ROYALLY ANNOYED
Prince Philip was ‘terribly upset’ about this ‘malicious’ episode of The Crown, say Royal biographers
PRINCE Philip was "terribly upset" about one "malicious" episode of The Crown, according to two Royal biographers.
The Duke of Edinburgh, who died on Friday aged 99, wasn't short of scandals in the hit Netflix show - but this one hit him particularly hard.
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During the past four series, Philip was implied to be involved in the Profumo sex scandal and shown as a serial philanderer who had an affair with acclaimed ballerina Galina Ulanova, despite there being no evidence of this.
Others controversial moments included Philip refusing to kneel at the Queen's coronation and "threatening" Princess Diana in a private chat, all of which have been questioned by Royal experts.
But the episode which hurt the elderly Duke most was the one in which his father blamed him for his sister's death in a plane crash.
Royal experts Philip was deeply hurt by how the 1937 death of Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark was portrayed in the drama – renewing calls for Netflix to apologise and add a disclaimer about fictional events.
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The Queen's biographer Sally Bedell Smith said the "most egregious" falsehood involved a scene in the second series when Philip’s father, Prince Andrew, blames his son for Cecilie’s death.
According to The Crown, Philip was meant to visit Cecilie in Germany but was forbidden from going after getting into trouble at boarding school.
Because of this, his sister decided to fly to Britain - but her plane hit a factory chimney in Belgium and crashed, killing Cecilie, her unborn baby, her husband, their two sons and her mother-in-law.
At Cecilie’s funeral, Netflix's producers show Philip being told by his dad: "You are the reason we are all here, burying my favourite child."
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Sally, 72, insists Philip "had nothing to do with his sister’s death" and there was no rift with his father.
"Cecilie did die in an air crash but that’s the only thing that was true," she added. "Everything else was invented in a shockingly malicious way."
"It was terribly upsetting to him," she added. "They (Netflix) should emphatically apologise and I think a disclaimer is necessary more than ever.
"Now that he is gone, what they have done to his reputation is in even sharper relief."
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Fellow biographer Hugo Vickers described the depiction of Cecilie’s death as "disgraceful", adding Philip had been "very upset" about it.
He added: "How disgraceful it was to turn Prince Philip into a caricature person – never doing any work in the series.
"The depiction was cruel and deeply unfair. The least Netflix could do was to alert viewers with a disclaimer."
Former culture secretary Karen Bradley urged Netflix to add a discalimer making it clear the series is a work of fiction, to right the wrongs to "this noble and dignified man".
She says: "Now that he has died, the least they can do is to make amends by acknowledging that the picture of the Duke of Edinburgh in The Crown was unjust and, in many respects, simply fictional."
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The Crown's producers said they were "deeply saddened" by the Duke's death on Friday, with Matt Smith and Tobias Menzies, who played him in the show, paying their own tributes.
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But Netlix and the show's creator, Peter Morgan, did not respond when asked if they would apologise for the portrayal of Philip.
In related news, here's 99 things you never knew about Philip – a secret romantic who married the Queen with 12p in the bank.
The Crown: Prince Philip’s emotional speech to Princess Diana
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