The Queen’s late sister Princess Margaret’s tumultuous love life has captivated the world ever since her failed engagement to Group Captain Peter Townsend, with the first two seasons of The Crown focussing heavily on her love affairs with both Townsend and her husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones.
In upcoming seasons three and four, there will be more romance in store for Margaret, including her affair with landscape gardener Roddy Llewellyn. Now, it has been revealed that the Queen approved of the tryst, which made her sister so happy.
The news comes after Lady Anne Glenconner revealed an exchange between herself and the Queen at Margaret’s funeral for new documentary, Elizabeth: Our Queen.
According to the Daily Mail, she said: ‘After Princess Margaret’s funeral, the Queen, she said, ‘I’d just like to say, Anne, it was rather difficult at moments, but I thank you so much [for] introducing Princess Margaret to Roddy because he made her really happy. It was difficult for the Queen, and I felt rather guilty always having introduced Roddy to Princess Margaret.’
The affair lasted for eight years and ended in 1981 when Llewellyn married Tatiana Soskin, but they remained friends afterwards. The couple met through friends in Mustique in the 1970s, with many remarking that he was her ‘type’. The relationship caused some scandal in the tabloids at the time, not only for being an affair, but also because of the 17-year age gap between them.
According to Craig Brown’s biography of Margaret, Ma’am Darling, Llewellyn had his sights firmly set on the princess, and engineered a romance between them.