‘The Crown’ Season 4 Episode 6 Recap: If She Doesn’t Bend, She’ll Break

When Diana met Charles, she was at once awestruck by him, and more than happy to accept her new life and all its trappings. She soon began to realize the pitfalls of royalty — what it all entails and how far removed it is from the comparatively normal life she grew up in. And now that she’s a young mother to Prince William, she loathes the fact that everyone keeps throwing her Princess-ly duties in her face, telling her that she is, above all else, requires to serve the crown above all others, including her own child.

In the “Terra Nullius” episode of The Crown (Season 4 Episode 6), no matter who Diana turns to for solace, it seems she is truly and utterly alone. If the Queen seemed like she gained some perspective and heart in “Fagan” after her encounter with her bedroom intruder Michael Fagan, whose hand she shook before he was led away in handcuffs, all sense of that humanity was lost when Diana asked for a hug at the end of the episode, and the Queen stood there like, “I hug how?”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Like many first-time mothers, Diana could not possibly have known how in love with her child she would become, and like many first-time mothers, she wants to be with her child as much as possible. (Unless it’s, hypothetically, a pandemic, and your kids are the only people you’ve seen in months and maybe we could use some time away but what is independent play anyway when you’re all in the house all the time for months on end?)

The problem is that most mothers in the royal family don’t share her view. When it comes time for Charles and Diana to embark on a six-week tour of Australia and New Zealand, Diana insists on bringing her child, something the Queen certainly never did when she made similar trips across the world. “Since when has a baby ever been a stabilizing influence on anything?” the Queen Mother says, disgusted at the thought of a sweet innocent child tagging along. Princess Anne, one of the children left behind on the Queen’s 1954 trip Down Under, side-eyes this entire conversation brilliantly.

The Queen gets word not just of Diana’s stubbornness when it comes to bringing William along on the trip, but of Diana’s eating disorder and her overall waning relationship with Charles. The Queen and Prince Philip give Charles and Diana a pep talk about how their own trip to Australia in 1954 was a salve for their marriage, bringing them ever closer, to which the younger couple avert their eyes entirely.

On the plane to Australian, Diana is dismayed to learn that Prince William will be staying at a sheep station called Woomargama (Googles “sheep station”) for two weeks, at which point she flips the royal F out. The Prince’s royal secretary, Sir Dwight Schrute, gives Diana the what-for and tells her that William was never even invited on this trip and he’ll be perfectly fine getting the Shaun The Sheep treatment for a coupla weeks while his parents go about their duties. Diana then gives it right back to him when she forces him to look at her perfect future-king and she tells him that her only duty is to make sure she raises a child with “a vestige of humanity because God knows he’s not going to be getting it from any of his courtiers.”

Australia’s new Prime Minister, Republican Bob Hawke, had but one desire during his tenure: for the monarchy to relinquish any claim on his country. He’s the one person who hopes that the royal visit will be a bust so that the people in his country will rebel against the monarchy and realize it’s ridiculous to be ruled by a Sovereign halfway around the world. But unfortunately for him, despite a very rocky start (no evidence exists that Diana gave a press conference calling it Ayer’s Rock) at both public appearances and in private, Charles and Diana charmed the Billabong shorts off of Australian public, Diana especially. Actually, while Diana dazzled everywhere she went, Charles was largely ignored. (In her now-infamous interview with Martin Bashir, Diana revealed that the public’s preference for her took a toll on Charles and his resentment for her grew as a result. “We’d be going round Australia, for instance, and all you could hear was, oh, she’s on the other side,” Diana said, explaining that fans would be disappointed to be situated along the side of he street that Charles walked on.)

At one point in the trip, Diana insisted on returning to see William, and for the first time in their relationship, she and Charles discuss their problems. Both feel unseen, never being shown any sense of encouragement and affection by the other. In this moment Charles tells Diana that he does love her. Looks like time well spent at the sheep station after all.

After their communication improves, so does their publicity, as they delight the public everywhere they go, including at charity gala in Sydney. The real Charles is not nearly so graceful as his fictional counterpart on the dance floor. Diana might be smiling but she would certainly have needed to be treated for whiplash after this performance.

Back at home the rest of the royals, the women especially, seem resentful, too, of Diana’s rave reviews, especially given the fact that her motherhood is being lauded while she puts it so prominently on display, after they all spent so much time trying to hide their own children away. The positive attention toward Diana, while initially charming to Charles, starts to become the couple’s undoing — when they appear in public separately, he’s a laughing stock; without his wingwoman, he’s court jester, not king.

During a speech to a rapt audience, Charles gushes over how lucky he is to be married to Diana, to which she raises her eyebrow while his back is turned. The expression causes the crowd to erupt in laughter and Charles later erupts in anger, privately, for overshadowing him.

It seems, Australia is more easy to charm than the Prince himself, and the tour ends with the couple on worse terms than ever. When Diana visits the Queen to ask for help with Charles, begging for some understanding of Charles’ temperament, the Queen says that Diana is accusing her of being a terrible mother to him, and that Diana played to the gallery a bit too much on their trip, hogging the spotlight. As she leaves, she tries for that hug, that awkward, unreciprocated hug, which the Queen tells Anne, Margaret and her mother about later. “Diana is an immature little girl who will, in time, give up her struggles, give up her fight,” the Queen Mother says.

“And if she doesn’t bend?” Elizabeth asks.

“She will break,” Margaret responds.

At this point, it’s just a matter of when.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Brooklyn. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.

Watch The Crown Season 4 Episode 6 ("Terra Nullius") on Netflix