Margaret, Countess of Snowdon

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1965)

Personal coat of arms

Personal standard as a member of the royal family

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (born as Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret Rose of York , temporarily HRH The Princess Margaret ), CI , GCVO , from the House of Windsor (born August 21, 1930 at Glamis Castle , Scotland ; †  February 9, 2002 in London ) was the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II and daughter of King George VI. and Queen Elizabeth .

Life

Princess Elisabeth and Princess Margaret at the performance of Aladdin (1943)

Princess Margaret of York was born in Scotland on August 21, 1930 at Glamis Castle, the ancestral home of her mother's family, who was the daughter of the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne . At the time Margaret's grandfather George V was British King. Her father, who later became King George VI. , as the younger brother of Edward VIII, was second in line to the throne . After Edward VIII's abdication because of his marriage to Wallis Simpson in 1936, her father surprisingly became king. From then until her marriage in 1960 she had the title and name HRH The Princess Margaret.

Queen Mary in May 1939 with her granddaughters Margaret (center) and Elisabeth

Princess Margaret was second in line to the throne of Great Britain until the birth of her nephew Charles in 1948. She was raised together with her sister Crown Princess Elisabeth by governess Marion Crawford and private tutors. The two girls never attended regular school and grew up without playmates of the same age. During the Second World War the sisters stayed at Windsor Castle .

In the first half of the 1950s, Princess Margaret had a romance with Colonel Peter Townsend . He was divorced, so that according to the public opinion of the time, a royal wedding was out of the question. However, according to documents published in 2004, she could have kept her titles and the grant from the civil list if she married . However, in 1955, she decided to end the relationship.

In 1960 Princess Margaret married the well-known photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones , who was made Earl of Snowdon the following year by her sister, who had been Queen since 1952 . With him she had two children, David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley , and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones.

Due to their very different personalities, the marriage was subject to great stress from the beginning. In later years, extramarital affairs made matters worse on both sides. The princess regularly spent her vacations - mostly without her husband - on Mustique , an island in the Grenadines in the Caribbean, where she owned a vacation home. The land was a wedding present from the then owner of the island, Margaret's childhood friend Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner (Lord Glenconner). Princess Margaret was considered sociable and artistically interested, sang and played the piano. Especially in the 1960s and 1970s, she was in private contact with Mick Jagger , David Niven and Peter Sellers . Princess Margaret divorced in 1978 after a two-year separation and did not enter into a new marriage.

In the last years of her life, Princess Margaret suffered from illnesses. In 1998 she suffered a minor stroke , and a short time later a fall followed, which permanently impaired her mobility. Further strokes followed in 2000 and 2001, and she was now permanently dependent on a wheelchair. She made her last public appearance in December 2001 on the 100th birthday of her aunt Alice, Duchess of Gloucester .

Princess Margaret died in a London hospital on February 9, 2002 after another major stroke. At his own request, she received a cremation in the crematorium Slough . Her urn was buried in her parents' grave in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle . At the time of her death, she was the eleventh successor to the British throne behind the descendants of her sister Elisabeth.

tasks

Princess Margaret, 1965

Princess Margaret appeared in public alongside her parents at an early age, for example at her father's coronation . Since the late 1950s, she has regularly performed public tasks for Queen Elizabeth II. This also included trips abroad, especially in Commonwealth countries.

She has also been the patron of a variety of organizations in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Her focus was on music , ballet and charities. She was President of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (comparable to the German Child Protection Association ).

Like almost all members of the royal family, Princess Margaret was Colonel of Honor in a large number of units in all branches of the armed forces in the United Kingdom and in other Commonwealth of Nations.

Aftermath

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon

Princess Margaret was considered one of the most colorful personalities of the House of Windsor in her day. Because of her unsteady and scandalous way of life, her life story continues to attract the interest of the British press even after her death. 2006 their children left the large jewels - and Preziosensammlung the princess on the auction house Christie's auction, scoring a double-digit million range; the proceeds were supposed to partially cover the high inheritance tax incurred and to go to the British stroke aid. It was the first time in history that the jewelry of the sister of a reigning monarch was publicly auctioned.

