Royal affairs with rockstars and gangsters?
She may look like Queen Elizabeth, but Princess Margaret is a whole different breed of royalty.
In the 17th century, King James I of England and VI of Scotland was the first monarch to
rule over both countries, forming the basis of Great Britain.
For the next three hundred years, however, every member of the royal family was born
in England.
That is until Princess Margaret.
Margaret came into the world on August 21, 1930, at Glamis Castle in Angus, Scotland,
the ancestral home of her mother, Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, later known as the Queen Mother.
In her book, The Wicked Wit of Princess Margaret, Karen Dolby pointed out that Margaret's Scottish
birth was not the only milestone on that particular day.
She was also the final member of the family whose birth was witnessed by the Home Secretary
under law, an archaic practice used to prove royal status.
The future princess' birth might have been marked with one more unusual characteristic
if normal procedures had been followed.
But the registration of Margaret's birth was put on hold for several hours, until another
baby was born.
This prevented Margaret from being listed in the parish register under the unlucky number 13.
The Duke and Duchess of York never enrolled either of their daughters, Elizabeth or Margaret,
in public school.
This was even after they had become princesses in 1936 when their father became King George VI.
Instead, they hired a teacher who recently graduated from the Moray House Training College
in Edinburgh named Marion Crawford — also affectionately called "Crawfie" by the future
Queen Elizabeth.
Crawfie was responsible for the girls' private education, but they received valuable input
from Queen Mary as well.
The Duke and Duchess had no interest in their children becoming intellectuals, says Christopher
Warwick in his book, Princess Margaret: A Life of Contrasts.
On the other hand, there might have been some regret from the duchess on taking this approach
since she got to have the experience as a child attending a Chelsea day school.
In 1939, King George VI and his family, including his daughter Margaret, were advised to seek
refuge in Canada in order to avoid the bombings of World War II, however, they refused to
abandon the country and sought the safety of Windsor Castle instead.
The dungeons below provided protection when needed, not just for the royals, but also
for the crown jewels, which were wrapped up in newspapers for safekeeping.
The young Princess Margaret acknowledged that the general mood was optimistic even in those
tense times but was not very impressed with some of the measures taken to protect her family.
In The Wicked Wit of Princess Margaret, she is quoted saying,
"We were not allowed to go far from the house in case there were air raids; and there had
been a pathetic attempt to defend the castle with trenches and some rather feeble barbed wire.
It could not have kept anyone out, but it did keep us in."
While the young princesses Margaret and Elizabeth lived in Windsor Castle, one of the ways that
the sisters passed the time was to organize the small productions of two plays, Cinderella
and a Nativity play.
Margaret enjoyed these childhood experiences, so when she was given the opportunity to help
direct performances of Edgar Wallace's play The Frog in June 1954, she accepted.
It was an amateur production that culminated in only three evening shows, but those involved
had a lot of fun on stage regardless of the number of mistakes that were made.
The attitude of the aspiring thespians probably had much to do with their status.
In his book, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, Craig Brown described the charity
event as made up predominantly of upper-class individuals, both among the cast and the audience.
One notable member of this esteemed crowd was the playwright Noël Coward who was heavily
critical of the performance and said,
"Those highborn characters we watched mumbling and stumbling about the stage are the ones
who come to our productions and criticize us!
They at least displayed no signs of nervousness; they were unequivocally delighted with themselves
from the first scene to the last, which, I may add, was a very long time indeed."
Princess Margaret would be part of more than one scandal throughout her life, and one of
the most well-known of these began at the coronation of her sister, Queen Elizabeth, in 1953.
From the way she interacted with war hero Peter Townsend at the event, it was clear
there was a strong mutual attraction between the two.
"In an act of complete spontaneity, she went up to him and brushed her white-gloved hand
over his lapel."
Townsend was a highly respected pilot in the Royal Air Force before working for the royal family.
But the fact that he was divorced meant that Margaret was prohibited from marrying him.
When she turned 25, the princess was free to wed Townsend without the queen's permission,
however, Margaret would have lost her royal position and was unwilling to do so.
Townsend and Margaret may not have ended up together, but their friendship remained strong
until his death in 1995.
Unfortunately, the two did not get to see each other often but made sure to keep in
touch occasionally through letters.
A few years before Townsend passed away, the two randomly ran into each other at an event,
and then attended a lunch together at Kensington Palace a year later.
People who saw them commented how close they still were after all those years.
Princess Margaret was rumored to have had numerous affairs throughout her life, including
with Mick Jagger, Peter O'Toole, and Warren Beatty.
Yet, one of these speculated affairs was confirmed years later in letters written by the princess
about Canadian Prime Minister John Turner.
Turner met Margaret in 1958 before he was prime minister when she was visiting Canada
for the summer.
The two hit it off right away, and the couple's chemistry did not go unnoticed by the local media.
However, their relationship was cut short, allegedly after word came from the palace
to end whatever was going on.
At the time, it was unclear how serious the affair was.
Years later, in 1966, the princess wrote a letter to her close friend, Sharman Douglas,
and said,
"John Turner is here & we meet on Thursday.
It will seem so funny as we haven't met since I nearly married him & he's bringing his wife!"
