Dying for a Crown is a 2022 Lifetime Movie of the Week Thriller directed by Damián Romay and written by Victoria Rose.
Lydia Campbell (Jennifer Titus) and her daughter Elle (Catharine Daddario, Alexandra's sister) are starting a new life together in a new town. Lydia has been hired as the assistant principal at Troy High School, while Elle transfers into the school for her senior year. Elle, pretty and a standout tennis player, yearns for acceptance from her new peers. Lydia, who'd been Homecoming Queen in her high school days, pushes her to run for the title as well. Elle isn't so sure, since equally pretty, popular and smart Kate Wheeler (Molly Hargrave) seems to have the crown all locked up. But Lydia doesn't mind breaking ethical boundaries or even laws to help her daughter out. Eventually principal Alice (Laura W. Johnson) and history teacher Mr. Lee (Jevon White) start to figure things out, but they could be Lydia's next targets.
No relation to Lifetime's Homecoming Revenge, which also goes by the title Dying for the Crown (though they share ingredients of Homecoming Queens, jealousy and grown women fixated on what they feel were injustices during their high school years).
Dying for a Crown contains examples of:
- Bad Influencer: When she introduces herself to her classmates on her first day, Elle makes a point of touting her VSCO account, which strikes the others as odd.
- Complexity Addiction: Lydia has apparently already planned out the course for Elle to become Homecoming Queen—she makes friends with the cool kids, becomes the star tennis player, and gradually builds up support in the vote, with hacking the vote apparently being a contingency backup plan. Unfortunately, Kate is already the queen bee, and Stephanie is the tennis star, so Lydia has to do some Xanatos Speed Chess and enlists Elle to target them, while she fiddles with the vote totals.
- Covers Always Lie: Lifetime's official blurb for the movie calls the high school Bellview, when it's actually called Troy in the movie. But, interestingly, Bellview is the Real Life name of the elementary school where Laura Carroll (the inspiration for Lydia) worked, while her daughter Emily Grover attended Tate High School. Possibly it was originally scripted as Bellview High, but someone realized the You Wanna Get Sued? problems with that name, and changed it.
- Evil Is Petty:
- Lydia's first big red flag is when she suspends a student for talking to his ill mother on his cell phone in the hallway, merely because he annoyed her, in a Drunk with Power moment.
- Elle plants glass shards in her tennis doubles partner Stephanie's coat so she'll cut her hand and be forced out of the next meet, to prevent her from upstaging Elle.
- Faux Affably Evil: Lydia tries to maintain a pleasant demeanor (though her smile often veers into a Cheshire Cat Grin), rarely raising her voice or directly threatening people, doing most of her misdeeds behind-the-scenes or using Elle as a foot soldier.
- Frame-Up: Elle plants a baggie of marijuana in Kate's locker and gets her suspended from school (with Lydia doing the locker search and suspending).
- Foreshadowing: The discussion in Mr. Lee's history class about the Bay of Pigs Invasion, centering on how Fidel Castro being the target of a failed attack made him more sympathetic and shored up his popularity in Cuba. This is exactly what happens with Kate after Lydia and Elle target her.
- Hero of Another Story: Three times out of four, a Lifetime movie with this plot would be centered around Kate, as The Ace who's seemingly a shoo-in to be Homecoming Queen, only to have evil interloper Elle swoop in and challenge her, including getting her suspended, which would lead Kate to go on a crusade to Clear My Name. That seems to be what's playing out offscreen, but instead, we're seeing Elle and Lydia's side of the story. Contrast this to Lifetime's Lethal Soccer Mom, which has the same basic premise (school authority figure sabotages her daughter's rival) but focuses on the victim.
- I Have Many Names: Elle also goes by Ellie.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Blonde, innocent Kate gets targeted by the evil brunette Campbell women.
- My Beloved Smother: Lydia is a huge Control Freak toward Elle. Elle is reluctant to go after Kate at first, but Lydia eggs her on and uses her powers as vice principal to help her.
- Never Trust a Title: While it's called Dying for a Crown, no one actually dies. Alice the principal gets seriously injured when Lydia hits her with her car, but she ultimately survives.
- New Transfer Student: Elle, though after a while it seems like she transferred there for the express purpose of becoming Homecoming queen
- The One That Got Away: Crossed with Driven by Envy. Lydia's high school boyfriend is now a wealthy mogul, and she envies the life his wife now has. She tells Elle to "learn from my my mistakes."
- Only in Florida: This is based on a prime Real Life crazy Florida story (high school girl and her school administrator mom engage in a complex conspiracy to rig the school Homecoming Queen vote), and keeps the Florida setting.
- Plot Hole: Ellie hitting up Kate and Becca for weed seems really random, unless she already knew Becca was The Stoner, but this is never spelled out. Similarly, her attempt to smoke a joint doesn't make a whole lot of sense if she obtained the marijuana to frame Kate.
- Plot Twist:
- An unusual example of a big twist happening fairly early in the story. For the first act, Lydia and Ellie seem like your typical good-hearted, trying-to-beat-the-odds Lifetime mother-daughter pair, forced to start over on their own after getting abandoned by the man in their life, with Lydia keeping an eye on Elle as she navigates a new school. It's not until Lydia turns a blind eye toward Elle's problems in school (instead of subjecting her to a "I'm worried about you, young lady" lecture) that we realize they're actually the story's villains.
- But then another huge twist gets revealed in the final act—Lydia may very well be a Con Artist who's never worked at a school before and faked her resume. She for certain mocked up her letter of recommendation, from a man who's been dead for ten years.
- The Stoner: Becca, Kate's friend, who gives Elle the weed that she uses to frame Kate (who doesn't smoke herself).
- Sudden Downer Ending: Elle and Lydia get arrested moments after Elle gets named Queen, and the movie just ends there, without even an epilogue.
- Tragic Villain: Elle doesn't seem like a bad person. She even shows some occasional flickers of a conscience. But between her evil, pushy mom and her understandable wish to be popular and well-liked at her new school, she ends up doing some truly despicable things.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Advertised as "inspired by true events," this is clearly a fictionalized version of the saga of Emily Grover and her mother Laura Carroll
, who were accused of rigging the Homecoming Queen vote at Grover's high school in 2020. Even the names are thinly disguised (Emily/Elle, Laura/Lydia, Tate High School/Troy High School). The major change is that Carroll was an assistant at an elementary school in the district, but still used her district computer account to hack the vote. After the story broke basically everyone commented that a Ripped from the Headlines Lifetime movie was inevitable. - Villain Protagonist: The movie focuses on Lydia's scheming to get Elle installed as Homecoming Queen, which turns violent after a while.
- Vorpal Pillow: At one point, Lydia is about to use this method to kill Alice, only to have a nurse walk in and interrupt.
