‘The Crown’ Season 4 Episode 3 Recap: Three’s A Crowd

I don’t know. Should I feel robbed that The Crown Season 4 Episode 3 (“Fairytale”) didn’t give us a full reenactment of Charles and Diana’s royal wedding, or should I feel a strange thrill after watching Diana and Camilla’s mental chess game of a lunch date where Camilla checkmated the hell out of Diana and proved that she was, is, and forever will be the only woman in Charles’ life? Either way, this episode did a masterful job of illustrating just how ironic the Charles and Di “fairytale” was: a marriage of duty, completely devoid of romance.

Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) will never not look forlorn. Even after proposing to Diana, the woman he called “a triumph” after she successfully won over his entire family during her “Balmoral test,” he still can’t seem to muster up any excitement over their impending marriage. His whole family eagerly awaits the phone call that the deed is done – this is indeed the royal “eager” face:

Diana accepts his proposal by telling Charles it’s “the happiest day of her life.” The episode soundtrack features Duran Duran, Ultravox, and Stevie Nicks — a rockin’ mixtape even today — and one that shows off Diana’s plugged-into-the-outside-world self. Upon entry into the world of royals, she starts to lose any sense of who she is, every incorrect curtsy to the wrong royal chipping away at the light inside her.

Shortly after their engagement, Diana moves into Buckingham Palace, partly to shield her from the public eye, and partly to commence the efforts to turn her into a proper princess. Her grandmother, Baroness Fermoy, is tasked with giving her lessons in etiquette after Diana unknowingly walked in on Princess Margaret who had been holding court over family cocktails, regaling the family with a tale of the time she visited Imelda Marcos’s aquarium. (That’s SO Margaret.) During one such lesson, Diana is chastised for using her hands while she speaks. “Gestures reveal us… One should never try to show one’s emotions,” she’s told before her hands are bound with rope to prevent her from ever emoting again.

Already starting to feel out of place, Diana is humiliated for the first time by Charles when, in their first public interview as an engaged couple, they’re told that they look very much in love, to which Charles responded, “Whatever love is.” (The real version of this moment can be found here, In later interviews, Diana recalled thinking of Charles’ remark, “What a strange answer. It absolutely traumatized me.”)

Charles is immediately called away from the castle for six weeks and in that time, he makes no effort to call or write to his fiancée. She bides her time answering fan letters, a move that surely enamored her to her subjects and cemented her status as the People’s Princess. She also takes ballet lessons and, most importantly, roller skates through the castle listening to Duran Duran.

Weeks of solitude start to wear on Diana – though she’s surrounded by servants, she’s starts to get stir crazy and so desperate that she’s driven to bulimia, bingeing and purging her way through the castle kitchen. No one’s looking, so in her isolation, the self-destructive habits take hold. She’s starting to get it now, what this whole “life as a royal” means, and it is indeed no fairytale at all. Just as she’s starting to backslide into  depression, a letter from Charles’s ex Camilla Parker Bowles, arrives, inviting her to lunch. Before his departure, Charles told Diana that Camilla is “great fun” and “the best company,” and they should meet up, and Diana, having no reason yet to believe otherwise, accepts the offer.

Camilla Parker Bowles seems like she can hang, it’s no wonder Charles likes her. But damn if she can’t read a room. Upon meeting Diana, she inundates her with Charles’ likes and dislikes, habits, hopes, and dreams. “Charles is so fussy and set in his ways.” “Charles eats a soft-boiled egg with everything.”  “Charles never has a second cup of coffee at home.”

Diana is rightly disturbed at the sense of intimacy Camilla shares with her future-husband. “Darling, you really know nothing, do you?” Camilla says, telling her, “You really need a Fred tutorial.” “Fred” being Camilla’s pet name for Charles. She explains that he calls her Gladys. (Why Fred and Gladys? They were character names from one of their favorite sketches on The Goon Show.)

Fred and Gladys becomes Diana’s tipping point. Diana binges her way through the rest of the lunch, then suggests they go Dutch when the bill comes. “Good idea,” Camilla responds. “I’m all for sharing.” Dang, Camilla, back the eff up.

When Diana, eager to get in touch with her husband on his trip, enters his private secretary’s office to try and reach him, the secretary (world’s WORST private secretary?) explains that he’s flying and out of reach, and then leaves sketches out for Diana to find, of a bracelet design he’s having made for… someone.

(Of course this is real, the Fred and Gladys bracelet was a gift to Camilla, though in real life, the bracelet simply says “GF.”)

When a despondent Diana learns of the bracelet, she makes an unsuccessful attempt to speak with the Queen to call of the wedding and later confronts Charles about it. Charles doesn’t deny the bracelet, but says it’s a parting gift to Camilla. A parting gift he gives her after spending the night with her just days before his wedding.

At the wedding rehearsal, Charles races through the proceedings, clearly uncomfortable and unable to fake any sense of love or care for Diana. Margaret, much as we poke fun at her self-centeredness, is the only one in the family willing to call out the truth, that this whole thing is a charade, a ceremony to celebrate a loveless union. (At this point in her life, Margaret has already divorced her husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones, having married him out of obligation more than love. Her true love, Peter Townsend, worked in the palace, was 15 years her senior, and divorced, making him unsuitable for marriage to her in the eyes of the monarchy.)

“Charles loves someone else. How many times can this family make the same mistake, forbidding marriages that should be allowed, forcing marriages that shouldn’t, paying the consequences each time?” she tells Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

“He’s marrying Diana,” Philip says, and that’s that.

On the eve of the wedding, as the ceremonial fireworks explode in the background, the Queen confronts her son to explain that it is out of duty to his role that, no matter what, he’s marrying Diana. Josh O’Connor does such an incredible job of always making Charles look pitiful, and his look of sadness when his mother tells him that despite the “wretchedness” he feels at the moment, she’s sure things will work out. Thanks, Mom.

As I mentioned at the top, despite the fact that this is the wedding episode, we don’t actually see the wedding. So allow me to let you watch the real thing here so you can stare at everyone’s faces to see how grim and mournful everyone actually is.

“Fairytales usually end at this point with the simple phrase, ‘They lived happily ever after’,” Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Robert Runcie, says (his speech is at roughly the 33′ mark), the voiceover of his actual wedding speech laid on top of the fictionalized version. “This is not the Christian view. Our faith sees the wedding day not as the place of arrival but the place where the adventure really begins.”

Adventure may be the wrong word, but something is certainly about to begin.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Brooklyn. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.

Watch The Crown Season 4 Episode 3 ("Fairytale") on Netflix