Just as Princess Margaret's birth was historic, so too was her 1960 wedding to Antony Armstrong-Jones,
later the Earl of Snowden.
"He is everything that sort of goes against royal protocol.
He is extremely fun-loving.
He is a bohemian."
It was the first royal family marriage featured on television.
The broadcast reached a massive audience of 300 million viewers around the world.
According to Princess Margaret: A Life of Contrasts, the bride-to-be was especially
excited about the live coverage because,
"Those of my friends who couldn't come could still see it.
I loved that idea."
Two thousand guests attended the service at Westminster Abbey.
Among the attendees were Winston Churchill, the future poet laureate Sir John Betjeman,
actress Margaret Leighton, and Noël Coward, along with many of her best friends.
For their honeymoon, newlyweds Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones used the Royal
Yacht Britannia to travel to the Caribbean Sea.
While on their cruise, Margaret visited her friends, Colin and Anne Tennant, on the small
island they owned called Mustique , located 100 miles west of Barbados.
At the time, the only other inhabitants there was a tiny village of fishermen and cotton
growers, but that would soon change.
Since the couple was camping on their mostly undeveloped island, they were grateful for
the offer to use the luxuries that the Royal Yacht had to offer when Margaret arrived in May 1960.
During the visit, Colin asked the princess if she would prefer a wedding present in a
box, or a plot of land on Mustique.
Margaret saw much potential for the island, so she chose a key location on a secluded
peninsula overlooking Gelliceaux Bay.
As depicted in Netflix’s The Crown, Margaret came across as the more aloof and “party
animal” of the royal family.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that once her dream vacation home was completed,
Margaret lived on Mustique as much as possible and threw many parties with major celebrities
and wealthy British aristocrats in attendance.
Princess Margaret continued to set records for the royal family during her life, even
when it came to the end of her marriage to Antony Armstrong-Jones in May 1978.
"He was never the right man for you."
Their divorce was the first within the royal family since the reign of Henry VIII nearly
500 years before.
However, in Princess Margaret: A Life of Contrasts, Christopher Warwick pointed out a key difference
between the two, which makes the end of the union between Margaret and her husband truly unique.
"It paved the way for public acceptance of royal divorce, which was to prove hugely beneficial
to her sister's children."
But when the marriage between Katherine of Aragon and King Henry was over in 1533, it
was an annulment, not technically a divorce.
The same went for his marriages to Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves.
Margaret's was the first royal marriage to end in divorce court.
Therefore, officially, the princess was only temporarily married, while Henry's weddings
were treated as if they had never occurred at all.
Of all Princess Margaret's alleged affairs, the most scandalous was her relationship with
petty gangster John Bindon.
There are photos of the two at her vacation home on Mustique, but the majority of those
closest to Margaret deny anything happened between the two.
Though it is possible the princess did witness him performing his favorite lewd party trick
of balancing beer glasses on his private parts.
There are rumors that far more risqué pictures exist to prove that Bindon was not just a
guest at Margaret's parties.
Rumor is the evidence was secured in the vault of Lloyds Bank to protect the princess, but
may have been taken in the notorious bank heist of 1971 because of possible attempts
from the government to censor the media, according to The Telegraph.
The Express has taken this rumor to the extreme, though it is highly unlikely that the robbery
had anything to do with Princess Margaret or the royal family.
In October 1979, tension between Ireland and the U.K. was extremely high after the assassination
of Earl Mountbatten by the Irish Republican Army.
Princess Margaret was then dangerously pulled into the conflict when a journalist claimed
that she had referred to the Irish as "pigs" at an event in Chicago.
Mayor Jane Byrne was quick to deny the princess said it, and her spokesman, Lord Nigel Napier
stated in the Belfast Telegraph that,
"There is no truth in the allegation whatsoever."
U.S. law enforcement was alerted that a plot targeting the princess was considered by the
IRA while she was in Los Angeles.
Fortunately, no attempt on her life was made.
The princess was frequently criticized for neglecting her royal duties, most likely due
to the publicity surrounding her wild lifestyle.
On the other hand, she supported 80 charities and arts organizations.
The range of organizations Margaret supported was quite broad, but often involved the health
and welfare of children or the treatment of those with severe illnesses.
She helped establish the first-of-its-kind ovarian cancer research unit at Belfast City
Hospital in 1995.
As a chronic smoker, the princess had suffered through a horrific case of lung cancer, which
resulted in the partial removal of one lung, so she was well aware of the damage the disease
could do.
"I don't like the sound of that cough."
"It's fine."
"And you've been struggling with your chest for a while."
Belfast gained worldwide recognition when a team located there identified a gene linked
to ovarian cancer.
When Princess Margaret passed away in 2002, she was cremated rather than buried, making
her one of only a few senior British royals to shirk tradition.
By being cremated, the princess was able to have her ashes interred beside her much-adored
father, King George VI, in the Memorial Chapel at Windsor.
"She loved him dearly.
And writes later how much she missed him.
How much of a good man he had been."
But there was another reason Margaret chose cremation.
The princess was a forward-thinker.
She believed cemeteries took up too much land in a world gradually running out of space.