Former aide reveals Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother’s “strained relationship”
While it may seem as though the details of the Royal Family’s life is information readily available at the public’s disposal, it can be difficult to really know what goes on behind closed doors.
However, it has become a custom for a former employee or insider to come forward with interesting information we might not have guessed without their stories or experiences.
This has been the case with Queen Elizabeth’s longtime dresser, Angela Kelly, and more recently Lady Anne Glenconner in her new memoir.
Glenconner served as a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret for many years and developed a close relationship, she described in Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown.
In her own words, Glenconner described personal experiences and interactions she shared serving under and alongside the Royal Family.
In the memoir, the former lady-in-waiting spoke on Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother, who buy her own accounts, “had a slightly strained relationship.”
"Those weekends at Royal Lodge were always fun, despite the bouts of bickering between the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret,” she said, per Express
"One would do things like open all the windows, only for the other to go around shutting them. Or one would suggest an idea and the other would dismiss it immediately."
Glenconner speculated they didn’t get along all the time because they might have been “too similar.”
“...I don’t think it is an unusual predicament for a mother and daughter," she wrote.
Referring to the family’s loss of King George VI, and the “figurative” loss of Queen Elizabeth, who assumed the throne after her father died, Glenconner said: "And while they had been part of a foursome originally, they were left as the spare pair, to a certain extent."
The former royal employee also wrote about a conversation she shared with Princess Margaret.
After noting the royal looked upset at her sister’s coronation, the Princess replied: "Of course I looked sad, Anne.
“I had just lost my beloved father and, really, I had just lost my sister, because she was going to be so busy and had already moved to Buckingham Palace, so it was just me and the Queen Mother."
Scroll through the gallery to see Princess Margaret with the Queen Mother throughout the years of their life.