Beyond fact and fiction: Cultural memory and transmedia ethics in Netflix’s The Crown

Abstract

The aim of this study is to discuss the potential ethical implications of the fictionalization of historical events represented across multiple media platforms – under the powerful umbrella of streaming media services en général and Netflix in particular – to examine the potential impact fictionalization has on what is culturally remembered and what is forgotten. Combining theoretical approaches from transmedia studies and cultural memory, the article addresses possible ethical conundrums involved in the Netflix historical drama series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II: The Crown. Methodologically, the article is structured as a case study underpinned by the multidimensional analytical model proposed by Erll, chosen to explore how the blurred lines between fact and fiction of the flagship historical drama The Crown could have ethical implications for and impact on what is remembered and what is forgotten regarding recent memories of the British Royal Family. The research findings indicate that a deeper understanding of the conventions of the historical fiction genre, as well as the transmedial ramifications of streaming media productions, could potentially mitigate the ethical implications of The Crown, going above and beyond fact and fiction.

Keywords

Cultural memory Netflix streaming media transmedia ethics transmedia storytelling

Introduction

George Orwell’s (1949) famous passage ‘who controls the past controls the future’ (p. 213) seems to anticipate the effects of digitalization and platformization on cultural memory. Although the practice of archiving and disseminating information is not controlled by a Ministry of Truth as in Orwell’s novel, our digital society remembers more and more of the past and brings it under new forms of control associated with the algorithms of powerful digital platforms (Mansell and Steinmueller, 2020). Archives and databases ‘are no longer considered to be passive guardians of an inherited legacy but instead, they are seen now as active’ (van Alphen, 2017: 74) agents of memory. Similarly, streaming media services’ catalogs (or databases) – ‘Netflix is a company that’s built on data’ (O’Flaherty, 2021) – have the cumulative power to produce, retain, select and distribute stories from the past, present and future worldwide (Lobato, 2019), influencing the dynamics of remembering and forgetting in society. Moreover, ‘the fast-developing digital infrastructures of mediated memory (social networks, digital media platforms such as VOD [video on demand], OTT [over-the-top] live streaming) at the same time allow remediation, preservation, archiving of the cultural and historical heritage’ (Daković, 2021: 3). Even though there were prior convergence experiences of broadcasting and telecommunications, for instance, the current platformization phenomenon reorganizes cultural practices and media production (Lobato, 2019). Therefore, streaming media platforms such as Netflix could ‘enable an innovative managing of memories; creation of new memory media formats; making of new collections; novel archival and curating practices’ (Daković, 2021: 4).

Daković (2021) has called the scholarly interest in this development a digital memory turn, which brings to the fore digital encounters between various media within memory culture. However, the innovative managing of memories and experiences on powerful and commercial digital platforms such as Netflix also entails ethical concerns regarding the boundaries between what is perceived as fact and fiction, true and false. Our purpose is not to investigate whether the series represents the past accurately or not, but to expose the ethical dilemma involved in the fictionalization of contemporary history when the series is perceived as an authoritative interpretation of the past. The aim of this article is indeed to discuss the potential ethical implications of the fictionalization of historical events represented across multiple media platforms – under the powerful umbrella of streaming media services en général and Netflix in particular – to examine the impact streaming media has on what is culturally remembered and what is forgotten. Combining theoretical approaches from transmedia studies and cultural memory, the article addresses possible ethical conundrums involved in an updated empirical object such as the Netflix historical drama series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II: The Crown.

In addition to the series created by Peter Morgan, the transmedial ramifications of The Crown involve the film The Queen (2006) and the stage play The Audience (2013), both written by Morgan and considered predecessors of the series; the books The Crown: The Official Companion, Volumes 1 and 2, written by historian Robert Lacey; as well as The Crown: The Official Podcast (Bowman, 2019), produced by Netflix. The case of the Netflix series The Crown is selected to qualitatively investigate the entanglements of certain cultural memories that are fictionalized and distributed across the complexities of globally connected technologies and markets, where the lines between fact and fiction are blurred. The Crown is a prime example of how ‘mediated memory and transmedia storytelling [. . .] allow retelling – of the original witnessed or experienced segment of the past – to develop and change across different media platforms’ (Daković, 2021: 3), potentially creating ethical concerns and confusing or misleading audiences. Methodologically, the article is structured as a case study underpinned by the multidimensional analytical model proposed by Erll (2010), chosen to explore how the blurred lines between fact and fiction of the flagship historical drama The Crown could have ethical implications for and impacts on what is remembered and what is forgotten regarding recent memories of the British Royal Family.

