Most beloved of all of us

Royals rehabilitated in drama's final series | First episodes focus on princess' tragic death

- SARA WALLIS

IN life Diana, Princess of Wales wanted to be the queen of people's hearts - and she certainly achieves that as a ghost in The Crown's sixth and final series.

For years, the Netflix drama has been a thorn in the side of the royals, painting them in a less than flattering light.

But in the four-episode first volume that drops today, the spectre of Diana, played by Elizabeth Debicki, is the guiding light for a rehabilitation of their reputations.

In slightly ridiculous supernatural moments, she returns from the dead for conversations with both Charles (Dominic West) and the Queen (Imelda Staunton).

Though perhaps intended as imagined conversations rather than actual ghosts, the scenes of a glamorous Diana popping into everyone's thoughts are a shock.

Charles tells Diana she was "the most beloved of all of us". And she says of his grief in the mortuary: "Thank you for how you were in the hospital, so raw, broken and handsome. She then tells him how much she loved him.

Di's ghost also visits the Queen and apologises for turning everything "upside down", then advises the monarch on "what the people need".