Prince Philip knocks at the door and Diana – portrayed to great effect in the series by Emma Corrin – tells him she is in a 'dark, loveless cave' and that she wants to 'break away'.
Yet the response from her father-in-law is menacing; he warns her that it won't end well if she does any such thing.
Diana replies: 'I hope that isn't a threat, Sir.'
Who can be in any doubt that this fictional conversation is a thinly veiled and chilling reference to Diana's impending death.
It supports the scarcely credible rumours, still fuelled by the internet, that Diana's fatal car crash in a tunnel in Paris in 1997 was a murderous 'hit' ordered by Prince Philip and designed to look like an accident.
It's hard to imagine a more hurtful allegation than painting Philip as a mafioso bent on bumping off a fragile daughter-in-law.
....
The series ends in 1990 with the Royal Family heading for Sandringham for Christmas in a convoy of Rolls-Royces.
The customary dead game birds are hanging up, presumably to stress to the viewers what a brutal bunch the family is.
And so follows the most outrageous calumny of all, Philip's thinly veiled threat to Diana.
Why does this matter? It matters because this country's relationship between Government and Monarchy has always been a delicate balance.
It matters because the reputation of the future King ought not to be sealed in the mind of the average Netflix viewer as a twisted, warped and bitter individual.