Cultural memory

The increasing interest in popular culture has expanded the field of cultural memory studies from looking at relatively stable representations of the past to more dynamic and interactive forms of remembrance. While pioneering research tended to focus on canonical works of cultural memory that had shaped perceptions of the past for generations (Assmann, 2011; Nora, 1989), scholars such as Astrid Erll (2009, 2010, 2011) Ann Rigney (2012) and Berber Hagedoorn (2013) emphasize instead the construction of cultural memory as a performative and more dynamic process of remembrance and forgetting. Individuals and groups, in this respect, are more involved in the formation of cultural memory. This orientation in cultural memory studies is associated not only with the increasing interest in a more rapidly changing popular culture but also with a new digital infrastructure where the traditional consumer of culture is challenged by the notion of an individual as producer and user of culture: the prosumer (Toffler, 1980). Thus, contemporary cultural memory is embedded and distributed through new sociotechnical practices (Hoskins, 2009), which have consequences for this field of studies. While early scholars of memory focused on the social factors or what Halbwachs (1950) called the cadre social, Erll and Rigney (2009: 2) argue that scholars of cultural memory should furthermore consider the ‘medial frameworks’ of remembering and the ‘specifically medial process through which memories come into the public arena and become collective’.

Our premise is that streaming media platforms such as HBO Max (Statista, 2021c) and Netflix (Statista, 2021a) constitute essential medial frameworks that play a fundamental role in currently shaping cultural memory in terms of the platforms’ influence and interaction with viewers, for instance, in the case of curation and selection of content (Hagedoorn, 2013). In recent years, streaming media platforms have circulated successful series related to historical topics (Pallister, 2019). Fictional representation of historical events contributes to emotional involvement with the past through a more creative narration compared to academic historiography, which makes them powerful as a medium of cultural memory. The historical fiction genre has been given different definitions, but in the pioneering study of the 19th-century historical novel, Georg Lukács (1983) ponders that besides placing the plot in a historical setting, the portrayed characters should think, speak and act in accordance with the historical period of the novel, which has become part of the genre expectations. In relation to cultural memory, Rigney (2012) argues that historical novels could be understood as portable monuments, as they are part of a more flexible cultural heritage compared to traditional historical monuments. This kind of basic feature is also relevant to historical fictions on streaming media.

However, the hybridity (fact and fiction combined) of the genre often tends to create anxiety and discussion around the accuracy and authenticity of fictional representations of the past (Saxton, 2020). While scholars in memory studies or historians interested in historical narration generally emphasize the constructive and identity-forming character of narratives of the past, regardless of whether they are historiography or historical fiction (Assmann, 2011; Erll, 2011; White, 1973), viewers of series do not necessarily share such presumptions. Popular historical fictions disseminated across streaming media such as The Crown, Chernobyl and Vikings are accompanied by – dependent on or independent of the platforms – the release of documentaries, podcasts or even books that set the boundaries between fact and fiction, true and false. This practice is part of the more dynamic and interactive process of remembrance and intersects with a renewed interest in ethical concerns regarding the relationship between history and fiction. We draw on existing research on transmedia ethics to address these issues.

Transmedia ethics

Transmedia storytelling (Freeman and Gambarato, 2019; Jenkins, 2006) entails a process in which installments of a story are dispersed across multiple media platforms, promoting audience involvement. The discussion of ethical challenges in transmedia storytelling is still in its early stages (Finch, 2012; Phillips, 2012). Nonetheless, for the scope of this article, we draw on Gambarato and Nanì’s (2016) study on the blurring boundaries between fact and fiction and potential ethical issues of transmedia storytelling through the conceptualization of ethics developed by semioticist Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce articulates the connection between aesthetics, ethics and logic, which enriches and enlarges the discussion of ethical matters in the realm of transmediality. Peircean ethics transcends the aspects of morality (moral beliefs and behavior) and its dualistic and polarizing approach between true or false, right or wrong, good or bad (CP 5.130). Peirce does not propose dichotomies to understand ethics and instead offers trinomial aesthetics, ethics and logic as normative sciences (CP 1.575). Aesthetics (the pursuit of what is worthy and admirable) is the foundation of his ethics (the way to achieve the admirable; CP 1.191; Parker, 2003).

Based on Peircean ethics, there are two key ethical dimensions to be considered in the development of transmedia stories: (1) blurring, disclaimers and disclosures, which ‘refers to the audience’s ability to discern the blurred lines between fact and fiction and the need for disclaimers or disclosures in each media platform involved’ (Gambarato and Nanì, 2016: 156), and (2) author and audience ethical involvement, which ‘deals with potential deception, disappointment, endangering and actual consequences for the audience and the transmedia authors and producers resulting from the blurring boundaries between factual and fictional aspects’ (Gambarato and Nanì, 2016: 156). A disclaimer is some form of statement that usually denies something, renounces a claim, a disavowal. A disclosure is a declaration, a revelation that aims for transparency. However, disclaimers and disclosures may or may not be effective, as audiences can comply with or overlook such attempts at accountability and transparency.

