I had really been anticipating season 6 of The Crown, a really good show on Netflix I am watching right now. To be honest, this season was pretty sad. But I think watching it kind of helped me process my own grief this week after my mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, passed away this past week. Daisaku Ikeda’s encouragement really touched my life, and he was a peacebuilder and writer whose works really encouraged me, so this week after finding out he died was very painful. This first part of The Crown deals with grief and the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death, and so watching this helped me to process my own grief. I felt a lot less like I was going through this alone, and watching these episodes reminded me that grief is a universal experience and it is indeed painful to go through for everyone.
I feel bad for putting spoilers in this post but at the same time, I understand that Princess Diana’s death was very real and very painful for everyone, and while I would learn about her in history or world geography class, seeing Elizabeth Debicki embody Diana’s character so well really made me feel as if I was meeting Diana. Elizabeth is an incredible actress and I really loved her in Widows, and she is also an excellent actress in The Crown. I think when everyone was grieving Diana’s death, I think it was really sad to watch, and it showed how Diana really touched everyone’s lives, even her ex-husband, Charles. And it was also painful to watch Dodi Fayed’s father grieving because that was his only child and even though he set these high expectations for Dodi and got really disappointed when Dodi didn’t meet his expectations, he still loved his son. It was really powerful when they showed Charles imagining a dialogue between him and Diana, and then Dodi’s dad imagining him talking with Dodi. Dodi in the imagined conversation tells his dad that he failed him so many times and didn’t meet his expectations. Dodi’s father wanted Dodi to get married to Diana but it was really driven by his pursuit of wanting to become a British citizen. In the earlier episodes of season 5, Dodi’s father, as a child, encounters the abdicated Edward and his wife, Wallis Simpson, and he aspires to be British. However, he has incredibly high expectations for his son to do what he tells him to do, and Dodi is always trying to seek approval from his father. I think that is why he hangs up on his dad before telling him that he and Diana didn’t actually seal the deal on getting married because he feared his father’s disapproval. If Dodi actually told his father that Diana didn’t want to marry him, then Dodi’s father would cut him off from his fortune and basically disown his son. The imagined conversation between Dodi and his father really showed how the father regretted making his son feel poorly about himself, like he failed his father. It seems that approval seeking is a huge pattern in a lot of these relationships depicted in the show. Prince Charles wants his mom’s approval and when he speaks out for the self-determination of the people of Wales, she reprimands him for doing so. When he says he was just expressing an opinion, she shuts him down and tells him no one wants to hear his opinion. Of course, I’m sure the backstory of all this was much more complex, but as someone who has spent most of my life wanting to seek approval and reading more books about it and learning how to work on not seeking validation all the time (which is still a work in progress) it was pretty painful to see how most of the characters’ lives were based on seeking external validation. But of course, I have to remember that the royal family probably didn’t have a choice because they were in the public eye all of the time.
I think watching the scene with all the paparazzi chasing Diana was pretty sad, too. I used to think it was so glamorous to see celebrities’ photos of them taking their kids to school, eating ice cream, kissing their partners. It all seemed like these actors, musicians and other famous people were these gods or deities. I think as I grew older and started seeing more clearly what Hollywood is really like, though, I have learned that celebrities are human beings just like me. And it’s pretty stressful for a lot of them to be going about their daily lives and have someone take a photo of them and splash it all over the papers. When I went to Los Angeles, I thought, I’m going to meet all these celebrities and it’s going to be so cool! But I didn’t, and I think after reflecting on it, it was best to just let these regular ass people live their regular ass lives. I think that is why while watching the show it was so emotionally painful to see Diana being chased by the people taking the photos. They just wouldn’t give her a break, and even when Dodi and her went to get ice cream, people hounded them for photos, so much so that they had to hide in a jewelry store. Even when they go in the restaurant they set up a reservation to dine at, the people around them just stare at them and they can’t just eat in private. Diana breaks down crying because it is really stressful that she just can’t enjoy her meal with Dodi without people following her and asking her personal questions.
And it was really profound when she told Dodi that motherhood brought her the greatest joy, and it’s why I felt really sad when she died because from watching the show it was clear that she really loved her sons and they also did everything they could to make sure their mom was happy and enjoying her life even when she was dealing with these really toxic dynamics in the royal family and not having her privacy respected. In this season she goes to Bosnia to support a charity that raises awareness of landmines and how the victims of landmine explosions often go unnoticed. In the earlier seasons I saw Diana supporting many charities and organizations, and she also treated people with the utmost respect. I think that is why watching the footage that shows the thousands of flower bouquets that people dedicated to Diana really hit like a gut punch because it showed me how Diana truly touched many people’s lives. She actually wanted to go out there and be with the people.
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