Prinsesse Margaret britisk kongelig

Prinsesse Margaret, fuldt ud Prinsesse Margaret Rose Windsor, grevinde af Snowdon, (født 21. august 1930, Glamis Castle, Skotland - døde 9. februar 2002, London, England), britisk kongelig, den anden datter af kong George VI og dronning Elizabeth (fra 1952 Dronning Elizabeth, dronningens mor) og den yngre søster af dronning Elizabeth II. Hun kæmpede i hele sit liv for at afbalancere en uafhængig ånd og kunstnerisk temperament med sine pligter som medlem af Storbritanniens kongefamilie.

Prins William og Catherine Middleton: Det kongelige bryllup i 2011: Prinsesse Margaret og Antony Armstrong-Jones

I 1961 udgav Årets Bog en biografi om prinsesse Margaret Rose, søster af dronning Elizabeth

Margaret var det første medlem af den kongelige familie på omkring 300 år, der blev født i Skotland, på sin mors familiesæde i Glamis Castle. Hendes uddannelse blev overvåget af sin mor, og hun og hendes søster blev overdraget til en guvernør. Margaret viste en tidlig interesse for musik og tog pianolektioner fra hun var fire år gammel. Hun var seks år gammel, da hendes onkel, kong Edward VIII, abdicerede, og hendes far blev konge. Derefter fik prinsesse Elizabeth, som tronarving, en separat uddannelse, mens Margaret fortsatte under sin mors opsyn. Derudover blev hun forpligtet til at deltage i offentlige forpligtelser.

Margaret, who became known for her glamour and beauty, displayed an early love for nightlife and the arts. When she was in her early 20s, she fell in love with Group Capt. Peter Townsend, a war hero who had served as an equerry to her father. Their romance became public knowledge when Margaret was seen brushing lint off Townsend’s jacket at her sister’s coronation in 1953. Although Townsend and Margaret wished to marry, the fact that he was divorced made the marriage unsuitable, and Margaret gained worldwide sympathy in 1955 when she publicly renounced their plans to wed.

Margaret was already a fixture on London’s social and arts scene when she began secretly seeing photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1958. The announcement of their engagement in February 1960 caught many by surprise. They were married on May 6, 1960, in the first royal wedding to be televised. (Armstrong-Jones was created earl of Snowdon in 1961.) The marriage was at first successful, and they had two children: David, Viscount Linley, born in 1961, and Lady Sarah, born in 1964. By the 1970s, however, the couple had grown apart. Both of the Snowdons engaged in public love affairs, and the princess scandalized conservative monarchists, cultivating friendships and romances among actors, writers, ballet dancers, and artists. She spent much of her time on the Caribbean island of Mustique, in the Grenadines. When her long-standing affair with Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener 17 years her junior, was exposed in 1976, she lost public sympathy, and her volatile marriage finally ended in 1978, the first divorce in the British royal family in 400 years.

Eventually her extensive charitable work, combined with a new, more modern sympathy for the restricted options she faced, gained her a measure of public respect. Princess Margaret, who smoked and drank heavily throughout her adult life, was often in ill health. She had surgery for possible lung cancer in 1985 (the tissue proved to be benign) and later suffered a series of strokes.