for the senior members of the family to really not let up and provide consistent pushback on the younger family members to fall in line and abandon any hopes for doing otherwise. However, even The Queen succumbed to involving herself in politics by suggesting a hint of contest between her and the priorities of the Prime Minister providing a real example of how the media would treat both senior and junior members of the royal family had they decided to do anything similar.
The second most prominent relationship highlighted in the show had to be between The Queen and the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher contrasting with the difficult and sometimes volatile relationship between Prince Charles and his late wife Princess Diana.
Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. The longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century, she was the first woman to hold that office. As prime minister, she implemented policies that became known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.
Thatcher was as unbending and relentless in her agenda as The Queen in her quest for protecting the sanctity of the crown. The show also did a very good job of highlighting the depreciation of the marriage and relationship between Prince Charles and Princess Diana along with the royal family’s senior members unwillingness to address the fundamental issues within their relationship.
The show, of course being a fictional rendition, was very captivating for an American with little to no knowledge of the inner workings of the royal family, its members, or its governmental purpose.
