'The Crown' Season 6 Part 2 Depicts the Death of Princess Margaret

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The sixth and final season of Netflix's behemoth hit historical drama The Crown finally catches up with Royal Family's more recent history, dramatizing several key events in living memory, including the death of Princess Diana, the marriage of Prince Charles to Camilla, and the early relationship of Prince William and Kate Middleton. All of these were sensational, headline-grabbing stories at the time, but The Crown dedicates one of its last episodes to the final days of Princess Margaret.

Margaret has long been one of the more entertaining characters in the show, helped in no small part by the real-life reputation enjoyed by the princess as Queen Elizabeth's less stuffy, more decadent younger sister. Played in earlier seasons by Vanessa Kirby and Helena Bonham Carter, Margaret is portrayed in Season 6 by Lesley Manville, and as a teenager in flashbacks by Beau Gadsdon.

Episode 8, "Ritz," flits back and forth between V.E. Day in 1945, when Margaret persuaded Elizabeth to leave Buckingham Palace to celebrate the end of the Second World War, and the late 1990s, when Margaret continues to drink and smoke despite her declining health.

"She doesn’t know how to function," Manville told the New York Times, describing how the sudden lack of social engagements in Margaret's diary brought her loneliness to the fore. "When you had all of that, and then you just see it ebbing away, that’s fascinating to play."

As her condition worsens, Margaret eventually confronts her own mortality—but the creators of The Crown opted not to show her death on-screen, but rather end on a scene of her and Elizabeth as girls, at the beginning of their parallel journeys, before cutting to a title card stating that Princess Margaret died on February 9, 2002.

How did Princess Margaret die?

Margaret's health issues, as depicted in Season 6 of The Crown, hew very closely to the facts—starting with the princess' penchant for drinking and smoking. In 1985, Margaret underwent surgery to have part of her left lung removed, and continued to suffer pulmonary issues for years, including being hospitalized for pneumonia in 1993. It was reportedly around this time that she made the decision to quit smoking for good.

The moment in "Ritz" where Margaret has a stroke while on vacation in Mustique in 1998 actually did happen, as did the incident the following year when she suffered another stroke and sustained serious burns to her feet.

Princess Margaret died on February 9, 2002 at King Edward VII's Hospital, having had a stroke the previous day which led to cardiac problems. She was 71.

"This is a terribly sad day for all my family, but particularly of course for the Queen, my mama, and my grandmother, the Queen Mother, and also for Princess Margaret's children, David and Sarah, and also my aunt's wonderful friends who, like all of us, miss her deeply," her nephew Charles, the future King of England, said in a television broadcast following her death. "My darling aunt had such dreadful times in the past few years with her awful illness and it was hard for let alone her to bear it, but for all of us as well - particularly as she had such a wonderfully free spirit."

"She lived life and lived it to the full... I think one of the fondest memories I shall have of her was of sitting at the piano playing away with a large, very elegant cigarette holder in her mouth. And, as I say, we shall all miss her dreadfully and dreadfully sad as death is at times like this, I think in a way for her it must have been a merciful release as many people would understand I think for someone who was such a vital and free spirit."

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