All language subtitles for Inside.The.Crown-Secrets.Of.The.Royals.1.720p.HDTV.x264-CBFM

(crowd cheering)
NARRATOR: The British Royal Family,

one of the most famous
dynasties in the world.

CROWD: God save the Queen!

NARRATOR: For more than a century,

the lives of the Windsors
have enthralled the nation,

mesmerized the press,

and inspired
some of the most popular films

and dramas of recent decades.

But what's fact
and what's fiction?

There were rumours that not
everything was right in the marriage.

PIERS: He was only on extremely loose
terms with monogamy.

KATIE: That's the moment
when the Palace

absolutely lost grip
of the narrative.

NARRATOR: In this series,
we delve deep into the archives

to reveal controversial
documents concealed for decades

ROBERT:
This is a hand-written note

saying: "We're going to tap
the King's phone".

NARRATOR:
And meet royal insiders

who witnessed history first-hand.

She steps out and we realise
this is a horror story.

I'm about four feet
from the Princess.

It was the first sign

something was wrong.

NARRATOR: In this episode,
we look at the perpetual conflict

for the royal family
between love and duty.

One of the hardest challenges
of being a royal is marriage.

You're not just marrying a person,
you're marrying a job.

- There is this added
component, this duty thing.

NARRATOR: After
the fairy tale wedding,

comes a reality which has seen

three out of four of
the Queen's children divorced.

We were living a lie,
the marriage was pretty much dead.

NARRATOR: The Queen
and Prince Philip, however,

have reconciled
both love and duty.

It has been
the great royal love story.

He calls her "cabbage",
for goodness sake.

WESLEY: Seventy-two years
is a very, very long marriage.

But what Prince Philip said,
I think, is "the key, is tolerance".

NARRATOR: But will the next
generation be able to do the same

in the pressure cooker
of the modern monarchy?

The fact that I fell in love
with Meghan so incredibly quickly

was a sort of confirmation to me
that...

all the stars were aligned,
everything was just perfect.

It was this beautiful woman just
tripped and fell into my life,

I fell into her life.

Meghan and Harry are
an incredibly tactile couple.

There's a lovely chemistry
between them,

and, without a doubt,

it has increased
Harry and Meghan's popularity.

You know, they suddenly seem
more real than royal.

NARRATOR: Love has never
seemed more important

to the royal family's
popularity,

but it's only
part of the picture.

I know the fact
she'll be unbelievably good

at the job part of it as well.
It's obviously a huge relief to me.

She'll be able to deal with
everything else coming with it.

I really believe that William and
Harry have learnt a lot of lessons

from watching
their parents' marriage.

KATIE: Diana told William
and Harry to marry for love,

and, to their great credit,
both of them have married for love.

William is completely
devoted to Kate,

they're very much in love,
they make a great team.

The big difference was
that William knew Kate

before they married one another.

WESLEY: They were
at university together,

they shared a house together
as flatmates

before they started going out,
so there was a long courtship.

And I think that she'd been
sort of inducted into the family

and knew what she was getting into.

NARRATOR: Harry's marriage to
Meghan was more of a whirlwind.

KATIE: Here is Prince Harry,

he's married an American,
he's married a divorcee,

and, without a doubt, this has been
a very fast-moving royal romance.

Yes, behind the scenes, there were
some questions being asked,

just to make sure that Harry
was sure, because of course,

divorce is something that has
tainted the House of Windsor.

NARRATOR:
The spectre of divorce has been

hanging over the Windsor dynast
since 1936,

when Edward VIII
chose love over duty,

and abdicated rather than
give up Wallis Simpson.

REPORTER: The same loyal welcome,
the amazing scenes of enthusiasm

that mark him as undoubtedly
deserving his well-earned title:

the most popular man
in the world.

NARRATOR:
Despite his huge crowd appeal,

Edward VIII was, behind the scenes,
obsessed by Miss Simpson.

PIERS: Wallis Simpson was
"an American adventuress",

in the words of Queen Mary.

She absolutely captivated,
entranced, bewitched him.

NARRATOR: Although she was still
married to her second husband,

the King was determined
to make her his wife,

which put him at loggerheads with the
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

He said to Baldwin
that he was going to marry her,

and Baldwin said:
"Look, this simply isn't on.

Parliament won't wear it".

NARRATOR: The King responded
that he would marry Mrs Simpson

without government approval,
and, if necessary, abdicate.

JANE: What Edward VIII
did was to say,

"I have to be with the woman I love

and that takes priority
over everything".

NARRATOR:
Royal biographer Robert Hardman

has spent his career

examining the decisions
the royal family make.

His investigations
at the National Archives at Kew

have uncovered secrets
about the abdication,

kept under wraps
for over eighty years.

ROBERT: Everyone from the Prime
Minister down was extremely worried

about the state of the King's mind,
which way he was gonna go.

This is an extraordinary document

from senior Home Office official

to the Head of the Post Office

saying, "We're gonna tap
the King's phone.

You'll arrange the interception
of telephone communications

between Fort Belvedere,
certain addresses in London,

and the continent of Europe".

This is effectively saying,
"Yes, he is our head of state,

we have sworn
oaths of allegiance,

nonetheless,
we're gonna spy on him,

because we feel
it's in the national interest".

Mrs Simpson has
all sorts of devious contacts

and friendships,
not least with German diplomats.

The King was known
to have met leading members

of the British fascist movement.
They want to know it all.

And indeed, it was later discovered
that it was an MI5 operative

hiding in a bush in Green Park
listening to the conversations.

You actually heard the first
conversation where

King Edward VIII
told his brother,

the Duke of York,
that he was going to abdicate.

