The burns to her legs were not healing.” Because of another series of strokes, “The sight in one eye had gone and she had virtually lost all movement on her left side. By 2000, according to Heald, “It was widely reported that the Princess had lost the will to live. The following year, thanks to a faulty thermostat, the princess scalded her feet in the bathtub. Before Margaret died in 2002, her health declined over a number of years. Manville is in the midst of filming The Crown’s sixth and last season, which reportedly covers 1997 to 2001, a sad final chapter for the princess. (Shortly after Anne divorced her first husband, Mark Phillips, in 1992, she married Laurence, making her the first close relative of a British monarch to divorce and remarry.) In another scene, Margaret furiously confronts her sister about refusing her happiness by preventing her marriage to Townsend, speaking to the queen in a way that no other person likely could. In the episode, Margaret encourages Princess Anne ( Claudia Harrison) to pursue a romance with Timothy Laurence, a former aide to the queen. And how she feels about that, specifically in the light of the queen’s children enjoying a freedom that Margaret did not enjoy-a freedom in terms of who they can be with.” It also reminds her about what she was denied and how her life might have taken a different route if she’d have been able to marry him. Of course they have this great evening together and she’s very spirited-singing, messing around, and telling jokes-and he’s witnessing that and thinking of all the life that maybe he hasn’t had. Just seeing them look at each other-that pool of memory and that wealth of love and emotion that they shared together when they were younger is suddenly remembered by both of them,” the actor says over Zoom. “Then, walking back into the apartment, the Princess turned to her private secretary and said words to the effect that he was just as she remembered him except that his hair had turned grey.” “Afterwards, as Townsend drove away, she waved goodbye with a pocket handkerchief,” wrote Heald. According to Tim Heald’s Princess Margaret: A Life Unraveled, Townsend was joined by two longtime friends-one of whom “recalled that it was a strange and mildly embarrassing meal as the Princess and Townsend talked quietly and intimately together while the other guests conversed among themselves and pretended that the effectively private conversation taking place in their midst was the most natural thing in the world.” Christopher Warwick’s biography Princess Margaret: A Life of Contrasts claims that Townsend and the princess followed lunch with a walk through the gardens. The real-life reunion between the princess and Townsend occurred at Kensington Palace over lunch in the summer of 1992. But the ball must come to a close-and after hours of singing, dancing, and luxuriating in familiar warm feelings-Townsend pierces their dreamy bubble by handing over the love letters she wrote him, a gesture of finality and closure. During the scene, Margaret-who has been hardened by years of heartbreak-suddenly softens, genuine joy and delight filling her face in a way it hasn’t since season one. The former lovers reunite at a reception at London’s Caledonian Club, where Margaret smokes from her trademark long cigarette, steals looks at her former fiancé, and shares one final dance with him. Margaret, meanwhile, now played by the Oscar nominee Lesley Manville, hears from Townsend ( Timothy Dalton) for the first time since breaking off their engagement some 40 years before. In season five’s “Annus Horribilis,” which is devoted to that famously bad year of 1992 for British royals, Queen Elizabeth ( Imelda Staunton) finds herself white-knuckling through three of her four children’s separations or divorces, each accompanied by its own tabloid scandal. Princess Margaret’s tragic romance with Peter Townsend may have been one of The Crown’s best early story lines-two young lovers prevented from living happily ever after because Townsend’s status as a divorcé clashed with the queen’s enforcement of the Church of England’s rules.
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