In Canada , the memory of Princess Margaret is particularly cherished: In Fredericton in the province of New Brunswick , a bridge over the Saint John River bears her name. In Toronto , the renowned teaching and research hospital was cancer therapy specialized Princess Margaret Hospital under the auspices of her niece Princess Anne named after her in 1958, as well as the hospital carrying Foundation Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation . There is also a Princess Margaret Hospital named after her in the Bahamas (acute hospital), in Hong Kong (acute hospital with a focus on nephrology and urology ) and in Perth, Western Australia (children's hospital) . On the Grenadine island of Bequia , a neighboring island of Mustique , a bay near Port Elisabeth where she is said to have swum is called Princess Margaret Bay .

Numerous biographies of Princess Margaret have appeared in English; no current translations into German are available.

progeny

The marriage between Princess Margaret Rose and Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowdon, on May 6, 1960, had two children:

1. David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon , (born November 3, 1961 in London), has been married to The Honorable Serena Alleyne Stanhope (born May 1, 1970 in Limerick , Ireland ) since October 8, 1993 . You have two children. The furniture designer known as David Linley and his children occupy positions 21 to 23 in the line of succession.
   1. Charles Patrick Inigo Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley (born July 1, 1999)
   2. Lady Margarita Elizabeth Rose Alleyne Armstrong-Jones (born May 14, 2002)
2. The Lady Sarah Frances Elizabeth Chatto, née Armstrong-Jones (born May 1, 1964 in London) has been married to the actor and artist Daniel Chatto St. George Sproule (born April 22, 1957) since July 14, 1994 . They have two sons together. Lady Sarah and her sons are number 24 to 26 of the line of succession.
   1. Samuel David Benedict Chatto (born July 28, 1996)
   2. Arthur Robert Nathaniel Chatto (born February 5, 1999 in London)

title

• Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret of York (August 21, 1930 - December 11, 1936)
• Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret (December 11, 1936 - October 3, 1961)
• Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (October 3, 1961 - February 9, 2002)

Orders and decorations

year	Country	Orders / decorations	class
1947	United Kingdom	The Imperial Order of the Crown of India	Companion
1948	Netherlands	Order of the Dutch Lion	Grand Cross
1953	United Kingdom	Royal Victorian Order	Lady Grand Cross
1956	United Kingdom	Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John	Lady Grand Cross
1956	Tanzania	Order of the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar	1st Class
1960	Belgium	Order of the Crown	Grand Cross
1965	Uganda	Order of the Crown, Lion and Spear of Toro Kingdom
1971	Japan	Order of the Noble Crown	1st Class
1990	United Kingdom	Royal Victorian Chain
N / A	United Kingdom	Royal Family Order of King George V
N / A	United Kingdom	Royal Family Order of King George VI
N / A	United Kingdom	Royal Family Order of Queen Elizabeth II

literature

• Theo Aronson: Princess Margaret. A biography . Regnery Pub., Washington DC 1997, ISBN 0-89526-409-9 .
• Craig Brown: Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2018, ISBN 978-0-374-90604-7

Web links

Commons : Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

• Official website (English)
• Newspaper article about Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Newsreel recording of Princess Margaret in 1954 while visiting the Royal Air Force in Oldenburg (Oldb) at britishpathe.com

Footnotes

1. ↑ Paul Reynolds: Margaret was offered marriage deal , BBC report of January 2, 2004 on Peter Townsend and Princess Margret, accessed September 27, 2010
2. ↑ British Royalty: Death of an Unhappy Princess . In: Spiegel Online . February 9, 2002 ( spiegel.de [accessed December 3, 2017]).
3. ^ Report in the Daily Mail about Princess Margret and Lord Glenconner , published August 30, 2010, accessed September 26, 2010
4. ↑ About the auction of Princess Margret's jewelry collection at art-perfect.de (German) , accessed on September 26, 2010
5. ^ Text and photos for Princess Margaret Bay ( memento of April 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on September 27, 2010
6. ↑ Princess Margaret, Honors. The British Monarchy, accessed February 25, 2010 . 
7. ^ Supplement to the London Gazette. (No longer available online.) The London Gazette, formerly the original ; Retrieved February 25, 2010 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.