Princess Margaret dies 71

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This article was published 09/02/2002 (8898 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LONDON — Princess Margaret, the once jet-set sister of the Queen who later in life was afflicted with poor health, died this morning after suffering a stroke. She was 71.

Buckingham Palace said Margaret died at 6:30 a.m. local time at King Edward VII Hospital in London.

The princess suffered a stroke yesterday afternoon — the latest in a series of strokes — at Kensington Palace but was moved to the hospital at 2:30 a.m. after developing cardiac problems.

Her children, Lord Linley and Lady Sarah Chatto, were with her when she died, the statement from the Palace said. Funeral announcements have not yet been made.

“Lord Linley and Lady Sarah were with her and the Queen was kept fully informed throughout the night,” the statement said.

The vibrant, fun-loving princess was a heavy smoker for many years and had suffered repeated respiratory illnesses. She had part of a lung removed in January 1985.

She had her first stroke, a mild one, in February 1998. She was last seen in public before Christmas at a 100th birthday party for Princess Alice, the Dowager Duchess of Gloucester.

When she was seen in public in recent months, she was always in a wheelchair, her legs often wrapped in a blanket, wearing heavy dark glasses because her sight had been affected by a stroke she had last March.

The Queen left Sandringham, her Norfolk estate, yesterday and travelled to Windsor Castle where she remained in touch with developments.

The Queen Mother, who at 101 is recovering from a persistent cold, stayed on at Sandringham.

Margaret’s death comes close to the 50th anniversary of the death of her father, King George VI, who died Feb. 6, 1952.

Her death will cast a pall over this year’s Golden Jubilee celebrations for the Queen, who embarks on a countrywide tour this year to mark her 50th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

The Queen is scheduled to visit Jamaica, New Zealand and Australia later this month as part of her Golden Jubilee celebration. She will visit Canada in the fall and will be in Winnipeg in October.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair paid his respects to the Royal Family on his plane on the way to Sierra Leone after receiving the news.

“I’m deeply saddened to hear of the death of Princess Margaret,” he said. “My thoughts are with the Queen, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and the rest of the Royal Family at this time.”

The flag at Buckingham Palace flew at half-mast this morning and a small crowd of people gathered at the palace gates to read the notice of Margaret’s death.

Unlike her sister the Queen, Princess Margaret was an infrequent visitor to Canada. The princess came to Manitoba for an official visit in 1974 to mark Winnipeg’s Centennial.

She was 17 when she embarked on her first major tour to South Africa in 1947. Subsequently, she visited Canada and was named colonel-in-chief of the Highland Light Infantry of Canada.

During her first visit, in 1958, she visited seven provinces, beginning with British Columbia which was celebrating its centennial as a British colony.

While in Vancouver, she caused a minor stir by dancing and chatting with John Turner, then a young lawyer and later Liberal prime minister of Canada.
The press noted the pair talked for over an hour after their three dances at a ball given in her honour.

It was 30 years until Princess Margaret returned to visit Nova Scotia and Ontario, where she attended the 129th running of the Queen’s Plate at Toronto’s Woodbine Racetrack. She presented jockey Jack Lauzon with the victor’s trophy.

She returned to Toronto in November 1993 for a four-day visit that included an hour-long walkabout at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.

In the 1950s at the age of 22, Margaret began an ill-fated romance with the dashing Group Capt. Peter Townsend, a hero of the Battle of Britain and a former aide to her father who was many years her senior.

The affair made headlines around the world because Townsend was divorced, which doomed any real chance of marriage between the two following the scandalous abdication of King Edward VIII.

The King had given up the throne to his brother, Elizabeth and Margaret’s father, to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. In the Church of England, which the monarch heads, the remarriage of a divorced person is forbidden.

In October 1955, Margaret announced that she would not marry Townsend, saying she was “mindful of the church’s teachings that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth.”

Margaret blamed the queen’s private secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles, for campaigning against her. He retired to an apartment at Kensington Palace, where Margaret lived, and she was heard to say when he walked by, “There goes the man who ruined my life.”

It was the first of many relationships Margaret was to have that would cause headlines. She was destined to be unlucky in love.

Margaret married the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, later to become Lord Snowdon, in 1960. The marriage ended in divorce 18 years later, making Margaret the first member of the Queen’s immediate family to be divorced. She would never remarry.

Margaret and her sister had opposing personalities, even as children.
Elizabeth, as first in line to the throne, carried the burden of responsibility that came with her position with great dignity. Margaret was the vivacious one, free of the royal duties bestowed on her sister.
Nevertheless, the sisters were extremely close, as Margaret once mention in an interview.

“In our family,” she said, “we don’t have rifts. We have a jolly good row and then it’s all over. And I’ve only twice ever had a row with my sister.”
Still, Margaret insisted on a royal formality in many of their relationships, never letting people forget she was the daughter of a monarch. Even her close friends had to call her “Ma’am,” although members of the family were said to get away with “Margot.”

Crossing the line would mean risking Margaret’s famous blue-eyed “acid drop” stare, which she once described as “a defence mechanism” that she didn’t even realize she was using.

Margaret and Elizabeth became larger public figures when their uncle abdicated, making their father, then the Duke of York, the king. He was ill-prepared for the throne, and uncomfortable in public, partly because he stuttered badly.

At the age of six, Margaret lamented her sister’s path as first in line to the throne.

“Does that mean you’re going to be Queen?” she reportedly asked her sister. “Poor you.”

Margaret was known to love music and frequented nightclubs. She was a great supporter of the arts, particularly the opera and dance.

She was pictured in clubs, smoking from her trademark long cigarette holder.
After meeting Margaret, legendary jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong expressed to reporters how taken he was with her.

“Your Princess Margaret is one hip chick,” he said.
Margaret was 30 when she married Armstrong-Jones on May 6, 1960. Their first child, David, was born on Nov. 3, 1961. Lady Sarah was born May 1, 1964.

By the early 1970s, the marriage was beset by rumours of infidelity and the two went their separate ways.

In 1973, the princess, then 43, met Roderic “Roddy” Llewellyn, a man of no apparent means and 17 years her junior. They were romantically linked for half a dozen years, and the publication of a photograph of them together on the Caribbean island of Mustique — where she often vacationed — was followed by announcement of the Snowdons’ formal separation.

The marriage was dissolved in May 1978. There was little scandal by this time as the public expressed sympathy for the princess who hadn’t been allowed to marry her first true love.

— Canadian Press