Diana adored her... until their bond turned toxic
‘I’VE always adored Margot,’ Princess Diana told a friend before things took a turn for the worse. ‘She’s been wonderful to me from day one.’
Diana used to greet Margaret by throwing her arms around her neck and was one of the handful permitted to address her as ‘Margot’.
This encouraged Diana to imagine that, as her marriage disintegrated, Margaret would take her side. Instead, Margaret increasingly avoided her.
When it became clear Diana had been the principal source for Andrew Morton’s book Diana: Her True Story, Margaret sent her a furious note of reproof and she complained to a friend: ‘Poor Lilibet and Charles have done everything they can to get rid of the wretched girl, but she just won’t go.’
Diana’s death did little to diminish Margaret’s animosity. ‘She didn’t like the emotionalism one bit,’ recalled Anne Tennant. ‘She said the hysteria was rather like Diana herself. It was as if when she died she got everyone to be as hysterical as she was.’
Alone among the royal family, Margaret argued that Diana’s corpse should not be allowed to rest in the Royal Chapel, nor be honoured with a royal funeral.
She was furious, too, about the mass of flowers outside Kensington Palace. Later, she opposed a suggestion to erect a statue of Diana outside the palace, saying: ‘I’m not having that woman outside my bedroom window.’