The Crown: Real-Life Princess Margaret Stories That’ll Make You Love Her More

The Crown proves that Princess Margaret was a truly fascinating character—a witty, charismatic, rebe..

admin December 15, 2017 12:26 am

The Crown proves that Princess Margaret was a truly fascinating character—a witty, charismatic, rebellious, and glamorous woman with tremendous star power and an ever-present cigarette. Had she been born to another family, she may have found happiness. But Princess Margaret’s birth order and place restricted her to her sister’s long shadow and archaic constitutional constraints. She rebelled against the crown—hence her nickname, “The Royal Rebel”—but declined to forfeit its privileges for her first love, Peter Townsend. Thus, she spent the rest of her years an unpredictable, unfulfilled, and incredibly spoiled prisoner, dependent on the shackles she so deeply resented, and unapologetic in her royal demands.

Though her life was tragic, it was never boring. When Margaret died in 2002, she left behind a litany of stories and anecdotes which—whether true or not—are vastly entertaining. They characterize her as a queen in the best, gives-the-least-fucks sense of the word.

As popular Margaret lore goes, the princess was seated next to 60s supermodel Twiggy at a dinner party. The royal proceeded to ignore her seatmate until, about two hours later, Margaret turned to the model and asked, “And who are you?”

Twiggy replied, “I’m Lesley Hornby, ma’am, but people call me Twiggy.”

Margaret responded, “How unfortunate,” and turned away again.

So committed to her dual vices—whiskey and cigarettes—was Margaret that the memoir Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaretalleges that Margaret “tried to combine the smoking and drinking by gluing matchboxes onto tumblers, so she could strike matches while drinking.”
Princess Margaret was notoriously late for any and all occasions. In 1959, the acclaimed English novelist Nancy Mitford wrote her mother a letter after an eventful dinner hosted in Margaret’s honor in Paris.

“Dinner was at 8:30, and at 8:30 Princess Margaret’s hairdresser arrived, so we waited for hours while he concocted a ghastly coiffure,” Mitford wrote, according to Theo Aronson’s biography Princess Margaret. “She looked like a huge ball of fur on two well-developed legs. Shortest dress I ever saw—a Frenchman said it begins so low and ends so soon.”

In 1986, Rupert Everett went to the theater with Princess Margaret and her lady-in-waiting.

“I never got asked again, I must say. She didn’t realize that there were two princesses there; one of them was me,” Everett recalled on The Graham Norton Show. His first faux pas of the evening, he said, was failing to light her cigarette.

“She was like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. She had huge black hair, the Hanoverian bosom, and her breasts rattled like castanets—I don’t know what was going on. She had cigarettes about this long,” Everett said, gesturing about two feet in front of him. “When we were getting in the car, she said, ‘Hey, you’ve got marvelous legs.’ And then she called me Leggy all night. ‘Leggy, do you mind if I grab you at the end of the second act?’”

During intermission, Everett excused himself to use the bathroom. But Margaret could not be bothered to wait. “She banged on the [bathroom] door and went, ‘Come on, Leggy!’”

“I spent the whole of the second act without having a pee.”

After a party at Kensington Palace for Marlene Dietrich, Princess Margaret “was furious to find that four bottles of very rare vodka, which had been given to her, had disappeared,” wrote Aronson in Princess Margaret. “With that streak of royal parsimony that goes hand in hand with her extravagance, she spent the whole of the following morning ringing round until she had tracked down the culprit. The bottles were returned.”
“One night, at a ball given by the celebrated hostess, Lady Rothermere, the Princess ‘grabbed the microphone from the startled leader of the band, whom she instructed to play songs by Cole Porter,’” wrote Aronson in Princess Margaret. “Obediently, all the guests stopped dancing and stood listening to the Princess’s performance. As they ‘shouted and roared for more’ she became, says Lady Caroline Blackwood, who was watching, ‘a little manic,’ with her swaying, full-skirted ball gown proving quite unsuitable for her ‘slinky’ gyrations.”

“She had just launched into ‘Let’s Do It’ when, from the back of the crowded ballroom, came loud sounds of booing and barracking. The rest of the place fell silent. Mortified by this unprecedented show of hostility, the Princess abandoned the microphone and hurried out of the room.”

“The culprit was the painter Francis Bacon, blind drunk as usual. ‘Her singing really was too awful,’ he afterwards said. ‘Someone had to stop her.’”

When Princess Margaret met Elizabeth Taylor for dinner, the royal reportedly told the actress that the 33.19-carat Krupp diamond Richard Burton had given her—which Taylor wore as a ring—was “vulgar.”

