Queen's Sister Said She 'Lost' Monarch on Coronation Day: 'Sad'

Princess Margaret said the reason she looked so "sad" in video footage from Queen Elizabeth II's coronation was because it meant that she "really lost " her sister, a friend and former lady-in-waiting has revealed.

Lady Anne Glenconner, a longstanding courtier who was a maid of honor at the 1953 coronation and remained close to Margaret throughout her life, recently discussed the royals in an address at the Oxford Union.

Glenconner described her duties at the coronation, which involved holding Elizabeth's train and following her from Westminster Abbey to the balcony of Buckingham Palace, before revealing that she noticed Princess Margaret looking "so sad" in archive footage from the day.

"Long afterwards," she said, "I saw a private film that [the queen] had made of various things [to do with the coronation] and there was she looking happy, and us and the Queen Mother, looking wonderful as she always did, and the Duke of Edinburgh, and then behind them was Princess Margaret looking really sad."

"I said to her, 'I've seen this film ma'am, you look so sad,' and she said, 'yes, of course I was. I lost my beloved father...and I've really lost my sister because she's going to be so busy, and I've got to go and live with my mother!'"

Margaret, who had a reputation as the wild child of the royal family in her early years, was 21 when her father King George VI died in 1952. Her sister, Elizabeth, then became queen.

Until her father's death, the princess had been living at Buckingham Palace with her parents. However, after her sister became queen, she moved to Clarence House with the Queen Mother, where she was reported to have felt isolated.

"She was a really wonderful friend to me," Glenconner said of the princess, before revealing that in her final years the royal declined seeing male friends after illness affected her famous looks.

"She loved men," Glenconner explained, "and she was so good with men, but when she became ill she didn't look too good and so she said to me, 'Anne, I'm afraid I'm giving up men now...but I'd love to see all my old girlfriends.'"

The princess died in 2002 at the age of 71, predeceasing her centenarian mother and older sister, the queen. She is buried in the King George VI memorial chapel at St George's Chapel, Windsor, where Elizabeth II was also laid to rest in September.

Glenconner's life has intercepted with members of the royal family over eight decades and many of her memoirs are recorded in her hit memoir published in 2019, Lady in Waiting.

That same year she was characterized in the Netflix drama The Crown, chronicling the public and private lives of the British royals during Elizabeth II's reign.

Despite befriending the actress Helena Bonham Carter who played Margaret in seasons three and four, the courtier does not claim to be a fan of the show, which returns in November for its fifth season.

"I thought it was rather good," she told the Oxford Union about the early seasons, "the maids of honor had a private showing because it was about the coronation...but then I think it has gone completely off-piste and ridiculous."

"I was in it for a very short time," she explained about her portrayal before adding, "the people in America think it's true and that's the trouble...I think that they should have a warning like books nowadays have to have warnings saying that most of it is completely made up."

The release of the series' fifth season has caused controversy in the U.K. as previews show the public breakdown of the relationship between Princess Diana and Prince Charles (now King Charles III).

Calls for the show to display a disclaimer before each episode have circulated since its debut in 2016.

In 2020 a British politician called for a disclaimer calling the series: "a beautifully produced work of fiction, so as with other TV productions, Netflix should be very clear at the beginning it is just that...Without this, I fear a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact."

Netflix issued a rebuttal to this, telling the Mail on Sunday at the time that the series was never presented as fact.

"We have always presented The Crown as a drama, and we have every confidence our members understand it's a work of fiction that's broadly based on historical events. As a result, we have no plans—and see no need—to add a disclaimer."

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