David S. Paton CC BY-SA 3.0
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdown, was the sister of Queen Elizabeth II and perhaps one of the “rebels” of the Royal Family. During the 1950s and 60s, Margaret struggled as the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to allow her to marry a divorced man. Eventually, she married Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960. Ultimately, it all contributed to her years of heavy drinking and smoking and her struggle with mental health.
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As depicted in Netflix’s The Crown, Margaret was known to go to parties often and was a heavy drinker and smoker. When she wasn’t on one of her many trips to the Caribbean, Margaret called Kensington Palace home. She lived in Apartment 1A, now the current London base of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
To go along with her drinking and smoking, Margaret’s servants and ladies-in-waiting were required to keep her ashtrays empty after three cigarette butts. They were also prohibited from letting her scotch glass run out of ice. Though her father, King George VI, died of lung disease from smoking, Margaret generally smoked more than 60 cigarettes a day. She was also known to be frequently depressed.
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According to Andrew Morton’s biography, Elizabeth & Marget: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters, at one point, her friends were so concerned for the Princess that they allegedly bugged her home. Her marriage began to collapse in the 1970s, and before the divorce, it was reported that the Princess was suicidal. The 1960 marriage started well, but by the next decade, they were leading separate lives. In 1978, the marriage ended, and so did a 400-year-old taboo on divorce within the Royal Family. Margaret would never remarry.
Some of the couple’s troubles include when Armstrong-Jones refused to speak to Margaret and spied on her through a hole in the wall. This is in addition to insulting notes he left for her. In 1974, Margaret suffered a breakdown when her friends arranged to bug a room where Margaret and Armstrong-Jones had a confrontation. That tape was sent anonymously to a psychiatrist who said: “This lady needs help soon.”
During that breakdown, some royal observers say it was a suicide attempt when the Princess took a handful of sedatives. She told her official biographer, Christopher Warwick: “I was so exhausted because of everything, that all I wanted to do was sleep.
“And I did, right through to the following afternoon.”
Other reported incidents for the Princess include in January 1967 when she hosted a party and called a friend late that evening. During that call, she threatened to throw herself out the bedroom window unless that friend came over.
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Through her later years, Margaret had several health problems. In 1985, she had part of her left lung removed. Ironically, this surgery was similar to the one her father had done 34 years earlier. By 1991, she gave up smoking but continued to drink heavily. In the 90s, she was hospitalised for pneumonia and suffered a mild stroke. She had a couple more strokes through the years before she died on 9 February 2002. The day before her death, she had another stroke followed by cardiac problems. She was 71 at the time of her death.