In principle, The Crown should comply with Peircean aesthetics and ethics as discussed, as Peter Morgan is adamant that his work on The Crown ‘is thoroughly researched and true in spirit’ (Associated Press, 2020). It seems that what plays a core role in the case of The Crown is the suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief (Coleridge, 1985 [1817]) refers to the acceptance of events or characters as believable when they are seen as incredible, that is, the intentional avoidance of critically examining something unreal for the sake of enjoyment. This premise implies that the audience is aware that it is fiction and then willingly suspends its disbelief or not. Ethically, the main goal of transmedia production should be to clarify first the level of fictionality of the story, and what the audience will believe cannot necessarily be controlled or guaranteed. The Crown is surrounded by ‘acts of remembering and forgetting [that] are not only acts of retrieving and deleting information, but also of creation. During the process of forgetting and remembering, we recreate and thus rewrite information’ (Tang, 2021: 77).

Analytical approach

The Crown case study is analytically guided by Erll’s (2010) three-dimension model, which distinguishes among intra-, inter- and pluri-medial levels. These three dimensions are relevant to exploring cultural memory by looking within, between and around cultural representations of the past. The intra-medial dimension relates to how memory is expressed within the representation itself. Thus, in the first section of the analysis, we focus on transmedia ethics in relation to the blurred lines between fact and fiction within The Crown series. The inter-medial dimension refers to the interplay between different representations of cultural memory, which in this article are related to the remediation of different media representations of the British Royal Family. In the second section, we describe the transmedia effects and ethics of The Crown, involving multiple media platforms. The pluri-medial level designates the contexts in which a memory-making representation is received and exerts influence in terms of reception and discussions in different media contexts. In the third section, the pluri-medial analysis, we discuss how the questions of truth and accuracy became a central theme – and an ethical dilemma – in the public discussion of the series in (1) the United Kingdom, where the production takes place, and (2) the United States, which is Netflix’s biggest market (Statista, 2021a). Although these three dimensions are intertwined and are not mutually exclusionary, for clarity, we organize them separately.

The intra-medial dimension: the blurred lines of The Crown

Netflix does not market The Crown as a documentary series. It is a historical drama, therefore, a fictionalized view of historical events. Robert Lacey, the historian who serves as the show’s consultant and the author of the books that accompany the series, refers to Peter Morgan in a recent interview as ‘very, very insistent, and so am I, that this is not a history documentary. We’re not pretending this is a chronological record of those years. There are lots of documentaries that do that sort of thing’ (Hallemann, 2020).

Using Gambarato and Nanì’s (2016) two key ethical dimensions as anchors, we examine the features of the Netflix series from (1) the audience’s ability to discern the blurred lines between fact and fiction to (2) the potential deception, disappointment, endangering and actual consequences derived from it. Seemingly, the blurred boundaries are not contrary to Peircean ethics to the extent that blurred lines can be a relevant factor in building compelling storyworlds, which complies with the pursuit of what is admirable. Nonetheless, in the case of The Crown, other details should be considered.

The series has received – in addition to considerable praise and accolades (Arias, 2021; Miller, 2020) – an avalanche of criticism (Busby, 2020; Hallemann, 2020) regarding its historical accuracy (English, 2020; Sharp, 2020; Vickers, 2020a, 2020b) and its capability to mislead audiences (Jenkins, 2020) and generate abusive reactions (Carr and Bucks, 2020), especially concerning the season 4 depiction of Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. ‘The blurry line between fact and fiction in Season 4 of “The Crown” has even led some to accuse the streaming giant of ghoulishly taking advantage of the royal family’s pain for financial gain’ (Boyle, 2020). In the midst of the season 4 criticisms, Netflix received ‘calls for it to be accompanied by a disclaimer explicitly stating that some events have been embellished’ (Busby, 2020, our emphasis).

The British newspaper The Guardian bolstered the call for ethical regulations, that in cases such as this some form of disclaimer or disclosure would be clearly displayed to audiences: ‘All we need is a simple icon in the top corner of the screen. It should read: F for fiction’ (Jenkins, 2020). Princess Diana’s brother also called on Netflix to add a disclaimer: ‘I think it would help “The Crown” an enormous amount if, at the beginning of each episode, it stated that ‘this isn’t true, but it is based around some real events’’ because ‘I worry people do think that this is gospel, and that’s unfair’ (Associated Press, 2020). Even the Conservative British government’s Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, urged Netflix to add the disclaimer shortly after the show’s fourth season premiered, as he was ‘concerned fabricated scenes were damaging for the Royal Family’ (Carlin and Hookham, 2020). Even though the fourth season revived a cultural memory of the Royal Family and the successful years of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, Dowden was particularly unhappy with the critical approach toward Prince Charles and feared that ‘a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact’ (Carlin and Hookham, 2020). Commercial mass culture, however, is not necessarily liberal or conservative, as Alison Landsberg (2004) has argued in her book about ‘prosthetic memory’, but could also inspire progressive politics and empathy with other people. In this case, it was the series’ critical approach to the Royal Family, together with the portrayed difficulties of Princess Diana, which prompted the intervention from the Conservative Party in the sphere of streaming media.

