'The Crown' fact check: How did Will and Kate meet? Did the queen want to abdicate throne?
The final season of “The Crown” may cover history as recent as 2005, but that doesn’t mean it can’t get the facts wrong.
Season 6 of Netflix’s long-running Queen Elizabeth II chronicle (played by Imelda Staunton) is a more contemporary account of the British royal family than earlier seasons. The last six episodes (streaming now) take place from 1997 to 2005, and include Prince William (Ed McVey) meeting and dating future wife Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy), Prince Harry’s (Luther Ford) scandals, and Prince Charles (Dominic West) and longtime love Camilla Parker Bowles’ (Olivia Williams) wedding.
But how accurate is creator Peter Morgan’s version of modern history? Was there scheming behind Will and Kate’s fairy-tale romance? Did the queen want to abdicate? How many bad decisions did Harry make?
We answer all your questions about Part 2 the final season of “The Crown."
How did Will and Kate actually meet? Did they live in a group house together?
The series shows Will and Kate meeting by happenstance on the street when they are both young teens and Diana is still alive. In reality, the future husband and wife met at St. Andrews University in Scotland when they were both students there in 2001.
"I think you said I actually went bright red when I met you and sort of scuttled off," Kate recalled to Prince William during the interview in 2010 announcing their engagement. "(I was) feeling very shy about meeting you."
Similar to how the series portrays, Will and Kate were friends first, and it took a long time for them to become romantically involved. They did move into a house together with a group of friends, like many other college kids do, in 2002, before they got together officially (the show portrays this happening afterward).
Did Kate really catch Will's eye by walking in a risqué fashion show?
The fashion show and the see-through dress that “The Crown” depicts are both from Will and Kate’s real story, according to fellow St. Andrews alum and fashion designer Charlotte Todd, who designed the garment.
Todd’s assignment was a fashion show called “The Art of Seduction,” “which is quite apt, really. I didn't know who Kate Middleton was and I didn't put her in it. It was just pure chance!" she told People in 2020. Whether Kate picked the dress on purpose to catch Will’s eye, as “The Crown” portrays, we can’t know.
The dress sold at auction for $125,000 in 2011.
Did Carole Middleton, Kate’s mother, plot to match her daughter with Prince William?
In one Season 6 episode, Kate accuses her mother (Eve Best) of scheming to put her in the path of the future king by suggesting the same gap year trip and pushing Kate to attend St. Andrews.
Royal correspondent Tina Brown suggests a similar narrative in her 2022 book “The Palace Papers.” Brown alleges that Kate’s mother convinced her daughter to go to St. Andrews instead of Edinburgh University and also “strategized” with Kate on how to get Will back after the couple's brief breakup in 2007. However, like many royal scoops, the book does not include comment from the parties involved.
Did Mohamed Al-Fayed accuse the British government and royal family of orchestrating Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s deaths? Was there a British inquest?
Al-Fayed (Salim Daw) publicly supported conspiracy theories about the death of Diana and his son, Dodi, for years. There have been many inquiries into the car collision in the years since 1997, including a 2004 to 2006 inquest by the London Metropolitan police which “The Crown” dramatizes (slightly out of the chronology).
Did young Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret sneak out of Buckingham Palace to celebrate VE Day at the end of World War II?
In an emotional episode chronicling Princess Margaret's (Lesley Manville) death, "The Crown" flashes back all the way to the 1940s. It shows young Elizabeth (Viola Prettejohn) and Margaret (Beau Gadsdon) escaping the palace to celebrate Victory in Europe Day, the day World War II ended on the continent. They both let loose in the anonymity of the jubilant crowds, with Elizabeth swing dancing in an underground jazz club.
Royal historian Hugo Vickers says this is partially true. "The princesses went out into the crowds on VE night," he says. But it was "with a group of escorts and with the full knowledge of the King."
Did Will and Kate endorse Prince Harry's Nazi costume for a ‘Colonials and Natives’ party?
In 2005, Prince Harry was photographed wearing a Nazi uniform as a costume at a “Colonials and Natives”-themed party. It was a monumental scandal around the world, and required profuse apologies and penance from the then-20-year-old.
But why did he wear the costume in the first place? It depends on who you ask.
In “The Crown,” Harry goes to a costume shop with Will and Kate and suggests the Nazi costume. Kate is apprehensive, worried it’s offensive. Will is more positive, saying that wearing it doesn’t make him a Nazi and that it’s a joke.
In his 2023 memoir, “Spare,” Prince Harry claims he was egged on by Will and Kate to wear the outfit. "I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform," Harry wrote. "They both howled. Worse than Willy's leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point."
Did the queen really consider abdicating around the time of Charles and Camilla’s wedding?
The finale episode of "The Crown" has Elizabeth contemplating her mortality and the future of the monarchy as her courtiers plan her funeral and her son Charles prepares to marry for the second time. Elizabeth has debates with herself − literally, as the actresses who played her in previous seasons (Olivia Colman and Claire Foy) return to play her inner conscience − about whether she should continue reigning into her even older age. Ultimately she decides not to abdicate, and the series ends with her walking out of a church, confident in her decision.
But did any of that really happen (sans the ghosts of queen actresses past)? The private thoughts of the queen are hard to confirm or deny. But royal historians and biographers have been adamant for years that the queen never seriously considered abdication. "As an anointed queen, she could not do so," Vickers says. "Had she been unable to fulfill her duties, a regent would have been appointed, as happened when George III fell ill (in the 1800s)."
'The Crown' Season 6 Part 1 fact check:Did Dodi Fayed really propose to Princess Diana?