Taylor is said to have replied, “Ain’t it great?” before convincing Margaret to try on the ring herself. “Not so vulgar now, is it?” Taylor retorted.

Upon meeting Grace Kelly, Princess Margaret said, “You don’t look like a movie star.” Offended, Kelly is said to have replied, “Well, I wasn’t born a movie star."
The late, great Christopher Hitchens recalled his own bizarre meeting with Princess Margaret, writing, “I myself cannoned into her, flesh-tinted and well into the gin (her, I mean), as I entered a cocktail party. She was unescorted, and seized on me as a new arrival. ‘Know anything about China?’ she demanded. I truly did not know whether she meant porcelain or the Middle Kingdom, and was very grateful for whatever rescue eventuated. There she was, I mean to say, going around the place letting in daylight on magic like billy-oh.”
“Once, at a Chelsea party given by the artist Rory McEwen, the Beatle George Harrison, having just been arrested, charged, and bailed for possessing drugs, came dashing up to the Princess. ‘Guess what?’ he exclaimed, ‘We’ve been busted. [The police] planted a big block of hash in my bedroom closet,’” wrote Aronson.

“How terrible,” murmured the Princess diplomatically.

But Harrison was after more than her sympathy. “Do you think you might get the charges dropped?” he asked.

“I don't really think so. It could become a little sticky. Sorry, George.”

Hollywood superagent Sue Mengers threw a party for Princess Margaret at her Los Angeles home in 1979, attended by Sean Connery,Jack Nicholson,Anjelica Huston,John Travolta, Farrah Fawcett, Robin Williams, and Barry Manilow, among others. According to Mengers’s memoirCan I Go Now?: The Life of Sue Mengers, Hollywood’s First Superagent, Nicholson pulled Margaret aside, in an act of partygoer hospitality, and offered her cocaine. Mengers, who was hoping to get an invitation to Buckingham Palace, was enraged.

Though she did not accept Nicholson’s offer, Princess Margaret is said to have stayed at the party until after midnight, dancing repeatedly with Travolta, who was 24 years her junior.

Mengers later told Vanity Fair, that the party was a disaster—“Every time she looked my way I curtsied. I was curtsying all night! She thought I was an idiot.”

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“While Princess Margaret was attending a high-society party in New York, the hostess asked her politely how the Queen was keeping,” reported The Telegraph. “‘Which one?’ she is said to have replied with her typically razor-sharp wit. ‘My sister, my mother, or my husband?’”
“When she dropped her coat at another function, the story goes that a man immediately offered to pick it up,” writes The Daily Beast. “Margaret’s response: ‘No. I’ll never remember where it is if you move it.’”
Recalling a dinner in Los Angeles that Princess Margaret attended with singer Linda Ronstadt and her then-boyfriend, California Governor Jerry Brown, Aronson wrote:

As the Princess’s table was served first, Miss Ronstadt strolled over and, standing behind the Governor’s chair, asked, ‘What are we having to start?’ She then leaned over with the intention of taking a piece of food off his plate in order to taste it. In doing so, she not only put one hand on the Governor’s shoulder, but she also put the other on the Princess’s shoulder. ‘I have seen people shrug many times,’ says Michael Caine, who was watching, ‘but the Princess’s shoulder shrugged like a punch from a boxer and with almost the same effect on Miss Ronstadt. She almost overbalanced and fell on the floor. At no point did Her Royal Highness even look up.

Full ScreenPhotos:Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon’s 18 Stylish Years of Marriage, in Photos

1960

Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, a fashion photographer who rode a motorbike, announced their engagement on the grounds of the Royal Lodge on February 27, 1960.Photo: From Getty Images.

1960

The Queen had her corgis, but Princess Margaret had her King Charles Spaniel, Rowley.Photo: From Central Press/Getty Images.

1960

The two were married in Westminster Abbey on May 6. Princess Margaret wore Norman Hartnell, couturier to the royals, and the Poltimore Tiara.Photo: From Bettmann Collection.

1960

Princess Margaret and Armstrong-Jones, now referred to as Lord Snowdon, return from their honeymoon in the Caribbean.Photo: From Daily Mail/REX/Shutterstock.

1970

Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon once again at the Badminton Horse Trials.Photo: From Fox Photos/Getty Images.

1971

Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon head out from the airport on their way to Canada. They opened the Winnipeg Art Gallery, which is still open today.Photo: From Popperfoto/Getty Images.