The final season of “The Crown,” has come to an end after six seasons of toeing the line between fact and fiction.
Much of the focus of the final six episodes, released Dec. 14 on Netflix, was on Prince William and his relationship with Kate Middleton, as the series wrapped up its retelling of the life and family of Queen Elizabeth II.
The couple first met while studying at St. Andrews University in Scotland. In the couple’s 2010 engagement interview, Middleton admitted that due to her shyness, it took some time for the pair to get to know each other. As they spent more time together, they became “very close friends.”
If “The Crown” is to be believed, it was Middleton’s mother, Carole Middleton, who pushed her daughter toward the young prince.
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Eve Best plays Carole Middleton, Kate Middleton’s mother, in “The Crown.” (Netflix/Getty Images)
Kate had intended to go with friends to Edinburgh University initially, but took a gap year and later enrolled at St. Andrew’s, where Prince William was, at the behest of Carole, portrayed in the show by Eve Best.
“The Crown” researcher Annie Sulzberger told Vanity Fair that their research backed up the series of events on the show.
“It was hard,” Sulzberger told the outlet. “My team is entirely women. We didn’t want the research to add up to, ‘Wow. She really did leave Edinburgh and go on a gap year and reapply to St. Andrew’s because of this new student [William] who was matriculating that year. We tried our darnedest to find other things that would’ve impacted her decision-making.”
“Edinburgh had the better art history program,” Sulzberger continued. “Edinburgh was a better school. All of her friends were going to Edinburgh. She had never talked about doing a deferment—a year off. So it was a little disheartening, actually, to come to the conclusion that a lot of the media had come to, which, in this case, we felt was accurate.”
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Kate Middleton, left, with her mom in 2005, after she began dating Prince William. (Tim Ockenden/PA Images via Getty Images)
Royal expert Hilary Fordwich told Fox News Digital that Carole’s depiction in the show is “conjecture.”
“Kate’s mother is made out to be a masterful Machiavellian manipulator which is inaccurate. While there were accuracies regarding many of their experiences, casting Carole Middleton in such a light is conjecture, originating in Tina Brown’s book [author of ‘The Palace Papers’],” she said.
Meg Bellamy plays Kate Middleton and Ed McVey plays Prince William in the final episodes of “The Crown.” (Justin Downing/Netflix)
Helena Chard, a royal photographer and broadcaster, noted that the change in Kate’s university plans probably were not all that unusual once people found out where William would be enrolling.
“I imagine thousands of students tried to enroll at St. Andrews University that particular year!” she told Fox News Digital.
Kate Middleton apparently changed her college plans to attend St. Andrew’s University, where Prince William was also enrolled. (Anwar Hussein Collection/ROTA/WireImage)
Ian Pelham Turner, a former royal photographer, explained, “It is true to say that Kate seemed to follow in William’s wake, moving from Edinburgh University to St. Andrews, including the outward bound course Raleigh International in Chile happened shortly after William doing the same.”
He continued, “Certainly Kate’s mom was very happy with the liaison once it had started and, further, it was well known that when William saw Kate’s legs on the fashion catwalk there was an instant physical attraction.”
The scenes depicting the infamous fashion show, where Kate walked down the runway in a sheer dress and drew William’s attention, show her making the decision to wear the ensemble after speaking with her mother on the phone, with Carole urging her to “make use of the assets God has given us.”
Per CNN, the designer, Charlotte Todd, did not exactly know how Kate ended up in the dress.
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Meg Bellamy as Kate Middleton wearing the infamous fashion show dress that supposedly caught Prince William’s eye. The real life dress, right, during a charity auction in 2011. (Netflix/Getty Images)
“I don’t know if Kate chose to wear this dress or if someone put her in the dress,” she told the outlet in 2011. “I don’t know if it was her intention to be there in her underwear in front of the prince.”
Shannon Felton Spence, a royal expert, says even if the claims that Carole engineered opportunities for Kate and William to meet and become more than friendly are true, the results were worth it.
“There is no shame in the Carole Middleton game,” she told Fox News Digital. “That positioning and social climbing that they portrayed in the series is a long thrown accusation at Carole. But so what? William and Catherine are happy.”
Felton Spence continued, “They are raising beautiful children. Catherine is good for the country, she is good for the Crown, and she is good for William. And the Middletons have given William a sense of stability, belonging and normalcy that will serve him well as a father and as king.”
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Royal expert Shannon Felton Spence says Prince William and Princess Catherine are happy, and Kate’s family “have given William a sense of stability, belonging and normalcy that will serve him well as a father and as King.” (Prince and Princess of Wales/Instagram)
Chard explained that the “predatory depiction of Carole Middleton is not going down well with the Wales’ and Middleton families.”