Notwithstanding, Netflix was quick to assure that the company has no intention of adding a disclaimer to The Crown, stating, ‘We have always presented “The Crown” as a drama – and we have every confidence our members understand it’s a work of fiction that’s broadly based on historical events’ (Associated Press, 2020). Furthermore, ‘as a result we have no plans – and see no need – to add a disclaimer’ (Associated Press, 2020). In 2021, however, reports are suggesting that the royals should sue Netflix over The Crown portrayals in season 4 and in anticipation of season 5, which will depict the British monarchy during the 1990s (Ibrahim, 2021). Season 5 ‘will be the most controversial ever. It deals with events that are still incredibly raw for many’, and ‘these are real people, and many are still alive’ (Ibrahim, 2021).

The debate on how audiences may perceive fictional worlds as true has been discussed at length in fields such as narratology (Bell and Ryan, 2019) and media studies (Hall, 2003), but it is currently revived by the alternative facts and the post-truth era (Wight, 2020). Nevertheless, it is relevant to note that the series debuted in 2016, and issues of historical fidelity and accurate cultural memory depiction did not cause commotion during earlier seasons – covering the period from 1947 to 1977 – although artistic license was applied from the beginning. The likely reason is that season 4 ‘is set in the 1980s, a divisive decade in Britain’ (Associated Press, 2020) that included the turbulent years of Margaret Thatcher’s government and the marriage of the beloved Princess Diana to Prince Charles.

We can trace a parallelism between The Crown and the HBO mini-series Chernobyl – also a recent dramatization of historical facts – to delve into the compelling argument that audiovisual productions of extremely high quality with a long reach are most likely to remain in the collective cultural memory as the truthful reference of historical events despite the more accurate historical texts (Gambarato et al., 2021; Gessen, 2019). Therefore, a case such as The Crown has the potential to influence what is culturally remembered and what is forgotten.

The enormous investment made by Netflix is reflected in the production quality of the cultural memory depiction and potentially contributes to blurring the lines between fact and fiction, leading to audience confusion. The Crown is the most expensive series produced by Netflix, costing US$13 million per episode (Statista, 2021b), and is ‘one of the most expensive TV shows of all time’ (Greig, 2020). The show’s producer, Andrew Eaton, assures that ‘we go to great lengths to get it accurate with the look, the feel, the history. That authenticity helps to make the imagined parts feel real’ (Telegraph, 2016), and Arias (2021) highlights that ‘different angles and technology used to film add complexity to scenes and help make them more believable’. Moreover, ‘[c]ritics say The Crown’s sumptuous sets and attention to detail, which is interspersed with actual news footage from the time, has misled many unfamiliar with the story into thinking it is an accurate depiction of events’ (English, 2020) instead of a reimagined portrayal for entertainment purposes. We add that the selection of the medium makes a difference in how the story is perceived by audiences, as the same story, ‘when presented on different platforms can have different impacts’ (Finch, 2012):

For example, it matters for the reception of a certain story about the past if the medium used is seen as reliable (such as scholarly historiography), stands for immediacy of experience (such as live news) or if the mediated text or image is seen as authentic (such as seemingly ‘indexical’ press photography and documentary film). (Törnquist-Plewa et al., 2017: 10)

This relationship between ideas of authenticity and the medium became even more apparent with the discovery of photography as a historical source. Raphael Samuel (2012) has noted that social historians during the 1960s ignored the artifices of Victorian photography. The photos were widely used by historians as they corresponded to the search for human documents (visual evidence that testifies to our shared humanity) and ‘seemed to answer to our insatiable appetite for “immediacy”, allowing us to become literally, as well as metaphorically, eyewitnesses to the historical event’ (Samuel, 2012: 319). The authenticity of The Crown’s production also plays an important role as historian Hugo Vickers ponders the audience’s suspension of disbelief and reflects that ‘some will say that they can suspend judgment as to whether it is true or not and simply enjoy it as “good drama”’ (Vickers, 2020a), but ‘I fear that many viewers do believe what they see’ (Vickers, 2020a). The ability of audiences to discern the blurred lines is paramount for an ethical approach to (trans)media productions. Vickers’ concern is shared by Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother, as he ‘worries that people forget that The Crown is fiction’ (English, 2020) and comments that ‘Americans tell me they have watched The Crown as if they have taken a history lesson. Well, they haven’t’ (English, 2020). On the contrary, Andrew Morton, Princess Diana’s biographer, declares himself impressed by The Crown’s ‘nuanced and sophisticated portrait of Diana’ (Miller, 2020). He concludes that

Of course, Peter Morgan is fictionalizing many events but so much of it rings true. Royalty has always hidden behind a mask embroidered by the media. The Crown is the most sophisticated mask ever constructed as we are beguiled, never quite sure what is true and what is false. (Miller, 2020)

However, Greig (2020) emphatically states that ‘[t]he moral of the story [is]: don’t look for historical accuracy in a Netflix soap opera about how we should all feel sorry for the Royal Family’. Moreover, historian Sally Bedell Smith stresses, ‘I am very sad to say that I have heard it over, over and over again that people take The Crown at face value, and they believe everything they see in the series’ (Carr and Bucks, 2020).

