Prinses Margaret British royal

Prinses Margaret, voluit Prinses Margaret Rose Windsor, gravin van Snowdon, (geboren 21 augustus 1930, Glamis Castle, Schotland - stierf 9 februari 2002, Londen, Engeland), Britse koninklijke, de tweede dochter van koning George VI en koningin Elizabeth (vanaf 1952 koningin Elizabeth, de koningin-moeder) en de jongere zus van koningin Elizabeth II. Ze worstelde haar hele leven om een ​​onafhankelijke geest en artistiek temperament in evenwicht te brengen met haar taken als lid van de Britse koninklijke familie.

Prince William en Catherine Middleton: The Royal Wedding of 2011: Princess Margaret en Antony Armstrong-Jones

In 1961 publiceerde het Boek van het Jaar een biografie van prinses Margaret Rose, de zus van koningin Elizabeth

Margaret was het eerste lid van de koninklijke familie in zo'n 300 jaar dat ze in Schotland werd geboren, op de zetel van haar moeder in Glamis Castle. Haar moeder stond onder toezicht van haar moeder en zij en haar zus werden toevertrouwd aan een gouvernante. Margaret toonde al vroeg interesse in muziek en volgde pianolessen vanaf haar vierde. Ze was zes jaar oud toen haar oom, koning Edward VIII, afstand deed van haar troon en haar vader koning werd. Daarna ontving prinses Elizabeth, als erfgenaam van de troon, een aparte opleiding, terwijl Margaret onder toezicht van haar moeder bleef. Bovendien was ze verplicht deel te nemen aan openbare opdrachten.

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.