The Crown – Avalanche

By: Kelly Kearney

Sometimes almost losing someone can make you see your relationships clearer. When Charles goes missing during an avalanche, the warring Prince and Princess start to realize that life is not worth living if you cannot be with the one you love. After a surprising admission, the unhappily wed couple do some soul searching on whether or not to continue on with their rocky fairytale or start a new chapter away from each other.

All Eyes are on Diana

The episode begins with a celebration at the Royal Opera House. It is the Prince of Wales’ birthday, but the crowds outside are not there for him. All eyes are focused on his wife, the county’s most famous and beloved royal. The couple sits together to watch the show of dancers and performers honoring Charles (Josh O’Connor), but suddenly Diana (Emma Corrin) excuses herself and the disappointed look on her husband’s face says these two are still at odds. After a few moments pass the audience roars with excitement when Diana surprises everyone, including Charles, and takes the stage. To the Billie Joel song “Uptown Girl” Diana shows off her dancing moves to the adulation of crowd. Everyone goes wild at her modern hip shaking moves and Charles grits his teeth with a smile. When the night ends, Charles rips Diana apart in the limo ride home. The celebration was in honor of him, the future King, and she stole his thunder with her inappropriate dancing. To be fair, any dancing from a royal that doesn’t look like an uptight Viennese waltz is deemed offensive, but Charles isn’t fuming over the dance as much as being overshadowed by his beautiful wife. He accuses her of not dancing for him but for the attention and he swiftly takes off to Gloucestershire to sulk with Camilla (Emerald Fennell). At the sane time the Queen (Olivia Colman), who must be horrible at reading a room, tells Philip (Tobias Menzies) she thinks the married couple might be turning a corner as if they are falling in love all over again. Talk about optimism! The cracks in their marriage are now chasms and no amount of motherly advice could bridge that divide.

Flashforward four months to March 1988 and we see a terrifying avalanche and instantly the phones starting ringing at Buckingham Palace. While on a ski trip Prince Charles was caught in the avalanche and now he is missing! Massive rescue efforts are underway, according to the news reports, but when an unidentified body is found the royal family fears the worst. As of now the body cannot be confirmed, so Elizabeth waits patiently for the call either way. When it does come, it’s good news! The body was a member of the Prince’s staff, but the rescue team found the Prince alive! The Queen is thrilled that her son was found, but her elation is short lived when her advisor Martin (Charles Edwards) informs her of the news articles that were set to come out. Once again, the tabloids were about to print a story outing Charles’ rocky marriage to Diana. They gave the palace a short reprieve while the Prince was missing, but now that he is safe and sound all bets are off. This news prompts Elizabeth to go to her daughter Anne (Erin Doherty) to ask her about the status of the unhappy couple. Anne spills the tea and basically tells her mother what everyone said prior to their forced wedding. Charles has always loved Camilla and add in their age difference, conflicting personalities, different friends and social groups and of course it was destined to fail. Now that they are living apart, Diana has been filling her time with dancing and what Anne refers to as a “revolving door” in her bedroom. The current man in Diana’s secretive life is James Hewitt and he keeps her company while her husband openly flaunts his relationship with Camilla in Gloucestershire. For some reason the rules for Diana do not translate to Charles and his infidelity. She is always seen as the problem while he is just misunderstood.

Once he is safe back home Charles starts to exhibit signs of PTSD from the accident. He cannot stop envisioning the snow barreling towards him. Camilla is, of course, by his side offering him comfort and understanding. He admits that the moment he thought he as going to die all he could think about was how badly he wanted her to be his wife. Life is too short not to live it with the one you love and he has decided he is not going to lose his one shot at happiness.

