Princess Di misquote in final Crown season sparks outrage
Fans of The Crown have shared their fury over a quote from Princess Diana, after details of a pivotal scene from the royal drama have emerged.
The sixth season of the show, which will be released on Netflix on November 16th, features a key part of Princess Diana's life, in which she dedicated much of her time lobbying for an international treaty banning landmines and her support of victims.
Just three weeks before her death in a car crash in 1997, she visited Bosnia and Herzegovina to meet with affected communities.
In the upcoming episode of the show, Diana – played by Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki – tells her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed, played by Khalid Abdalla, about the horrors of the explosives and how they are responsible for thousands of deaths.
“A man called Ken Rutherford drew my attention to it. He started the Landmine Survivors Network. After his jeep hit a landmine in Somalia he lost both of his legs,” Diana explains to her boyfriend on-screen.
Diana then makes a bold statement, likening stepping on a landmine to her ill-fated marriage to Prince Charles.
“He said to me every survivor has a date of the day they stepped on the landmine. He said, ‘Mine was December 16, 1963’. I said, ‘Mine was 29 July, 1981 — my wedding day’.”
In the scene, Dodi laughs in response.
The inclusion of the presumably fictional quote has been criticised by royal biographer and Majesty magazine editor Ingrid Seward, who had a personal relationship with Diana.
“Diana would never have said anything like that. I think it is an unfortunate comparison,” she told The Sun.
“I think the mere fact that The Crown is depicting Diana’s life and her death is exploiting her memory so they can put into her mouth anything that they want to — however distasteful people might find it.”
Seward went on to emphasise the significance of landmine awareness to the late princess.
“It was very important – it was her big thing and it was a great success too. It is something that she will always be remembered for,” she told the publication.
Image credits: Netflix