Here's Everything 'The Crown' Just Got Straight-Up Wrong About History

What The Show Portrays: In the series finale, Elizabeth grants Charles’s request to marry Camilla Parker Bowles. Though she won’t attend the actual civil ceremony, Elizabeth will host the reception, where she intends to give a speech. But there’s a catch: Elizabeth wants to write the speech herself – and no one knows what she will say.

People within the family begin to speculate that Elizabeth’s speech will serve as a wedding gift to Charles, the gift he’s always wanted: that she will abdicate the throne and give him the reins of the kingdom.

Of course, she ultimately decides against abdication and instead uses her speech to offer her congratulations to the happy couple. 

What Really Happened: Elizabeth gave a speech at Charles and Camilla’s reception. In it, she reportedly referenced two fences in the Grand National, an annual steeplechase: “[Charles and Camilla] have overcome Becher’s Brook and The Chair and all kinds of other terrible obstacles. They have come through and I’m very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.”

But there is no evidence whatsoever that Elizabeth considered abdicating the throne at the time of Charles’s wedding – or at any other point in her reign. Most historians and biographers agree that abdicating would have been unthinkable for Elizabeth. As historian Hugo Vickers explained to The Guardian, “One main reason why the Queen will absolutely not abdicate is unlike other European monarchs, she is an anointed Queen. And if you are an anointed Queen you do not abdicate.”

The shadow of the queen’s uncle, the one-time king Edward VIII, loomed large over her life. It was only through his abdication that Elizabeth’s father became king, and then her afterward. According to Vickers, “The Royal Family felt gravely let down by the Abdication.” Her uncle’s abdication was nothing more than a dereliction of duty. And if there was one thing Elizabeth took seriously, it was her sense of duty as queen. 

All of this to say: It’s very, very likely that the last thing on Elizabeth’s mind in the lead-up to Charles and Camilla’s wedding was abdication.

What The Show Portrays: While shopping in London, 15-year-old Kate Middleton and her mother Carole leave the store only to see Princess Diana and Prince William across the road. The royals are handing out magazines for charity and greeting the crowd that has gathered around them. Carole encourages Kate forward, and the teenager shyly introduces herself to the princess – and shares longing glances with the young prince.

What Really Happened: Kate Middleton never had the opportunity to meet Princess Diana. The royal died in 1997, several years before her son and Middleton would start dating while at St. Andrews University in the early 2000s. 

“I would love to have met her, and she’s obviously an inspirational woman to look up to,” Kate said in her 2010 engagement interview. 

In a 2017 interview with GQ, Prince William also expressed regret that his mother never got to see him build a family with Kate. “I would love her to have met Catherine and to have seen the children grow up. It makes me sad that she won’t, that they will never know her.”

What The Show Portrays: On VE Day – or “Victory in Europe,” when the Allies accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945 – Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth plan to sneak out of Buckingham Palace and join all the celebrations that have spontaneously erupted across London. 

Accompanied by Peter Townsend and Porchie, Elizabeth’s loyal friend, the group of four eventually make their way to the Ritz. Elizabeth slips downstairs to the Pink Sink, a subterranean club with American music and servicemen, where she joyously spends the night dancing the jitterbug and sharing a kiss or two. 

Exhausted and deliriously happy, the sisters don’t return to the palace until daybreak.

What Really Happened: Elizabeth’s clandestine celebration on VE Day really did happen with her parents’ blessing. Yet The Crown doesn’t get all the details right. 

Peter Townsend and Lord Porchester weren’t the only ones who accompanied 19-year-old Elizabeth and 14-year-old Margaret for their night on the town. Instead, 16 members of the royal household went with them, including both men and women.  

