Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
August 21, 1930 – February 9, 2002
British princess, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, whose romance with Peter Townsend and marriage to Antony Armstrong-Jones drew wide public attention.
Biography
Princess Margaret was born at Glamis Castle in Scotland in 1930, the younger daughter of the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and the only sibling of Elizabeth II. She was educated at home with her sister by a governess. When her uncle Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 and her father became king, she became second in line to the throne. During the Second World War she remained at Windsor Castle.
After her father's death in 1952, Margaret's romance with the RAF officer Peter Townsend, her father's former equerry, became a public controversy, and she ended it in 1955 under pressure from the government and the Church. She took on a growing round of official duties and became president or patron of many charities.
In 1960 she married the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, later Earl of Snowdon, at Westminster Abbey; they had two children, David and Sarah, and divorced in 1978. Her glamorous social life and later relationships kept her in the press. A heavy smoker, she suffered a series of strokes from 1998 and died in London in 2002.
Family
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon
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