The King Who Never Was Review: Netflix’s latest 3-part Italian investigative docu-series (Il Principe) chronicles the events surrounding the death of Dirk Hamer, a 19-year-old German boy, and how the Italian Royal family was involved in it. The show is directed by Beatrice Borromeo Casiraghi.
The show digs up archival footage, old interviews, news footage, audio clips, and photographs along with interviews from the people involved and those who are still alive today, to give you a complete and thorough recap of what all transpired. The events that led to the show, began in 1978 and took a very long time before reaching an unexpected ending. Legal battles and trials spanning decades have been sewn together in a seamless manner to provide us with a deep dive into the murder mystery and the truth behind it. The King Who Never Was is full of twists and turns and is definitely worth the watch.
– The King Who Never Was Review Contains No Spoilers-
The King Who Never Was Review: Discussion
In the early hours of August 18th, 1978, a bullet hits Dirk Hamer in his stomach. This comes after he had accompanied his elder sister Birgit Hamer on a trip to the French island of Cavallo, near Corsica. The island was the getaway spot for the royal Savoy family of Italy. Annoyed with the noise of the bunch of Italian folks that had trespassed their property, Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy takes a gun, because it’s dangerous out there, and heads out to bring back his son’s dinghy that the people had taken without even asking them. Then, in the quiet of the night, a couple of shots are fired. The rest is what the show is all about.
We get accounts of the events from the very people who were involved in the incident. This includes Vittorio Emanuele himself, his son Emanuele Filiberto, his wife Marina, Dirk’s sister Birgit Hamer, other members of the Hamer family, people who were at the party, the lawyers, the police officials, and many others. These accounts provide authenticity to the feelings that we often aren’t able to otherwise perceive. People have been through so much for so long that all of it feels starts to feel like a bad dream.
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The truth that comes out at the end isn’t what shocked me. It was the sheer ways in which it was made to be hidden that rocked me to the core. Among everything else, I was enslaved by the ways in which facts were twisted and couldn’t help but wonder whether there are two sides to every fact that I have learned about the incident.
With every progress, there appeared more doubts and considering the major emotional turmoil that both Birgit and Filiberto were going through in their own ways; the former being the sister who was desperately chasing justice for the murder of her brother and the latter being a son whose father was facing prison sentencing for killing a person and mother was fighting vigorously to save him, the show was as agonizing as it was appalling.
The question that arises in my head after seeing The King Who Never Was is with the truth disregarded, is it justified for emotions to come in the way of justice? Maybe. Vittorio’s wife Marina did all that she could to get him acquitted. Did she do this because she loved him or did she do this because she knew the truth? As for Birgit, from the very beginning, she believed that the shot that killed Dirk was fired by the Prience of Naples himself. She had no proof to believe that but she did. Isn’t this emotion taking over fact? Well, I don’t want to spoil things so I leave the answer to you.
The King Who Never Was Review: Final Thoughts
The King Who Never Was filled me with a lot of bitterness by showing how we as humans are able to falsify facts to alter truths. But at the same time, the fact that the search for one truth often leads to the revelation of more truths is what makes the docu-series and the case a lesson in disguise; a lesson that just like life, truth always finds a way. It may be late but it does find a way. The show is gripping and doesn’t even let you bat an eyelid as you wait to find out the truth. So do “give it a watch”.
The three-part docu-series is now streaming on Netflix.
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