The Crown Prequel May Dazzle Viewers, But It Cannot Hide Britain’s Colonial Past

Netflix may be preparing to return to the palace. According to the Telegraph, the streaming giant has reportedly approved a prequel to The Crown after lengthy negotiations with Left Bank Pictures. The alleged deal, said to be worth up to £500 million, would take the royal drama backwards rather than forwards. The series would reportedly begin with Queen Victoria’s death on the Isle of Wight in 1901 and end with Princess Elizabeth’s wedding to Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in 1947.

On paper, it sounds like prestige television catnip. The timeline covers Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI, the creation of the House of Windsor, the abdication crisis, two world wars and the early life of the woman who would become Queen Elizabeth II. It offers royal scandal, political anxiety, family conflict, social change and enough costume design to make Netflix’s budget department sweat.

Many viewers will be excited. I understand why. A young Edward VIII. A young George VI. Queen Mary glaring across a drawing room. Wallis Simpson walking into history. Winston Churchill muttering through wartime gloom. The abdication crisis alone could carry a season.

But I am not excited. Or, more accurately, I am cautious. Because a prequel to The Crown is not simply a historical drama. It is an extension of a brand that already turned monarchy into global intellectual property. It is the royal family as a cinematic universe, and it is history repackaged as luxury content.

And this particular stretch of history comes with a very large problem. You cannot begin with Victoria in 1901 and end with Elizabeth in 1947 without talking about empire.

Netflix wants the Crown cinematic universe

GB News reports that Peter Morgan, who created the original Crown, is expected to take charge of the prequel. The original series ended in 2023 after six seasons and 24 Emmy Awards. It also turned the British royal family into one of Netflix’s most valuable prestige brands.

The prequel appears designed to do what every successful franchise eventually does: go backwards. That is not automatically a bad idea. Historical dramas about monarchies have existed for centuries. Shakespeare gave us Richard III. Royal courts, succession crises and family power struggles have always attracted writers because monarchy is theatre by design. It has costumes, rituals, betrayals, public performance and private decay.

The early 20th century is also genuinely dramatic. The monarchy had to survive the death of Victoria, the collapse of European royal houses, the First World War, anti-German sentiment, Irish independence, the abdication crisis and the Second World War. In 1917, George V changed the royal family’s name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor. That was not just a branding choice. It was a survival move. Britain was at war with Germany, and a monarchy with German roots needed to look aggressively British.

That alone is a fascinating story. So is the abdication crisis of 1936, when Edward VIII gave up the throne to marry Wallis Simpson. So is George VI’s reluctant rise. This material could make excellent television. The problem is the framing.

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The Crown’s propaganda machine

I liked The Crown in its early seasons. It had restraint, atmosphere and it understood that monarchy works best on screen when the silence says as much as the dialogue. But as the series moved closer to modern memory, its function became harder to ignore.

For all the media hysteria around its depiction of Diana and Charles, the series still helped soften Charles and Camilla. It gave them sadness and complexity. It gave them a grand, tragic romance inside a system that supposedly crushed everyone involved. That is how prestige-TV propaganda works.

It does not have to make someone look perfect. It only has to make them look complicated enough that the audience starts to move from judgment to sympathy. Charles became the wounded intellectual trapped by duty. Camilla became the woman history misunderstood. Their relationship, once widely seen as a source of public humiliation for Diana, became part of a sweeping emotional saga about two people denied happiness by a cold institution.

That is very convenient for the current King and Queen. This is why a prequel matters. The danger is not that Netflix will make every royal look saintly. The danger is that it will turn the institution itself into the tragic hero. The monarchy survives war, scandal, social change and family dysfunction. The Crown endures. The palace adapts. The audience feels moved. But moved by what? A family’s pain? Or a system’s survival?

The Empire was not wallpaper

The timeline here is very specific. 1901 to 1947. That’s not an accident. In 1901, Queen Victoria died as Empress of India, the matriarch of an empire that spanned a quarter of the globe. By 1947, Princess Elizabeth married Philip in the same year that India and Pakistan won their independence, marking the beginning of the end of British colonial rule.

That is the frame. That is the story. But will Netflix tell it? Or will they give us Queen Mary’s jewels without explaining where those jewels came from? Will they show George V at the 1911 Delhi Durbar, being proclaimed Emperor of India in a spectacle of imperial “razzle-dazzle,” without showing the machinery of colonial extraction that made that moment possible? Will they show the abdication crisis without showing the colonies that were still firmly under the Crown’s boot?

The Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of the most contested objects in the Crown Jewels, is a perfect example. India has long demanded its return, viewing it as a symbol of colonial-era exploitation. It was taken from a ten-year-old boy after his mother was imprisoned. And if Netflix shows that diamond on Queen Mary’s neck without a single line of dialogue about where it came from, that’s propaganda.

The Violence They Won’t Show

The original Crown often understood the emotional burden of monarchy. It was much less interested in the people burdened by the monarchy’s imperial reach. That cannot happen here. A prequel covering 1901 to 1947 would move through the Boer War, Irish independence, the First World War, the Second World War, Caribbean labour rebellions, African nationalism and the Bengal famine. These were not side stories. They were part of the same imperial system that gave the Crown its global power.

The Boer War was still ongoing when Victoria died. Britain’s use of concentration camps against Boer civilians, and the suffering of Black Africans during that conflict, exposed the brutality behind imperial pride.

Ireland also belongs in this story. The Easter Rising of 1916, the War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Irish Civil War showed that Britain’s imperial crisis was not only overseas. It was on Britain’s doorstep.

The Caribbean belongs here too. In the 1930s, labour unrest spread across British colonies, including Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados. Workers protested poverty, wages and colonial neglect. Their resistance helped expose the reality behind imperial rhetoric.

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Africa belongs here. British rule across the continent relied on land seizure, forced labour, racial hierarchy and extraction. The formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 gave power to a white settler state while excluding the Black majority. The Natives Land Act of 1913 helped lay the foundations for apartheid. In Egypt, the 1919 revolution challenged British domination. In West Africa, nationalist movements grew stronger through the first half of the century.

And both world wars belong here as imperial wars. Britain did not fight alone. Colonial soldiers, workers and resources helped keep Britain alive. Men from India, Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, Australia and New Zealand served in wars fought under the language of freedom, democracy and civilisation. Then many returned home to the same colonial racism they had left. That contradiction should haunt every polished royal scene.

Final thoughts

The prequel could be brilliant. It could also be royal propaganda with better hats. The difference will depend on whether Netflix has the nerve to tell the full story. The period from 1901 to 1947 was not just the making of the modern Windsors. It was the beginning of the end of the empire that made them global.

A drama about the abdication crisis could be entertaining. A drama about Queen Mary and George V could be visually stunning. And yes, Elizabeth and Philip’s cousin-romance will no doubt be sold as a dazzling new royal beginning. But a drama about the Crown in this period must be bigger than the palace.

It must show what monarchy looked like to the people beneath it. Otherwise, this will not be history. It will be branding. It will be another expensive exercise in royal image management. Another reminder that Britain loves telling stories about crowns while avoiding the people crushed beneath them. A Crown prequel that starts with Victoria and ends with Elizabeth cannot stop at palace doors. The empire was not scenery. It was the story.