Peter Morgan’s The Crown finally came to a close recently. Apart from a couple of well-done episodes, most of the story felt like sentimental fanfic.
From Diana’s spectre showing up for Queen Elizabeth and Charles to William and Kate’s overtly simplified romantic origin story, The Crown season six took more than a few artistic liberties to tell the story of the royals. One particular scene in The Crown season six that retcons an encounter between Kate and the late Diana has many questioning if it happened in reality.
In The Crown season six, episode seven, titled ‘Alma Mater’, we see a young Kate Middleton (Ella Bright) and Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) meet briefly. The episode flashbacks to the December of 1996 when Kate was fifteen. In the scene, Kate and her mother encounter Diana and Prince William (Rufus Kampa) while they are selling The Big Issue magazine for charity. Kate asks her mother to donate, introduces herself to Diana, and exchanges glances with Prince William.
In the very next scene, we see that Kate has a poster of young William in her room. However, this interaction is entirely fictional.
Kate Middleton never met Princess Diana in real life
Kate Middleton, now known as Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, never had the opportunity to meet Princess Diana. Diana, Princess of Wales, passed away in a car accident in Paris on August 31st, 1997, when Kate was still a teenager. Kate Middleton and Prince William, Diana’s son, began dating several years after Diana’s death, and they got married on April 29th, 2011.
Kate confirmed in a conversation with a fan last spring that she had never met Princess Diana. As per People, Middleton told the royal fan, “Unfortunately, I never had the chance to meet her.”
Even Prince William said so in an ABC interview following his marriage to Middleton in 2011, “I’m just very sad that she’s never going to get a chance to meet Kate [Middleton].”
