Princess Margaret: The Decision That Came 47 Years Too Late

On the thirty-first of October 1955, Princess Margaret released a statement from Clarence House. It read, in part: mindful of the Church's teachings that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before any others.

She was twenty-five years old. She was ending her relationship with Group Captain Peter Townsend, a man she genuinely loved, because the Church of England would not permit her to marry a divorced person whose former spouse was still living.

In July 2002, the General Synod of the Church of England voted to allow the remarriage of divorced persons in church. The vote was two hundred and sixty-nine in favour, eighty-three against.

Princess Margaret had died in February 2002. Five months before the vote. Forty-seven years after the statement.

This is the story of what duty cost her. Not the Townsend story you already know. The specific, documented, devastating detail that most people have never been told.

In this Princess Margaret documentary, we explore:
• Her childhood as the younger daughter of King George VI, and how the abdication of Edward VIII changed everything when she was six years old
• Her relationship with Group Captain Peter Townsend and the three years they spent trying to find a way to be together
• The precise wording of her 1955 statement and what it cost her to write it
• Her marriage to Antony Armstrong-Jones, the affairs, the divorce in 1978, and the press coverage that defined the public image of her later years
• The final years of her life, the strokes from 1998, the wheelchair at her mother's one hundred and first birthday, and her death on 9 February 2002
• The Church of England's General Synod vote of July 2002, five months after her death, forty-seven years after the decision that changed her life
• What the Queen said at Margaret's funeral, and what her eyes said that her words did not convey

Princess Margaret's story is one of the most well-known in modern royal history. This film tells the part of it that almost nobody knows. If you love royal history, British history, and the real stories behind the public image of the monarchy, History Roadshow is the channel for you.


A note on sources. This video draws on the most recent historical scholarship, but history is never entirely settled. If you are curious about the debates around any of the claims made here, or want to dig deeper into the primary sources, drop a question in the comments, and I will do my best to point you in the right direction.

Timestamps
0:00 Intro
1:41 Price she paid for duty
3:48 The man
5:50 The Price
8:32 The life that followed
13:01 The final years