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There will be a fair few spoilers in what follows, so if you’re unfamiliar with Royal history and want to keep it that way before watching The Crown, I would suggest bookmarking this article and returning to it at a later date.

After a long wait, The Crown‘s fourth season finally aired on Netflix on Sunday, and I binge-watched the entire thing in one sitting.

It’s the best season yet, so if you haven’t checked it out, set some time aside.

There is much to talk about, as things start heating up for the Royal Family. These are, after all, the Thatcher years, which was a particularly tumultuous time in British history. Apartheid is in full swing in South Africa, leading to a feud between the Queen and the Iron Lady over sanctions, and of course, we delve headfirst into the early days of Charles and Diana’s relationship.

One of the topics receiving a lot of attention is the depiction of Diana’s eating disorder, bulimia, and her struggles with mental health.

Not everyone is pleased with how it was handled.

Writer Ingrid Seward told the Daily Mail:

“It was a significant thing in her young life, so I think it needed to be depicted in some way.”

“It would have been absolutely fine having her bending over the loo, but I don’t think you need quite such detail. I think it perhaps was a bit over-embellished.”

The Queen’s ex-press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, said that the show could not ignore Diana’s bulimia but added that it was important for viewers to remember that “the script is fiction, the words are fiction and some of the actions are fiction”.

To be fair to the writers of The Crown, they’ve been saying for years that the show must be seen first and foremost as a fictional television series based on real events, but people seem to have trouble getting behind this.

Image: The Crown

Now that we’ve heard from Ingrid up there, whose sensibilities were clearly wounded, let’s move on to Vanity Fair for Emma Corrin (she plays Diana) and her take on things.

“I have struggled with my mental health, and I know what it is like to want to make your emotions tangible, to want to exercise some control over things that feel out of your grip…so it made me empathize a great deal with this character,” Corrin told Vanity Fair this August.

“I think it’s important eating disorders and mental health are shown sensitively but accurately on-screen, so that conversations are started—so that awareness is built.”

Corrin says that before filming she conducted extensive research, and decided that just referencing it would be dishonest. A pared-down depiction also had the potential to have the unintended consequence of glamorising the condition, which would be dangerous for more impressionable viewers.

Here’s The Crown creator Peter Morgan:

“Diana did have an eating disorder, and she talked about it publicly…. It never occurred to me that what we were doing was risky or unusual by showing her struggle with bulimia, because she had talked about it so much.”

Diana went on record multiple times to talk openly about her condition – including a 1995 conversation with BBC1 Panorama:

“It was a symptom of what was going on in my marriage,” Princess Diana said. “I was crying out for help, but giving the wrong signals…The cause was the situation where my husband and I had to keep everything together because we didn’t want to disappoint the public, and yet obviously there was a lot of anxiety going on within our four walls.”

Image: Anwar Hussein

She added, “I didn’t like myself. I was ashamed because I couldn’t cope with the pressures. I had bulimia for a number of years, and that’s like a secret disease…. And it’s a repetitive pattern which is very destructive to yourself.”

Corrin said that she felt a duty to continue the conversation that Diana started in the 90s to draw attention to mental health struggles.

It looks like the conversation is in full swing.

If you or someone you know is suffering from an eating disorder, you’ll find help here.

[source:dailymail&vanityfair]