What The Crown Got Right About Princess Margaret's 70th Birthday
Amidst the numerous historic moments featured in The Crown's sixth and final season, one understated but sweet one may stand out to fans of Princess Margaret. In it, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth is feted at a royal birthday party at the Ritz. While it may have lacked the pomp and circumstance of the monarch's annual birthday celebration, Trooping the Colour, it was a particularly notable occasion as it marked the princess's 70th birthday.
Though Margaret reportedly spent her real 70th birthday quietly at Balmoral, the party in question did indeed happen, and the show managed to work in plenty of true details. As shown in the episode, the real life celebration followed a period of health woes for Margaret. The year before her milestone birthday, she scalded her feet in the bath while at her island getaway on Mustique, causing enough damage that she was bedridden and forced to eschew royal duties for months. She continued to suffer from mobility issues afterward, evidently stemming from the incident—she even attended the wedding of Prince Edward and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, in a wheelchair.
She had also, by 2000, already suffered a minor stroke—she would be diagnosed with more in the subsequent years—though whether that contributed in any way to her mobility problems is unclear.
Among the guests, of course, were Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, though there was no record of whether the queen really did give a speech at the private event. Margaret's children David Armstrong-Jones (known then as Viscount Linley, later the Earl of Snowdon)—who reportedly planned the party—Lady Sarah Chatto joined, along with David's wife at the time, Serena. Also on the guest list was Margaret's former flame, Roddy Llewellyn, with whom she made tabloid headlines during the 1970s, as portrayed in The Crown's third season.
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