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Princess Margaret, played by Helena Bonham Carter, has a less prominent role in season four of The Crown, but she still has her moments in the limelight.
One of those moments comes in 1985, when he has a great health problem; another comes when she is forced to face her own melancholy and poor mental health.
Here’s the full story behind those stories at The Crown.
What was wrong with Margaret’s lungs?
As her friend Anne Glenconner, formerly Anne Tennant, says in her autobiography: “Princess Margaret had been in constant decline since 1985, when part of her lung was removed.” (Anne is played by Nancy Carroll in The Crown and appears in many scenes in Mustique.)
On January 6, 1985, she underwent surgery to remove part of her left lung. “It seemed as if history was about to repeat itself,” writes its authorized biographer Christopher Warwick. “It was certainly true that the specter of his father’s final illness, and his operation at the same age for the removal of a cancerous left lung, was the most important thing in the minds of many people.” (King George VI, played by Jared Harris in The Crown, had his diseased lung removed in 1951, but died the following year.)
We don’t know if Margaret went to the doctor after coughing into a tissue, looking down, and seeing that it was stained with blood (that old trope from the movie). But we do know that, at the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, surgeons made an incision from the shoulder to the waist and removed a section of the lung.
However, to everyone’s relief, the section of lung they removed was found completely “innocent.”
What other health problems did Margaret have?
Not many to begin with. In 1978 she became seriously ill with hepatitis and then viral pneumonia, but Christopher Warwick insists: “Although it was true that she was less robust than her mother or sister, she had never been as susceptible to the disease as some, especially in the United States. . press, seemed to insist. “
On February 7, 1980, after being admitted to the hospital to have a skin lesion removed, Princess Margaret wrote humorously in a private letter to a fellow Margaret, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: “I am writing to you belatedly. to thank you for your kind letter. I just had to get a few things out of my face, but luckily everything went well and we didn’t worry. ” She followed this up with thoughts and questions about the political events of the day.
But Margaret’s lung health was more concerning.
The princess was an utterly relentless smoker. Derek Jacobi once recalled: “She smoked continuously, she didn’t even put out her cigarette when the soup arrived, but leaned it against the ashtray.” Reports of her nonstop smoking are everywhere; he smoked about 60 cigarettes a day.
For the next several years, Margaret continued to live large. Anne Glenconner writes about staying with her at Kensington Palace for most of 1990, her lunches at the Ritz, her shopping trips, and her long night drinking sessions. Then there were song afternoons while Margaret played the piano, and charades, puzzles, and dancing.
Then, in early 1993, she was admitted to the hospital for five days, suffering from pneumonia. Warwick writes, “It was enough to make her find the will and determination to quit smoking once and for all.”
In 1994, Princess Margaret suffered a stroke at a friend’s house in Mustique, although she may have been experiencing minor strokes in the previous months. Over the next several years he had several small strokes and in 2002 he died in hospital after suffering a last stroke.
Did Margaret go to therapy for mental health problems?
Margaret went to therapy during her marriage to Tony Armstrong Jones (played by Ben Daniels in season three). Christopher Warwick’s book notes: “They certainly sought the help of a prominent Harley Street psychologist in an attempt to fix things between themselves.” Unfortunately, it was not a success.
Craig Brown’s book Ma’am Darling also mentions a solo trip, a one-time trip to see a consulting psychiatrist attached to Westminster Hospital (Dr. Peter Dally) after Tony convinced her to seek psychiatric help in 1966. .
It’s a lot harder to find any information about Margaret seeing a counselor after the divorce, as dramatized in The Crown, but who knows, maybe she paid a private visit.
Did Margaret keep going to Mustique?
During their marriage, visiting their home in Mustique offered Margaret “a break from her husband,” as Anne Glenconner puts it.
And after their 1978 divorce, Margaret continued to see Roddy (that is, for the first two years of The Crown season four). They were frequent visitors to the island of Mustique, but in early 1981 Roddy told Margaret that he planned to marry another woman. And that was the end of it.
Margaret continued to go to Mustique, but later passed the house over to her son David, who rented it in high season as a vacation rental, so she limited herself to visiting her old refuge only when it was free from tourists.
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