Did Queen Elizabeth Really Stop Her Sister From Marrying The Love Of Her Life?
WRITTEN BY SUMI DEKA
The latest season of The Crown featured romantic frustrations and failures in the British Royal Family. One of them was about Princess Margaret.
Princess Margaret is Queen Elizabeth’s sister and the show portrays Margaret as stopping her sister for not allowing her to marry her true love.
Margaret and Peter Townsend, a former Battle of Britain pilot, fell in love when he was an equerry first to George VI and Elizabeth II. He divorced his wife in 1952 and proposed to Margaret.
But the Queen had to allow for the marriage under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. Margaret and Townsend were told to wait for two years until she was 25.
However, the Queen still refused to give permission but a compromise was worked out. The government was now under Anthony Eden who was divorced and later remarried.
Anthony pledged to amend the Act to remove Margaret and her children from the succession. So the Queen’s permission was unnecessary now and the Queen agreed to a change in the Act.
Apart from opposing her sister’s marriage, the Queen’s attitude was summed up by Eden in a letter to Commonwealth prime ministers. The letter stated that Her Majesty would not stand in the way of her sister’s happiness.
However, the princess announced in 1955 that she would not marry Townsend. According to a letter found in the files, the Princess was possibly not so determined to tie the knot.