Some vehement critics of the show consider that ‘the validity of “true story” docu-dramas can only lie in their veracity. We have to believe they are true, or why are we wasting our time? False history is reality hijacked as propaganda’ (Jenkins, 2020). Furthermore, Jenkins (2020) contemplates that we should not have to rely on historians and royal experts to clarify what is untrue in the series as the ‘correction will pass millions of viewers by’. The ethical conundrum of The Crown lies not in what the show proposes to achieve – fictionalized history – but what it achieves regardless: indistinguishable blurred lines between fact and fiction.

The inter-medial dimension: the transmediality of The Crown

A recent thought-provoking study by Lähteenmäki (2021) argues that ‘history is by its nature a large-scale transmedia project, which is not understood as such, and that this causes friction when history is engaged through multiple different mediums’ (p. 1). His argument is built on the premise that all sorts of mediated representations, from historical novels to historical games, are intertwined with (1) historiography, going beyond ‘the academic view of historical knowledge’ (Lähteenmäki, 2021: 1) and (2) worldbuilding, which is one of the core principles of transmedia storytelling. Within transmedia studies, worldbuilding (Jenkins, 2006; Tosca and Klastrup, 2019; Wolf, 2016) is the art of constructing robust worlds that contain multiple stories spread across diversified media platforms. Following Lähteenmäki’s argument, a transmedia perspective emphasizes that representations of the past in different media should be seen as complementary and intertwined rather than oppositional and exclusive, as we demonstrate in this section.

The history and story of Queen Elizabeth II’s kingdom are extensively represented by media – photographs, films, television, documentaries, books and so on (Clancy, 2019; Strong, 2016) – which bridges the gap between past and present as visual media plays a crucial role in the revival of historical periods (Samuel, 2012). However, not all representations are directly connected to the transmedia storyworld of The Crown and, therefore, are not discussed in this article. In this analysis, we consider the following media platforms: (1) the biographical drama film The Queen (2006), written by Morgan, depicting the death of Princess Diana in 1997; (2) the stage play The Audience (2013), written by Morgan, focusing on weekly meetings between Queen Elizabeth II and British prime ministers; (3) the Netflix series The Crown (2016–), created by Morgan; (4) Robert Lacey’s books The Crown: The Official Companion, Volume 1: Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill, and the Making of a Young Queen (1947–1955) (Lacey, 2017) and The Crown: The Official Companion, Volume 2: Political Scandal, Personal Struggle, and the Years That Defined Elizabeth II (1956–1977) (Lacey, 2019); and (5) The Crown: The Official Podcast (2019–), produced by Netflix, with 26 episodes thus far in which producers and cast members discuss aspects of the series in depth (Bowman, 2019). The podcast is accessible via Apple Podcasts and Spotify, among other digital platforms.

In the narratology realm, fictional and nonfictional worlds are amply discussed (Doležel, 2010; Eco, 1984; Ryan and Thon, 2014), and differentiating between them is not necessarily an easy task (Doležel, 2010). This seems to be the case for The Crown as well (Hallemann, 2020; Vickers, 2020a). ‘History is an even better example of transmedia. Especially when it comes to the robustness of the depicted world’ (Lähteenmäki, 2021: 2). Although storytelling and worldbuilding are not the same (telling a story is different from building a storyworld), they are intertwined but can be conflicted, based on ‘the argument that historians do not tell stories but instead describe how things were’ (Lähteenmäki, 2021: 4–5). Moreover, Lähteenmäki (2021) argues that worldbuilding and narrative aspects are essential to understanding the notion of history: ‘History requires there to be a world that is more than the narrative, and it currently requires a narrative to be history at all’ (p. 5). However, according to Lähteenmäki, historical worldbuilding is not necessarily built on narratives, and a transmedia perspective could involve other engagements with the past. Instead of looking at historical representations as a completely independent work of a specific narrative, they could be seen as ‘episode[s] of history’ (Lähteenmäki, 2021: 11). A transmedia perspective offers a more comprehensive view of these different parts of a larger whole: ‘All works, independent of the medium they are presented in, are just glimpses into a world and the next episode in the series offers another glimpse, which is still not enough to be a complete thing’. The continued interest in transmedia representations ‘grows from finding new things rather than finding completion’ (Lähteenmäki, 2021: 11).

