‘The Crown’ Season 4: A Quick Recap Of The Major Events of Seasons 1-3

The Crown Season 4 is the season that Princess Diana finally crashes into the staid world of the Royal Family. Newcomer Emma Corrin plays Diana with all the sensitivity, charisma, glamour and sorrow that made the real Diana one of the most compelling figures in history. Her arrival on the scene forces Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman) and her family to reassess their relationships with the public, and moreover, each other.

However Diana’s introduction offers up another quandary: Can you watch The Crown Season 4 if you’ve never watched The Crown Seasons 1-3? The answer is yes…but there are a few things you’ll need to know.

Although the bulk of The Crown Season 4 embarks on a whole new soap opera, weaving together the drama of Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Diana’s marriage with Queen Elizabeth’s tetchy relationship with new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), it also assumes you have a knowledge of a few key relationships. It blows past exposition establishing Charles’s relationships with Lord Mountbatten (Charles Dance) and Camilla Parker Bowles (Emerald Fennell), and assumes you know the ins and outs of Princess Margaret’s (Helena Bonham Carter) sad saga.

While there will be other references that go over your head, these are the three major threads The Crown Season 4 assumes the viewer remembers from seasons past. So here’s your cheat sheet to Lord Mountbatten, Camilla Parker Bowles, and Princess Margaret. We promise it’s all the Crown recap you need to dive into the Diana drama…

WHO DOES TYWIN LANNISTER ACTOR CHARLES DANCE PLAY ON THE CROWN? ALL ABOUT LORD MOUNTBATTEN

One of the most important characters in The Crown Season 4 premiere, “Gold Stick,” is played by Game of Thrones alum Charles Dance: Louis Mountbatten, the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. But, uh…who the heck is that?

If you’ve been binging The Crown for years, you’ll know that Dance took over this part for Greg Wise after Seasons 1 & 2. You’ll also know that he has been the most steadfastly supportive father figure in Prince Charles’s life. (One of my favorite scenes in the show is when Wise’s Mountbatten takes a schoolboy-aged Charles on a shopping spree to make the boy feel more confident. Wise’s line-delivery of “Doesn’t it just lift the spirit?” is incandescently fun.)

There’s a lot to Mountbatten’s military career, messy marriage, and role in shepherding Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies) into a romance with the young Elizabeth. But what you absolutely need to know about this guy is that he is the only adult who has ever been kind, good, patient, or parental to Prince Charles. Mountbatten’s counsel means everything to the young royal. (As you can see in the gif above from The Crown Season 2.)

The second thing you need to know is that at the time of The Crown Season 4, Mountbatten is seen as one of the senior members of the Royal Family. He’s retired from service at this point and vacations in Sligo, Ireland for fun. That’s of note if only because the early 1980s were a particularly violent time in Northern Ireland, where the IRA and other groups sought to oust their British overlords for good.

So that’s what you need to know about Lord Mountbatten, aka Tywin Lannister, but nice.

WHAT IS THE STATUS OF PRINCE CHARLES AND CAMILLA PARKER BOWLES IN THE CROWN SEASON 4?

If you know anything about Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage, you’ll probably know that it was blown up by an explosive affair Charles had with Camilla Parker Bowles. There were other strains on the relationship, too — which The Crown Season 4 delves into — but Camilla was the main issue. In fact, Charles and Camilla are married today.

So what exactly is the status of the Charles/Camilla tryst when The Crown Season 4 opens?

Well, The Crown Season 3 introduced young Camilla Shand as a popular aristocrat who is absolutely beside herself with jealousy because her beloved boytoy Andrew Parker Bowles was shagging Princess Anne (Erin Doherty). Camilla decides two can play at that game. She seduces Prince Charles, simply to make Andrew Parker Bowles jealous. The problem? Charles honestly believes Camilla to be his soulmate and Camilla is torn between the two men.

While Queen Elizabeth II was okay with their dalliance, the Royal Family itself had a conniption when it seemed Charles was determined to marry her. Especially since it was common knowledge that she, at that time, preferred Andrew Parker Bowles. So pressure was placed on Camilla and Andrew to tie the knot simply to take her off the market.

By the time The Crown Season 4 starts, Camilla and Charles are still carrying on an affair, but there’s an understanding that Charles needs to marry an appropriate match. Well, everyone gets this but Charles. He still harbors dreams of being Camilla’s tampon husband.

But yeah, they’re still seeing each other in private and in public, they are friends.

WHO DOES HELENA BONHAM CARTER PLAY ON THE CROWN? PRINCESS MARGARET

Okay, okay…some of you might be like, “Duh, Decider. I know Helena Bonham Carter plays the middle-aged version of Vanessa Kirby’s glamorous Princess Margaret on The Crown.” But then again, some of you might not know. Or maybe you started The Crown ages ago and stopped watching and didn’t realize that Bonham Carter was the older version of Margaret.

And maybe — just maybe — some of don’t know who Princess Margaret was. (That’s okay!)

Princess Margaret was Queen Elizabeth’s younger, more attention-hungry sister. In The Crown Season 1, Margaret snipes at her sister that their beloved father called them his “Pride and Joy.” Elizabeth was his “Pride,” for her devotion to the crown, but Margaret was his “Joy,” aka his favorite. Of course Margaret does this because she’s jealous that her sister gets the glory of being queen.

Young Princess Margaret is a glamorous favorite of the press and public. She does have trouble in love, though. In The Crown Season 1 we learn that she’s madly in love with her father’s trusted assistant, Group Captain Peter Townsend (Ben Miles). The older man helps steady Margaret, but he’s, uh, married with children. It was a big no-no in the Royal Family to marry a divorcé at this time. While Elizabeth wants to let Margaret wed a divorced Townsend, she is told she can’t.

So Margaret marries the caddish photographer, Antony Armstrong-Jones (Ben Daniels). That marriage is a disaster that blows up in Season 3. While Margaret enjoys an affair with a much younger man named Roddy Llewellyn (Harry Treadaway), by Season 4 that, too, has ended. So Margaret is aging, alone, and unsure of her role in the family as the younger royals are capturing the spotlight.

What you really need to know, though, is that in The Crown Season 4, Margaret represents a figure who has been emotionally chewed up and spat out by the Royal Family’s cold policies. If only she had been able to marry the man who was right for her — Peter Townsend — she could have found a tremendous amount of happiness. Instead, she was not only told to put duty ahead of her emotions, but convinced to marry someone not right for her.

Hmm…does that sound like something that might happen again to the Royal Family in The Crown Season 4??

The Crown Season 4 premieres on Netflix on Sunday, November 15.

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