“They are incredibly close-knit families and hugely protective of Carole Middleton. Kate enjoyed a stable, loving upbringing and Carole Middleton and family offered Prince William the same support, taking him under their wing and giving him the love and protection that he needed. Prince William still loves this stabilizing normality,” she said.
The timeline of the show also claims Kate crossed paths with Prince William and his mother, Princess Diana, briefly in 1996. The mother and son are seen selling a magazine for charity while Kate and her mother are holiday dress shopping. When Kate buys a copy from Diana, as she offers her money, Diana asks for her name and tells William, “Say thank you to Kate.” The moment is followed by a scene of Kate cutting out pictures of William to hang in her bedroom.
By all accounts, the meeting never happened.
A scene in “The Crown” shows Kate MIddleton, left, meeting Princess Diana and Prince William by chance, an event experts agree never occurred. (Getty Images)
“Kate has lamented a number of times in public that she never met Princess Diana,” Fordwich says. “She most certainly would not have met them selling a magazine in support of the homeless, since Princess Diana didn’t ever sell any publications on the street, albeit she did take both Will and Harry to visit those ‘sleeping rough’/the homeless.”
She added, “It’s more likely, if they did meet when younger, that when William was nine he did play in a hockey match at Kate’s prep school. Although there is no record of them meeting at that juncture, Kate might well have crossed paths with William whilst in the sixth form at Marlborough College as they did share mutual friends.”
Earlier this year, Kate made a rare comment at the Dowlais Rugby Club in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, telling a crowd “I never, sadly, got to meet her,” per “Today.”
When asked how she felt the late royal would be as a grandmother, Kate said, “She’d be brilliant … We miss her every day.”
Experts are divided on a detail in “The Crown,” whether Kate Middleton hung pictures of Prince William in her bedroom as a teenager. (Justin Downing/Netflix)
Experts are divided on one element of William and Kate’s romance: whether Kate had pictures of her future husband pasted on the wall of her bedroom as a teen.
Christopher Andersen, author of “The King,” told Fox News Digital, “While other girls plastered their walls with posters of soccer players and rock stars, Kate’s dorm room was dominated by a color photo taped directly above her bed of William in boots and tight-fitting jeans. The snapshot was taken of William and his brother standing with their father beside a stream at Balmoral. Kate simply cut Charles and Harry out of the picture.”
“Kate devoured every article about William and kept track of his schedule on the internet. Lots of her classmates joked about marrying William, but one told me when Kate talked about landing her prince, ‘she sounded like she really meant it,’” he added.
Turner, however, said the detail is “an embellishment of this romantic fairy tale.”
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Prince William and Kate Middleton have been married since 2011. (Chris Jackson Getty Images)
Fordwich speculates it is “Highly doubtful Kate cut out photos of Will and decorated her room with them after meeting him as she was older than him. However, this idea might have come from the fact that, indeed, the young Princess Elizabeth was… cutting out photographs of Philip during WWII.”
Felton Spence noted that even if Kate did, she was not alone in her adoration of the handsome young prince.
“Even though Catherine said she never had William on her wall…. Everyone our age did! I did! He was a HUNK! I think she absolutely did. Do I think it was a shrine collage? No. But it’s more likely than not that she had William up there with the Levi’s guy and Mark Wahlberg,” she said.
While much of the focus has been on the William and Kate storyline, “The Crown” does conclude with a touching tribute to Queen Elizabeth II.
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The final episode of “The Crown” features all three actresses who played Queen Elizabeth II, Olivia Colman, Imelda Staunton and Claire Foy, in a heartfelt send-off for the late monarch. (Justin Downing/Netflix)
The final episode, “Sleep, Dearie Sleep,” ends in 2005 after covering a handful of pivotal moments, from Charles and Camilla’s wedding, to Prince Harry’s Nazi costume scandal, to the possibility of the Queen abdicating her throne as she plans her own funeral.
In the end, she remains the monarch until her deathand the series ends with her listening to the episode’s title song, which was indeed played during her funeral, and seeing visions of her younger self, including Claire Foy, who portrayed Queen Elizabeth II in the first two seasons and Olivia Colman, who handled seasons three and four, before exiting Windsor Chapel on her own.
In Fordham’s opinion, “Season six of ‘The Crown’ is an unexpectedly good watch, [and] will keep everyone enthralled for a while and keep our royal family in the limelight.”
“‘The Crown’ invents all sorts of scenes, dialogue, situations and events that never took place. But in the end, so what?,” Andersen told Fox News Digital. “This is drama based on fact, and as someone who has covered the royal family for 50 years, I’m impressed by how much the series gets right. In the end, ‘The Crown’ is far more than the sum of its parts. The series brings the royal family to life in a way it never has before, and that is truly a remarkable achievement.”