In this sense, it is not difficult to see how the film The Queen and the stage play The Audience build the storyworld that is then further explored in the Netflix series. The glimpses of fictionalized historical events depicted in the film and the play are integrated parts of The Crown, for example, the queen’s weekly meetings with different prime ministers such as Winston Churchill (seasons 1, 2 and 3) and Margaret Thatcher (season 4). Moreover, Lacey’s books – in addition to illustrating and promoting the series – feature additional historical background, images of the time period and behind-the-scenes images of the series. The first volume provides in-depth historical research of the early years of the queen’s reign, corresponding to the content fictionalized in season 1 of the series. The second volume offers accurate historical facts that inspired the drama’s seasons 2 and 3. Furthermore, The Crown: The Official Podcast (Bowman, 2019) offers insights into the production, including discussions about artistic license. For instance, during the podcast, while debating the first episode of season 4, Morgan recognizes that the plot surrounding the letter sent by Lord Mountbatten to Prince Charles to advise him to marry Diana instead of Camilla ‘was made up in my head’ (Robinson, 2020). Morgan explains, ‘What we know is that Mountbatten was really responsible for taking Charles to one side [. . .] and saying, “look, you know, enough already with playing the field, it’s time you got married and it’s time you provided an heir”’. He added, ‘I think everything that’s in that letter which Mountbatten writes to Charles is what I really believe, based on everything I’ve read and people I’ve spoken to, that represents his view’ (Robinson, 2020).

Thus, the books and the podcast can be seen as an attempt to capitalize on the success of the series and to mitigate the historical shortcuts fictionalized in it. Considering the ethical perspective of transmedia projects previously discussed, Lacey’s books and the Netflix podcast are aligned with the ethical actions that are performed to achieve what is admirable per se, in this case, the transparency of the British Royal Family history under the auspices of Queen Elizabeth II.

In the context of transmedia storytelling, ‘fans of fiction end up with surprisingly similar questions to those that historians face: What is authentic, genuine, or true in a fictional/historical world?’ (Lähteenmäki, 2021: 16). Next, we discuss what could raise ethical concerns in the face of the blurring lines between fact and fiction in The Crown discussed in the public arena.

The pluri-medial dimension: the public discussion of The Crown

As the interest in writing royal history has been declining in academia for several years, The Crown has become a huge success not only in the United Kingdom but also internationally, especially in the United States (Bahr, 2020). The considerable public discussion of the series demonstrates how powerful this representation is as a medium of cultural memory, as the process of reception is essential in this regard (Erll, 2010: 395). Within the pluri-medial networks in which this series is discussed, the issue of fact versus fiction has been a central theme. The strong reactions to how fact and fiction are intertwined in the series actualize questions of audience expectations for the genre as well as ethical concerns about the responsibility of producers of historical fiction to portray the past accurately. While the hybridity of the genre tends to trouble readers or viewers, it also explains why historical fiction exerts an important influence in different medial frameworks and, by extension, on cultural memory (Rigney, 2012). In this section, we outline this discussion with examples from the daily press and social media in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Comments about and analyses of the series gave limited attention to the overall narrative (Boyle, 2020; Bryan, 2020; Busby, 2020), for example, how The Crown contributes to perspectives on and interpretations of 20th-century British history and the role of the monarchy. This lack of interest in the historical narrative suggests that the cultural impact of the series relates – to a large extent – to scandals and gossip involving the British Royal Family rather than political history, although the series also emphasizes this aspect extensively. Even though historians are not necessarily averse to writing about scandals in royal courts, the media reactions tended to reduce the content to discussions about what is accurate or false in the series. An extreme example of this tendency is a letter sent to The Daily Telegraph, which went viral on Twitter, complaining about the portrayal of Prince Charles’ fishing technique in the show as ‘gross – almost criminal – negligence’ (Garvey, 2020). Although this kind of criticism appears more anecdotal than serious, it was, nevertheless, quoted in several newspapers (Brown, 2020; Bryan, 2020; Sykes, 2020) and confirmed the general tone of the reception. The audience’s expectations regarding the factual details of the personal lives of the British Royal Family appear to be particularly high (Brown, 2020; Busby, 2020; English, 2020), while the political and aesthetic dimensions of the portrayal create hardly any debate. One of the few occasions that the series has raised political concern is related to the portrayal of Margaret Thatcher:

Netflix are playing you. You sympathise with her because they want you to – they’re telling a specific story, not offering a window into reality. [. . .] Obviously, The Crown Season 4 is too sympathetic to Thatcher and pushes some pretty conservative narratives about who she was, what she did and why. (Greig, 2020)

