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CNN Saturday Morning News
Princess Margaret Dies in Her Sleep
Aired February 09, 2002 - 07:02 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: As we said, Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth's younger sister, has died in London. She had been in poor health for a number of years. Buckingham Palace says Princess Margaret died in her sleep at a London hospital with her children at her side.
CNN's Margaret Lowry takes a look at her life.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARGARET LOWRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In many ways, it was a life on the sidelines. Princess Margaret Rose, born in 1930, youngest daughter of the man who would be king, George VI, sister of a girl who would one day be queen.
JANE MOORE, BRITISH JOURNALIST: She very much kept herself to herself. She had a very close circle of friends that she trusted. She had her regular villa that she visited on Mustique. She tended to go to the same places that she knew. And I think she managed, I think she would have said herself, that she managed to live a fairly guarded life.
LOWRY: Guarded, perhaps, but if not always in the limelight, she nonetheless was never entirely out of the public eye -- a regal, sometimes imperious player on the royal stage.
MOORE: She loved going out to parties, and she was recognizably the more attractive royal as well. She was very beautiful when she was younger. And she had a great sense of humor and a great sense of fun.
LOWRY: In the '60s and '70s, Margaret moved in arty, upper-crust circles at home, a jet-setter on the international scene, a heavy smoker and drinker, a party princess. To many, if sister Elizabeth, the queen, seemed self-sacrificing, Margaret often appeared simply self-indulging.
INGRID SEWARD, EDITOR, "MAJESTY" MAGAZINE: She very much set a trend for royals behaving badly. And then, of course, in later life, she came to despise both Fergie and Diana for the way they carried on. But in fact, she was the one that started the trend. I mean, she -- there was nothing she didn't do, and she -- as a result, she experienced some great unhappiness. LOWRY: Perhaps Margaret's greatest unhappiness came from her love affair with then-Group Captain Peter Townsend. Their doomed romance gripped the nation. They couldn't marry, government ministers ruled. Townsend was divorced.
Two decades earlier, history had provided a costly object lesson when Margaret's uncle, King Edward VIII, married divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. He lost not just crown but country. Margaret chose differently.
SEWARD: She felt very bitter about her failed romance. I think she felt bitter that she wasn't allowed to marry the man that she loved, but she wasn't prepared to give up being Princess Margaret. There was an alternative. She could renounce her rights, and she could renounce her money, and -- but she's also very religious, and she would -- I think that was the real guiding light that decided her.
LOWRY: A decision that won the nation's sympathy.
MOORE: People love a good love story, and that's what that was, and I think people felt that she'd been hard done by, in that her duty to the royal family, she couldn't marry the man she loved.
LOWRY: The man she did marry in 1960 was society photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones. Perhaps ironically, it ended in divorce. But their union produced David and Sarah, now grown and married themselves, leading relatively low-profile lives.
MOORE: But they're two of the royal children that have managed to balance knowing what their duty is as a member of the royal family, but also managed to bring it into modern times and earn their own living, which is something that has earned them great respect.
LOWRY: Princess Margaret's life too become lower and lower profile in her later years, and although various health scares as well as an accident in which she severely scalded her feet made headlines, she managed to keep largely out of public view.
As one writer recalled, "She was like Mustique, the Caribbean island she so enjoyed, small, remote, and known only to a few."
SEWARD: They always felt so sorry for her that she was never allowed to marry the man she loved, so it was a romantic feeling that life had dealt her a bad blow. But in fact, I don't think that's totally correct. I mean, she -- Princess Margaret had a very nice life. She had a lot of friends, she traveled a lot. She didn't have too arduous royal duties.
LOWRY: Some saw her as demanding, with little sense of humor, a royal who wanted to be treated like one. She had little use for spin doctors or opinion polls, no great believer in photo-ops, though she did her bit for the family when necessary, and kept to herself when not.
Less a hostage to fortune, perhaps, than an accomplice to her own destiny. Margaret Lowry, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Right now it is a little past noon in London, so most of Britain has probably heard the news about Princess Margaret's death.
CNN's Richard Quest joins us live now from outside Buckingham Palace. Hello, Richard.
RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, an organization that is well used to being in the spotlight, that's probably the best way to describe the royal family. But even by their terms, this week has been an extraordinary event.
First of all, we had, of course, the queen's Golden Jubilee, the official date on which her majesty came to the throne. That was earlier in the week, when her -- the anniversary of her father, King George VI, passing away.
And then just as the queen is getting ready to go abroad for a major trip to Jamaica, New Zealand, and Australia, part of her constitutional duties as head of the British Commonwealth, so now indeed she's faced with great sadness.
What we know, Miles, is that yesterday evening, Princess Margaret suffered a stroke while at Sandringham. From there, she was moved to King Edward VII Hospital, and it was as a result of cardiac problems during the night that it became clear things were very grave indeed.
Her two children, Lord Viscount Lynley and Lady Sarah, both brought to her bedside, and at 6:30 this morning, peacefully in her sleep, Princess Margaret passed away.
The queen, who was at Sandringham with the queen mother -- who, incidentally, is not well herself -- the queen moved to Windsor Castle to be closer to, obviously, events here in central London.
This morning her majesty the queen came back to Buckingham Palace. The flag is now flying above the palace at half-mast as the meetings are taking place, Miles (audio interrupt) exact nature, the exact form that the funeral will take, because on the one hand, it is obviously a major royal event in British life, but on the other hand, it's not a state occasion.
Still, there are dignitaries, friends and family, all of whom have to be ensured that they can be here in London for the funeral next week -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Richard, heretofore, the talk in Great Britain has been, well, a bit of apathy over the 50th jubilee for the queen. How might this affect public opinion about the royals in general, particularly at this time?
QUEST: Well, I think you have to remember, Miles, that Princess Margaret has been an ill woman for a very long time, back to 1985, when she had part of her lung removed as a result of cancer treatment. Throughout the '90s, there were stories, of course, of strokes, there was the time in '99 when she scalded her feet in the bath in hot water at her holiday home at Mustique in the Caribbean.
So the fact -- and people were shocked in -- last -- two years ago, when last year, when we saw pictures of her at the queen mother's 101st birthday celebrations. She was in a wheelchair, her face was puffy, she was wearing dark glasses, and her arm was in a sling.
So the fact that the queen -- that the Princess Margaret has passed away is not a total surprise. But still, there will be great sadness.
O'BRIEN: CNN's Richard Quest, outside Buckingham Palace. Thank you very much.
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