Princess Margaret Was Furious With Diana For This Hypocritical Reason?

Princess Margaret was considered a progressive royal, one who hobnobbed with celebrities was outspoken and achieved the first royal divorce in some 400 years. Therefore it may seem a tad bit hypocritical for her to have been aghast at some of equally liberated Princess Diana’s behavior, given her penchant for breaking the royal mold?

Did Princess Diana break royal protocol by talking about her miserable marriage on television?

In 1995 The Princess of Wales infamously talked about her marriage to the BBC, telling all about her faltering union with Prince Charles.

It was a jaw-dropping interview, one that raised plenty of eyebrows and broke the rule on tell-all royal behavior. At the time Diana shockingly admitted to having had affairs.

She said she did so after discovering that her relationship with Charles was over long ago. Such a stunning admission saw an infuriated Queen Elizabeth demand that the troubled twosome ends their sham of a marriage and get a divorce.

Her Majesty Was Not The Only One Incensed By Diana’s Train Wreck Interview

But divorcee Princess Margaret was also livid at Diana’s behavior. According to royal watcher Victoria Arbiter, speaking in the documentary, Princess Margaret: Rebel without a Crown, “As far as Margaret was concerned, that was the ultimate act of betrayal. Margaret had had her own infidelities but you don’t talk about them in a public forum.”

Well if that was true, then maybe she had a point about Diana spilling her guts to the nation?

Diana Infuriated The Royal Family By Airing Their Dirty Laundry On Television

“You don’t air your dirty laundry and, more than that, you don’t throw the entire Royal Family, and with it the institution of monarchy, under the bus. She was furious,” Arbiter said.

Royal watcher Jenny Bond claims that Margaret was jealous of Diana as well as Sarah Ferguson. When the pair were suddenly, “the focus of all the press attention around the UK, she was plain jealous. She had been the belle of the ball, she had been the one people wanted to follow. So I think she was jealous and she was unsympathetic towards their behavior.”

There is another reason Margaret may have lashed out and that is that she herself made a very personal sacrifice to protect the Royal Family; it involved her choice of husband.

Margaret wanted to marry former royal equerry Peter Townsend but was forced to abandon her dream because the queen did not give her blessing. Instead, she married Antony Armstrong-Jones, a union which ended in divorce.