Patently, Thatcher has a conflicting political legacy that evokes reactions. Politically, she represented both a neoliberal modernization of the United Kingdom and, concomitantly, a conservative turn, using Victorian values to mobilize the British people to its traditional paths (Samuel, 1992). Overall, however, the political dimension of the series is surprisingly absent in the public discussion of The Crown, despite the depiction of a century full of conflicts and political changes, which potentially could have ramifications for cultural memory (Assman and Shortt, 2012). The media reception has focused more on Prince Charles’ infidelity, which developed into a major topic on social media (Carr and Bucks, 2020). In fact, one of the main criticisms (English, 2020) of season 4 is about the portrayal of Charles’ and Camilla Parker-Bowles’ relationship during his marriage to Diana. Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine, states, ‘The Crown is a very one-sided portrayal, which is really the Diana version. The sad thing for people viewing it is that they are going to take it as the correct story line, which it isn’t at all’ (Carr and Bucks, 2020). Consequently, the suggestions launched ‘falsely’ (Carr and Bucks, 2020) at Camilla by media trolls after the season aired that she had an affair with Charles for the entirety of his marriage to Diana illustrate the potential unfortunate repercussions that can occur because of misleading content. Carr and Bucks (2020) point out that ‘[i]n reality, Charles had practically no contact with Camilla for five years after his marriage in 1981’. Hate comments targeting Camilla were posted on the British Royal Family’s Instagram page:

I’m sorry most of The Crown is true, a few things were a little different, but Charles cheated and married Diana for the heirs, he thought she was young and naive and would let him cheat . . . all the issues were from Camilla. Just think if that had not happened, Diana would be alive. (Carr and Bucks, 2020)

Camilla received more than 4000 comments, such as ‘horrible woman profiting off the heartbreak of another woman’ (Sperling, 2020) and ‘You tortured Diana from the moment she was engaged to your precious Charles’ (Sperling, 2020). The Palace showed concern about Charles’ and Camilla’s public images after these Internet trolls appeared and turned off commenting functions across their social media accounts (Majeed, 2020). Charles and Camilla’s relationship, media and public obsession with Diana, Elizabeth II and Thatcher’s positions of power are some of the entanglements present in the series that denote how The Crown is intertwined with matters of gender equality, gender identity and sexuality (see Jenner, 2021). The press addressed these issues in various ways, including the viewpoint of the actors involved in the series. For instance, Claire Foy, who plays Elizabeth II in the first two seasons, refers to the Queen as a ‘proto-feminist’ (Bonner, 2016) and Emma Corrin, who plays Diana in the fourth season, stated that playing Diana helped them realized they are nonbinary (López, 2021).

Furthermore, the British press clearly questioned if the series is causing the Royal Family more harm than good: ‘Outraged critics have demanded that Netflix clearly label The Crown as “fiction” amid claims that the show’s inaccurate storylines could irreversibly damage the monarchy’ (Evans, 2020). Some adjectives used to criticize the portrayal of the personal lives of members of the monarchy are ‘grossly unfair’ and ‘really quite sadistic’ (Evans, 2020).

The elaborated historical settings, decors and costumes, among other elements such as actual footage, imprinted a sense of authenticity and gave the impression that the series proposed an authoritative interpretation of the past. This characteristic can also be observed in other high-quality productions such as HBO Chernobyl, as discussed by Gambarato et al. (2021). The verisimilitude of the Netflix production, in turn, provoked strong reactions among specialists, who did not agree on the historical authenticity of the series. Newspapers, for instance, hired numerous royal experts to comment on what was right and wrong in the series (Carr and Bucks, 2020; Sykes, 2020; Vickers, 2020a), which correlates with the current discussion of fake news and fact-checking. The well-known columnist Simon Jenkins (2020) states, ‘Fake history is fake news entrenched’, dismissing the series as fake news due to a list of fabrications. Thus, the use of these alternative authorities to criticize and fact-check the content of the series in the press shows the important interplay between authenticity and authority in the fictionalization of the past (Margaronis, 2008; Sánchez-Arce, 2007).

Similarly, USA Today published a fact-check with the American historical biographer Sally Bedell Smith, known for her biographies of Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana and Prince Charles. The interview focused on season 4 and included some corrections of what was perceived by Smith as wrong or a complete fabrication in the series, for instance, that the Queen favored one of her children (Lawler, 2020). Another royal expert who has been even more involved in this kind of criticism is Vickers, who has accused the series of ‘perverting and twisting of known facts’ (Vickers, 2020a). Moreover, Vickers (2020b) published a book to show how The Crown episodes were based on false premises. This kind of discussion is far from how scholars of cultural history or within memory studies deal with cultural representations of the past. Vickers obviously disagrees with historians who follow White’s (1973) constructivist approach to historical facts together with the idea that historical writings and fictional writings have a similar reliance on narration, as previously discussed. The constructivist perspective undermines any truth claims or notions of objectivity within historical scholarship but could potentially also have contributed to a broader discussion about The Crown and how its narration relates to relevant historical work. Vickers and other experts adhere instead to a more traditional view of historians’ truth claims, which perfectly matches the widespread concerns about placing real people in situations that are ‘partly true and partly false’ (Vickers, 2020b).

