The Rise of the Class-Conscious Cinderella
The rich are deformed by wealth and can only sustain themselves through the suffering of these heroines
There’s a scene early in The Crown’s wildly popular fourth season, where Princess Diana meets her royal in-laws. She’s barely out of her teens and suffers from profound insecurity and anxiety; until she met Prince Charles, she was working as a part-time kindergarten teacher. Now she stands face-to-face with the most powerful people in the country—and they hate her. They stand around her in a circle, like wolves closing in on a wounded deer. They talk over her every time she speaks. She’s supposed to have memorized a complicated hierarchy of titles and greetings, and they mock her every time she gets something wrong, which is often. The camera whirls around Diana, watching the panic attack brewing on her face, until we’re as dizzy and overwhelmed as she is.
Diana’s tormentors are normally the show’s protagonists, the royal family we’ve come to know and root for over the past three seasons. But in an instant, all of the characters we like become terrifying strangers. Our only concern is for the helpless young woman who finds herself trapped with these inbred, old-money monsters.
