'The Crown' Season 3 completely ignored Princess Anne's most dramatic '70s moment

Earlier seasons of Netflix’s The Crown had it easier than Season 3. The first two installments of the period drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II focused primarily on the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, and Princess Margaret; the third season adds in a new generation of main characters in Prince Charles and Princess Anne. Those early seasons also covered less time than Season 3, with Season 1 spanning a mere five years, Season 2 spanning ten, and Season 3 cramming a whole 13 in the same ten episode run time.

It’s natural that a season with more characters and years to cover would have to cut some major events, but Season 3 does so at the disservice of Princess Anne, who went through a lot in the 1970s: she competed in the Montreal Olympics, married a commoner, and was the victim of a failed kidnapping attempt that was so dramatic it inspired a Tom Clancy novel.

Princess Anne married equestrian Mark Phillips in 1973 in a televised wedding that attracted a hundred million viewers. Hers was not the first royal wedding to be broadcast (that honor belongs to Princess Margaret, whose marriage to Antony Armstrong-Jones got 300 million viewers), but she was the first of the Queen’s children to marry. The Crown doesn’t mention Phillips or Anne’s wedding at all this season, and the episode that begins in 1973 focuses instead on Princess Margaret’s relationship with Roddy Llewelyn.

That episode (“Cri de Cour”) ends in 1977 with the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, squishing almost four years into an hour of television. The finale’s focus on Margaret’s emotional breakdown leaves little room for the dominating news story of 1974 — Ian Ball’s failed kidnapping of Princess Anne on Pall Mall.

In March 1974 Princess Anne, her husband Mark Phillips, her lady-in-waiting Rowena Brassey, and her bodyguard James Beaton were stopped on their way back to the palace from a charity event. The man who stopped their car, Ian Ball, was a mentally ill man who had crafted a meticulous plan to kidnap and ransom Princess Anne for two million pounds. Ball had a gun and shot James Beaton, the chauffeur Alex Callender, and a civilian reporter who witnessed the altercation and attempted to help.

After shooting his way through to the princess, Ball approached Anne and ordered her to get out of the car, to which Anne notably replied “not bloody likely.” Eventually she complied with Ball and exited the car to avoid more bloodshed, at which point a passing boxer named Ron Russell intervened and punched Ball in the face.

Read that again. Princess Anne cussed out a dude with a gun to her head and a wandering prize fighter punched her assailant in the face. Fuck a royal wedding, how did that not make it into The Crown Season 3?

Ron Russell in May 1974, two months after delivering the royal smackdown that saved Princess Anne's life. Credit: PA Images via Getty Images

Thanks to Ron Russell’s fists of steel, Ball was neutralized, taken into custody, and found guilty of attempted murder and kidnapping. He remains in a mental hospital to this day. All of the men he shot recovered, and Queen Elizabeth II awarded Russell the George Medal for gallantry. At the medal ceremony, the Queen is said to have thanked him by saying “the medal is from the Queen of England, the thank-you is from Anne's mother.”

Two years after the attempted kidnapping, Anne represented Great Britain as an equestrian in the 1976 Olympics, where she did not medal but did become the first royal ever to compete in the games (her daughter Zara Phillips competed in the 2012 London Olympics and won a silver medal for equestrian team eventing).

Again, The Crown Season 3 had a lot of ground to cover and its final episode was a beautiful character study for Helena Bonham-Carter’s Princess Margaret, but it would have been nice to see Erin Doherty’s quick-witted adult Anne give us a “not bloody likely” for history’s sake. Hopefully Season 4 will have some sort of flashback for Princess Anne, if only to give its viewers the next-generation royal drama we truly deserve.