Morgan and Lacey defended the series from this storm of criticism. Interestingly, they did not insist on artistic license to respond to ethical accusations. Instead, they proposed a wider definition of historical truth. A repeated quote from Morgan, circulated in the press on both sides of the Atlantic, underscored this determination: ‘Sometimes you have to forsake accuracy, but you must never forsake truth’ (Busby, 2020). On one hand, the quotation demonstrates a belief in the possibility of uncovering and exposing the truth about the past, while many practitioners of historical scholarship tend to be more careful about such claims. On the other hand, Morgan recognizes the abandonment of accuracy in the production, which must be understood as part of the fictionalization in terms of the invention of dialogue, timeline changes and so on, much discussed in the podcast, for instance. However, according to this perspective, such fictional interventions do not necessarily distort the truth. The historian Richard Slotkin (2005) similarly argues that historical fiction can expose a poetic truth when non-essential facts are sacrificed to give a sense of how it was to live under certain social conditions, for example, being married to Prince Charles. The fictional invention could in this way complement professional historical scholarship. Lacey defends the series in the same fashion: ‘There are two sorts of truth. There’s historical truth and then there’s the larger truth about the past’ (Hallemann, 2020). This perspective offers artistic freedom without sacrificing the historical truth, potentially overcoming ethical dilemmas of the production in the Peircean sense. But only if audiences share this belief in a wider historical truth.

Conclusion

George Orwell’s (1949) passage ‘who controls the past controls the future’ is completed by ‘who controls the present controls the past’ (p. 213). Amid the rise in an ever-expanding digital infrastructure, the present can be connected to the past more easily easier and faster than ever before (Hoskins, 2009). Important conveyors of cultural memory in this scenario are the commercially successful productions of historical fictions created and distributed by streaming media services worldwide. Considering that some of these productions, such as The Crown, impose interpretations on central historical processes and events, new ethical considerations about representing the past and its boundaries between what is perceived as true or false are raised. The vast reach of a streaming platform such as Netflix (Statista, 2021a) impacts what is culturally remembered and what is forgotten, making the influence of streaming media on cultural memory processes undeniable. By combining theoretical approaches from transmedia studies and cultural memory, we discussed how the blurred lines between fact and fiction in Netflix’s historical drama The Crown develop into an ethical dilemma.

From a transmedia perspective, we argue that the series is based on a historical storyworld shared by previous representations of the British Royal Family that should be considered. The series integrates, for example, glimpses of fictionalized historical events depicted in the film The Queen (2006) and the stage play The Audience (2013). These inter-medial relations show how the remembrance of important historical events basically constitutes a transmedia phenomenon (Erll, 2010: 392), which points to the importance of overcoming a more traditional analysis of cultural memory limited to a specific medium. The British Royal Family is part of a dynamic cultural memory that is repeatedly and extensively represented in multiple media. The series itself has also been the subject of books and a podcast, which can be seen as an attempt to capitalize on the series’ success. From a transmedia ethics perspective, however, they also contribute to the transparency of the process of fictionalization and offer an open dialogue with audiences.

Strong reactions to how fact and fiction intertwine in the series suggest that more dialogue about the genre is needed to overcome the intra-medial ethical implications of the blurred lines of The Crown. Furthermore, in the pluri-medial analysis, we examined multiple British and American media outlets, indicating that commentators and reviewers tend to see the fictionalization of historical events as a disturbing element. These reactions can be seen as positive engagement with the past, illustrating how cultural memory is shaped by performative acts in a dynamic process of remembrance (Erll, 2011; Hagedoorn, 2013; Rigney, 2012) and, in this case, the quest for historical truth. However, the very narrow focus of this engagement tends to reduce the content of this memory-making fiction (Erll, 2010) to what is right or wrong in the drama, while essential aspects of the historical narration or storyworld are simply ignored and are not a subject of critical discussions and reflections.

Comments on and reviews of The Crown gave, for instance, very limited attention to the series’ perspectives on and interpretations of 20th-century history, as well as the political dimension of portraying the past through the eyes of the British Royal Family. An empirical study of the audience reception of The Crown is beyond the scope of this article, but we acknowledge, as highlighted by Gray and Bell (2013), that a deeper understanding of the audience perspective could add to further discussions on historical programming such as this series.

A deeper understanding of the conventions of the historical fiction genre, as well as the transmedial ramifications of streaming media productions, could potentially mitigate the ethical implications of The Crown, transcending fact and fiction. Paraphrasing the 1940s theater code of ethics (Marshall, 2012), The Crown undeniably succeeded in creating the sine qua non entertaining sense of illusion.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Renira Rampazzo Gambarato

Biographical Notes

Renira Rampazzo Gambarato is Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Jönköping University, Sweden. Her areas of expertise revolve around transmedia studies, Peircean semiotics, and design thinking. Her recent books are Theory, development, and strategy in transmedia storytelling (Routledge, 2020), The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies (Routledge, 2019), and Exploring Transmedia Journalism in the Digital Age (IGI, 2018).

Johannes Heuman is Associate Professor in History at Jönköping University, Sweden. Heuman specializes in modern French history, including social movements and memory. He is the author of the book The Holocaust and French Historical Culture, 1945–1965 (2015).

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