The Crown season 4 on Netflix will unfold a controversial royal family scandal that was hidden for years. Queen Elizabeth had two female cousins, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, who were locked up in a mental health asylum for most of their lives.
According to The Sun, this storyline in The Crown season 4 will focus on Helena Bonham Carter's Princess Margaret in the seventh episode. In the 1980s, the Queen's sister learned that her cousins, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, have been living in poor conditions in a mental health facility because they had severe learning disabilities.
Bonham Carter will apparently have an explosive scene with the Queen Mother (Marion Bailey) as she will rage on about the cruelty over locking up Nerissa and Katherine since they were teenagers. The confrontation will also feature the Queen Mother explaining why her family decided to declare Nerissa and Katherine as dead, as their mental health would affect the integrity of the monarch and the royal family bloodline.
The Bowes-Lyon sisters were the daughters of the Queen Mother's brother, John, who were born in 1919 (Nerissa) and 1926 (Katherine). They were sent the Royal Earlswood Institution in Surrey in their teens, when Queen Elizabeth's father, then the Duke of York, became the King of England.
During those times, children with learning disabilities and their families experienced serious social stigma. Nerissa and Katherine apparently didn't get the best care at the institution and were reportedly left for dead.
They apparently didn't have a lot of visitors and not much of their family were documented on record. However, Nerissa and Katherine would curtsy whenever they'd see the Queen Mother or Queen Elizabeth on TV.
Onelle Braithwaite, one of the nurses who looked after the institutionalized, said that the sisters' real identities seemed like an open secret in their community. Katherine even had a slight resemblance to Queen Elizabeth. Braithwaite also said that their mother, Fenella, visited the girls until she died in the 1960s.
Nerissa died in the 1980s but Katherine lived until 2014, at the age of 87. According to a Channel 4 documentary, The Queen's Hidden Cousins which aired in 2011, the world came to know of this royal family secret with Nerissa's death. Her grave was discovered with a generic marking without any hint that she's a royal cousin. But, the documentary also suggested that speculations that the royal family abandoned her cousins hurt and offended Queen Elizabeth.
The Crown season 4 will reportedly take artistic license in telling the Bowes-Lyon sisters' story.
The Crown season 4 will launch all 10 episodes on Nov. 15 on Netflix.