The group joined the throngs of people celebrating. They even formed a conga line and danced in the streets. Finally, they made their way back to the palace, where an enormous crowd had gathered to greet the king and queen. As Margaret Rhodes, a royal cousin and one of the 16 escorts, later recalled in her memoir:

We struggled to the front, joining the yells of ‘We want the King; we want the Queen.’ I rather think the Equerry got a message through to say that the Princesses were outside, because before long the double doors leading onto the balcony were thrown open and the King and Queen came out, to be greeted by a rising crescendo of cheers, to which their daughters and the rest of us contributed. It was a view of their parents that the Princesses had never before experienced and for all of us young people it was the grand finale to an unforgettable day. I suppose that for the Princesses it was a unique burst of personal freedom; a Cinderella moment in reverse, in which they could pretend that they were ordinary and unknown.

By the time the princesses returned home, it was around midnight. They hadn’t stayed out until morning, as the show depicts.

As biographer Sally Bedell Smith notes, VE Day was only the first of several nights in which the princesses went incognito into the crowds of London to celebrate the end of the war. The next night, they went out again.

After Japan’s surrender and the official end of the war in August, they again celebrated in the crowds. This time, they partied at the Ritz and the Dorchester, two of London’s poshest hotels. On this final outing, people recognized the future queen and applauded her. 

While the Ritz Hotel did have a basement club called the Pink Sink, there’s no evidence that the princesses visited it during their outings. 

What The Show Portrays: Prince William and Kate Middleton both attend St. Andrews University in Scotland. When William first sees Kate at school, he’s clearly interested in her. But, despite some friendly banter, they never quite sync up. They each date other people.

Finally, during a party after a fashion show, Kate and William confess their feelings for each other and kiss. They begin dating and William even visits Kate to meet her family. He eventually asks her to be the fourth roommate in a flat he’s sharing with friends in St. Andrews.

What Really Happened: William and Kate were friends long before they became romantically involved. As William shared in an interview right after their engagement: “We were friends for over a year first. It just sort of blossomed from then on. We just spent more time with each other and had a good giggle, had lots of fun, and realized we shared the same interests and just had a really good time.”

In the same interview, Kate concurred, “It did take a bit of time for us to get to know each other. But we did become very close friends from quite early on.”

Kate and William did share a flat at university; they lived at 13A Hope Street in St. Andrews, near campus. When they moved into the flat in 2002, they did so as friends. It wasn’t until they were flatmates that their relationship became romantic. That’s why the kiss they share after the fashion show, as The Crown depicts, probably didn’t happen. 

What The Show Portrays: Prince Charles arranges a huge bash for Camilla Parker Bowles's 50th birthday. He invites his mother to attend the party, but she refuses. Elizabeth cites a previous engagement as the reason for her refusal, but it's obvious that she still does not approve of Charles's relationship with Parker Bowles. Instead, Princess Margaret is at the party, and the show suggests that her approval of Charles and Camilla is a corrective to her own past romantic disappointments.

What Really Happened: It's true that Charles threw Camilla a party in honor of her 50th. Though Camilla's family - including her ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles - attended the celebration, Charles was the only member of the royal family in attendance. In other words, Princess Margaret wasn't there at all. 

What The Show Portrays: After the shocking news of his mother's death, Prince William overhears his father explaining to the queen how important it is that they match the public's mood. The people want to mourn her, he says, and the royal family needs to be on the right side of this; it should be a public occasion. Upset, William slips out of Balmoral Castle and goes missing for 14 hours. Everyone at the castle goes into crisis mode to try and track down William.

What Really Happened: There is no evidence that William ran away for more than half a day. On the contrary, all of the royals who were at Balmoral – including William and Harry's cousins Peter and Zara Phillips, Princess Anne's children – seemed to rally around the newly motherless princes. The queen herself actively cared for them in their time of grief. They all spent plenty of time in the healing embrace of nature.

Indeed, one thing did ring true in The Crown's dramatization of the events: William found comfort in the wilds of the Scottish highlands, just not as a runaway. As he revealed in 2021:

I was in Balmoral when I was told that my mother had died. Still in shock, I found sanctuary in the service at Crathie Kirk that very morning and in the dark days of grief that followed I found comfort and solace in the Scottish outdoors. As a result, the connection I feel to Scotland will forever run deep.

Indeed, William opted to attend university at Scotland's St. Andrews University, where he met his future wife Kate Middleton.