The Crown : Inside Princess Margaret’s Tumultuous Relationship with Lord Snowdon—and the Royal Family’s First Divorce
It was a royal romance that was never a fairy tale: Princess Margaret and photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones, a combustible, complicated couple who ended up being the family’s first divorce. (Unless you count Lord Harewood, the Queen’s cousin, who split from his wife in 1967.) Their tumultuous relationship is a major plot point in season three of The Crown—just as their tumultuous courtship was a major plot point of season two.
Before we continue, a warning that spoilers abound below. So if you haven’t finished The Crown yet, it’s perhaps best to avert your eyes (although, much of this is, well, history).
The couple was married—and Armstrong-Jones became Earl of Snowdon—in 1960, and by the mid-1960s it was clear that they were having problems. In February 1967, Snowdon was forced to deny divorce rumors to the Times of London, after several papers suggested the couple was on the verge of splitting up. “It is news to me, and I would be the first to know if it were true,” he said. He also denied taking a trip to New York to get away from his wife: “There is no question of me trying to hide in New York. I just must be able to work as an ordinary journalist.”
But where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, author Craig Brown recounts their disintegrating union: “Home alone, they sniped and bickered. Each of their friends has a story to tell of their acid rows,” he wrote. “Snowdon would shut himself away in his studio, telling her, ‘Never come in here without knocking!’ When she asked him if he’d be in for lunch, he pretended not to hear.” Sometimes, these disagreements spilled into the public sphere: “Before a grand party or a public engagement, he would make a point of reducing the princess to tears, ensuring that she would appear puffy-faced and red-eyed on arrival,” Brown recalls. Wrote The New York Times in their obituary of the princess: “By the late 1960s there were nasty public quarrels. This, coupled with an often ill-concealed irritability at official functions and a love of reveling, brought growing public ridicule.”
What were their fights about? Everything and anything—books and gossip publications recount how Armstrong-Jones loved to get up early and ski on holiday, whereas Margaret would lounge in bed; Armstrong found her needy and often rude (which, by all accounts, she was); there were mutual infidelities (more on that later), as well as Armstrong’s frequent and long work trips as a photographer. Perhaps Anne de Courcey put it best in her biography of Snowdon: “The trouble was that both were stars, accustomed to being the focus of attention, and a certain competitiveness was almost inevitable.”
One outlandish plot point in The Crown seems to be true: It is reported that Snowdon did indeed leave hate notes for Margaret to find. The most infamous? “You look like a Jewish manicurist, and I hate you,”—which, yes, is uttered by Helena Bonham Carter in an episode.
As for the infidelities, The Crown focuses on two lovers in particular: likely Lucy Lindsay-Hogg for Snowdon and Roderic Llewellyn for Princess Margaret. In reality, each person had multiple extramarital affairs over the years, and Margaret’s relationship with Llewellyn lasted longer than suggested in the show—BBC reports she met the 25-year-old landscaper in 1973, at a luncheon in Edinburgh, while on their way to mutual friend Anne Tennant's house. In February 1976, they caused a scandal after paparazzi caught them together on a beach in Mustique.
One month later, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon announced their separation. “HRH the Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, and the Earl of Snowdon have mutually agreed to live apart. The Princess will carry out her public duties and functions unaccompanied by Lord Snowdon. There are no plans for a divorce proceeding,” read a statement from Kensington Palace.
Her sister followed up with one of her own: “The Queen is naturally very sad at what has happened. There has been no pressure from the Queen on either Princess Margaret or Lord Snowdon to take any particular course.”
In the show, Princess Margaret overdoses on a mixture of substances as the troubles in her life grow. It’s unclear if it’s intentional or not—the producers leave that up for interpretation. While it makes for a poignant point about the depths of Margaret’s misery, friends denied any rumors that she had tried to commit suicide. (When reports emerged anyway, it was said that the alleged attempt was spurred by Llewyn’s travels.)
In May 1978, the couple officially divorced. According to the Times of London, the proceeding lasted one minute and 53 seconds.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
