How tall were Charles and Diana in real life, and is their height difference on ‘The Crown’ accurate?

Between The Crown seasons 4 and 5, casting changes were made in order to represent a new era of the monarchy during the early to late 1990s. Charles and Diana, the then-future King and Queen of the United Kingdom, were recast with older actors to represent the former couple as parents to two boys coming of age, while at the end stage of the marriage. Elizabeth Debicki and Dominic West took over from Emma Corrin and Josh O’Connor, respectively.

Between seasons 4 and 5, Diana also had a noticeable on-screen adult growth spurt. The younger Diana – played by a 5 feet, 8-inch Corrin – was significantly shorter than her husband, standing in the series at around 6 feet, 1 inch tall. The older Diana, both in status and stature, had overtaken her husband, as the Princess of Wales became the Royal Family’s most-adored member.

While perhaps an accident of re-casting, this physical change seems quite fitting for the character development across The Crown seasons 5 and 6. Elizabeth Debicki, according to an interview with The Guardian, is six feet, three inches tall — typically considered a towering height for a man, and even more so for a woman. Dominic West’s IMDb page says he is six feet tall, but that does not account for Diana’s heels that are worn in most scenes.

How tall were the real Charles and Diana?

While there’s plenty of documentation on the British Royal Family, they’ve never put out an official statement on how their members measure up. Diana, Princess of Wales, was reported by friends and acquaintances of the late royal to be around 5 feet, 10 inches – although some report her to be 5’11. Like both Corrin and Debicki, Diana was taller than the average woman, something said to have quashed her dreams of being a ballet dancer as a young girl. Technically speaking, Diana was closer to Corrin’s height than Debicki’s, and a woman of 6 foot 3 is much more unusual. However, this does not detract from Debicki, as her statuesque, elegant frame is synonymous with the popular memory of Diana, even if it is not exact.

As for the now-King Charles, he is said to have been around the same height as Diana, at five feet, ten inches. However, Diana wore high heels at public events, which made her appear noticeably taller than him a lot of the time. Charles may be, however, shorter than claimed, as humans tend to lose an inch or two off of their height as they get older. Charles is also speculated to have asked Diana to crouch down in official photos to make him look taller during their marriage, although this has not been confirmed. If so, then Charles’ often-unflattering depiction in many scenes of The Crown serves as an example of Napoleon Syndrome, a phenomenon where shorter men are claimed to attempt to over-compensate for their insecurities over their stature through (often failed) attempts at dominance.