Margaret, Princess

▪ 2003

Princess Margaret Rose Windsor, countess of Snowdon 

      British royal (b. Aug. 21, 1930, Glamis Castle, Scot.—d. Feb. 9, 2002, London, Eng.), the second daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (from 1952 Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, Queen ); q.v.) and the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, was a glamorous beauty who struggled throughout her life to balance an independent spirit and artistic temperament with her duties as a member of Britain's royal family. Margaret, who displayed an early love for nightlife and the arts, gained worldwide sympathy in 1955 when she publicly renounced Group Capt. Peter Townsend, the royal equerry she loved but could not marry because he was divorced. She married photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones (later earl of Snowdon) in 1960 and had two children, David, Viscount Linley, and Lady Sarah. By the 1970s, however, times had changed; both of the Snowdons engaged in public love affairs, and the volatile marriage finally ended in divorce (1978), the first in the British royal family in 400 years. The princess scandalized conservative monarchists, cultivating friendships and romances among actors, writers, ballet dancers, and artists, notably Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener 17 years her junior with whom she had a prolonged romance in the 1970s. She also spent much of her time on the Caribbean island of Mustique. Eventually her extensive charitable work, combined with a new, more modern sympathy for the restricted options she faced, gained her public respect. Princess Margaret had surgery for possible cancer in 1985 (the tissue proved to be benign) and later suffered a series of strokes.

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