A Shocking Admission

After her talk with Anne, the Queen calls the Prince and Princess of Wales to her palace for a meeting. As the two wait for Elizabeth and Philip to make their entrance, Diana starts to remember all the good times with Charles. It’s funny how time manages to erase the bad and leave us with only happy memories. Diana has a collage running through her mind of snapshots of a happy couple, but the truth is far more unsettling. When the Queen and Prince Philip finally arrive they want to know what the state of their marriage is. Elizabeth prefaces their response with a reminder that their marriage is a reflection of the crown and the crown must always appear stable. She asks if they want their marriage to work and as Charles is about to answer with a resounding no he is cut off by Diana who says she does! Almost losing Charles made her realize she couldn’t imagine her life without him. It filled her with an emptiness she had not expected to feel. Charles is stunned into silence and tucks away the letter he was going to read, which no doubt said he wanted a divorce. Elizabeth turns to Diana and asks her why she wants to continue with the marriage if she has been unfaithful. This line of questioning is rich coming from the woman whose son is publicly flaunting his mistress. Nobody asked him to quit his Camilla addiction! To really sell her determination to make tings right, Diana apologizes to Charles for her part in their separation. When Charles tries to speak up his father cuts him off with a pointed look and says, “There is nothing left to say.” If Diana wants this to work then it will work and his voice is once again lost in the shuffle of royal duties. As horrible as Charles has been throughout this marital ordeal, one thing is hard to dismiss; his voice is constantly silenced by the expectations the crown puts on him. The crown doesn’t care about his emotional state. It doesn’t care what his heart desires. It only cares that he falls in line, protects his royal bloodline and does what is expected of him. Anything else is frivolous commoner stuff and the crown has no time for that.

The Anniversary

Back in Gloucestershire Charles is unloading his anger over Diana to Camilla. He tells her his exit speech was cut short by Diana’s unwillingness to end things and now she has even given up the other men in her life. She is really trying to make this work, but Charles has no interest in meeting her halfway. In fact, he has positioned spies in the palace that will report back to him the minute Diana steps out with another man. The hypocrisy of this is chokingly obvious. Charles is trying to catch Diana in a tryst in the hopes he can use it against her when this reconciliation blows up, and he is telling it to his lifelong mistress! To make matters worse, Diana keeps filling his schedule with activities to help them bridge the gap toward marital bliss and all it’s doing is angering him because it prevents him from seeing Camilla.

When their wedding anniversary comes around Charles’ plans for a romantic night with Camilla are put on the backburner when his secretary informs him that Diana has something planned for them both. It’s a weekend for just the two of them and Charles has no choice but to show up and pretend to be happy about it.

During their anniversary dinner Charles gifts Diana with an old book of their family history and in return she gives him a VHS tape of herself performing on stage. She bought out a West End theater and along with the cast of The Phantom of the Opera, she sings a song for her Prince. It was a thoughtful gift that later Charles mercilessly mocks with his sister Anne. He calls it silly, awful and explains how tiring it is to fake happiness when he is miserable without his true love, Camilla. Anne gives him some advice on Mrs. Bowles. She tells him that Camilla isn’t unhappily wed. In fact, she loves her husband very much, regardless of what Charles believes. She says nobody, not the family, not Diana and not even Camilla want his marriage to end. With all the times Anne complained about her own loveless and unfulfilled life, here she is mimicking Mummy and giving Charles terrible advice to fake it until you make it. No wonder this family is always unhappy.

Old Habits Die Hard

After his revealing talk with Anne, Charles sneaks a meeting with Camilla to ask if what his sister said was true. Does she have the same special feelings for her husband Andrew that she claims to have for him? Camilla never truly answers the question, but we get a peek inside what drives her.. She says that nobody has ever been so devoted to her the way Charles has and, for that matter, nobody has ever needed her as much as he does. Be that as it may, she prefers their secret love affair because she isn’t interested in becoming the villain in this fairytale. The whole world would see her as a homewrecker and Diana as the helpless martyr. She would be dragged through the streets or at least the papers and become the Wicked Witch to Diana’s Snow White. She does admit she loves Charles, but it seems her ego is the real deciding factor here. She loves him for how much he loves her, but she is not risking her social status for anyone – even him.

As the episode nears its end the familiar merry go round of Diana trying to contact Charles while he plays happy couple with Camilla takes its toll on the Princess mentally and physically. Call after call goes unanswered and Diana pours her frustration into her dancing and eventually her bulimia. After week with no contact from her husband, Diana breaks down and calls her former lover James Hewitt (Daniel Donskoy) and brings him back to the palace. Immediately the spies alert Charles about Diana’s overnight visitor and therein starts the plot to out Diana’s infidelity and use it as the cause for their irreparable rift.