Princess Margaret’s doomed relationship with Group Captain Peter Townsend has been documented—and dramatized—extensively through the decades. Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister wasn’t permitted to marry a divorced man and still retain her royal status, and after two years in limbo, made a public statement that she was choosing the Crown over love. But according to royal biographer Sarah Bradford, the drama surrounding the "Townsend affair" caused a rift between Margaret and the Queen Mother.
Margaret had fallen in love with her father’s much-older equerry, Townsend, who was a married man, but even after his divorce, it was made clear that the royal aide was an unsuitable match for the third-in-line to the throne. Townsend became comptroller of the Queen Mother’s household after King George VI’s death in 1952, and author Gyles Brandreth wrote that the relationship was swiftly denounced by courtiers when Margaret and Townsend approached Queen Elizabeth ahead of her coronation.
