Battle royale

The new series of Netflix's The Crown is plunging into inflammatory territory. Will King Charles really simmer in silence?

The Prince of Wales invites prime minister Sir John Major to a secret meeting to explore the possibility of becoming Charles III in 1991 not 2022. The Princess of Wales seduces heart surgeon Hasnat Khan by asking him to place his finger on her breasts and trace her valves and arteries. In a war within the BBC, the director general John Birt goes nuclear against chairman Marmaduke Hussey by agreeing to let Martin Bashir interview Diana for Panorama.

Season five of The Crown is business as usual: melodrama presented in lavish quasi-documentary style, carried by near-hologrammatic performances by great actors, now including Elizabeth Debicki's Princess Diana and Imelda Staunton's Elizabeth II.

But this run has one very significant difference. This time, episodes carry the following notice: "Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatisation tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign." That doesn't go as far as some critics of the show's cavalier way with fact would want. But until now, Netflix has always refused to gloss the content at all, even refusing a direct request from the recent Conservative culture secretary Oliver Dowden to add a "health warning" for viewers, especially in the US, who are seemingly convinced that The Crown is the inside story.

Even now, Netflix stresses that the statement is not a "disclaimer" (the company has always refused to run these) but a "description". Whatever you call it, the streamer's agreement to finally stress the drama's loose relationship with the truth represents a vast shift in the balance of power between the monarchy and Netflix, between The King and The Crown.