PIERS:
The public only knew about it

on 3 December, and by 10, 11
December, the King had gone.

NARRATOR: On 12 December, his
brother was proclaimed George V

and Edward left the country.
He married Wallis in France in 1937.

None of his family
attended the wedding.

Putting love over duty had changed
the course of British history.

PIERS: None of them
had been prepared for this.

They'd been prepared for a life
of living in a country house

with horses and dogs: basically
what Elizabeth wanted to do.

That's what she was prepared for,
she wanted to be a country lady.

NARRATOR: Just a decade later,

the girl who had hoped to live
a quiet life in the country

had fallen in love,

and the Palace thought her choice,
Prince Philip of Greece

was also unsuitable.

There was this strand of
British establishment thinking

that he was a slightly
dangerous outsider

from a foreign royal house.

The Greek royal family
had been imported from Denmark

and so Prince Philip
is not actually Greek at all,

he has quite a lot of German
and Russian blood in him.

NARRATOR: When he was just a baby,

Philip's family went to live
as impoverished exiles in Paris

and soon after, the
Greek royal family were deposed.

He was very much a man
who had to make his own way in life.

He said to me once
that his mother was ill

and his father was away so he said,
"I had to get on with it".

And get on with it he did.

NARRATOR: Luckily for Philip, he was
rescued by his extended family,

his mother's brother,
Louis Mountbatten,

helped transform Philip's fortunes

by encouraging him
to join the Royal Navy.

PIERS: He'd come up through
this school of hard knocks

and been very successful,
he was good looking,

he was extremely attractive
to women

and he caught the eye of
Princess Elizabeth at Dartmouth.

WESLEY: And Philip was
a naval cadet,

and he impressed the girls,
he jumped over a tennis net,

and then, as the Royal Yacht was
leaving,

he went behind it
in a rowing boat.

NARRATOR: 13-year-old Elizabeth
fell in love with Philip

at Dartmouth Naval College.
But her mother was less enamoured.

HUGO: Queen Mother would
have much preferred her

to marry a Grenadier Guard
and indeed spent

quite a lot of time putting
Grenadier Guards in her path.

NARRATOR:
After the Second World War,

the prevailing feeling

was that Elizabeth should marry
someone British.

PIERS: The Queen Mother
saw him as a Hunnish Junker,

with all sorts of
very embarrassing Nazi relations.

NARRATOR:
But the determined princess

saw something in the
dashing young naval officer

and remained resolute.

HUGO: She was still
very young and, so,

the King took them all to
South Africa on the African tour.

NARRATOR: George VI
had agreed they could marry

as long as his daughter waited

until they came back
to announce her engagement.

One of the most welcome feature
of the royal train,

which transported
the family across South Africa,

was the post-office carriage
with its telephone exchange.

A vital lifeline to Philip.

PIERS: She was strikingly in love
with him and made it clear.

He certainly saw the advantages of
marrying into the House of Windsor.

Somebody described him
as a big dog wanting a basket.

NARRATOR: The Queen's was
a love match which endured,

but fast forward a generation,

and her son felt impelled to
sacrifice love on the altar of duty.

INDIA: What I do remember is
as the weeks passed,

Diana became thinner
and thinner and thinner.

PENNY: By the time
they walked up the aisle,

the relationship was
in a very, very bad way.

NARRATOR: In 1980,
Prince Charles was 32,

and the pressure was on for him
to marry and produce an heir.

In a way, it was
the last marriage played out

by old royal rules -

that the Prince of Wales had to find
a suitable bride,

a young, aristocratic,
virgin bride.

And of course, Diana Spencer
ticked all these boxes.

PENNY: Everybody loved her.
She was funny, she was uncomplicated.

But the reality was
actually rather different.

It was the most curious
engagement really,

they didn't know one another.

Diana was taken out
of her lovely flat

where she shared
with bubbly girls

and she was given a suite
of rooms at Buckingham Palace.

The perfect girl Charles thought
he was falling in love with,

was much darker,
and was much more moody,

and by the time
they walked up the aisle,

the relationship was
in a very, very bad way.

NARRATOR: An interview filmed
on the eve of the wedding

exposes the
state of their relationship.

INTERVIEWER: What sort of reactions

have you encountered to your
marriage?

Well, the most overwhelming and
touching reactions as far as

we've been concerned.

They're stiff, they have
no kind of body contact.

INTERVIEWER: When you make your vows,
that's the most personal moment.

And hardly any sort of
eye contact.

INTERVIEWER: Is it gonna be that for
you, even though you know

the eyes of the world
are watching you

at that very important moment?

Well, I hope so, yes.
I don't know about...

People often say,
"Why did Charles not marry Camilla

"when he had the opportunity?
When they first met,

"when they were young
Both were single?"

But Camilla was in love
with Andrew Parker-Bowles.

Charles, I think,
fell very much in love with her.

But actually,
he didn't ask her to marry him.

But I don't know that she would
have accepted if he had done.

Charles always said
that when he married,

he would marry
with his head and not his heart.

And that, I think,
was a hangover

from the lesson
learnt from Edward's abdication.

It could not be a passion

that swept him away.

I suspect they quite quickly found

they weren't ideally suited
to each other,

but unfortunately, the world
had fallen in love with her.

(crowd cheering)

NARRATOR: Charles and Diana's wedding

was to be the biggest national
celebration since the coronation,

with Lady Di
in the starring role.

Everything was huge about it.

St Paul's, because it could
take this enormous crowd.

A wedding dress that
practically covered the steps.

It was a sort of surrogate
love affair for the nation.

It seemed to be a completely
romantic wedding.

Of course, we didn't know what
was going on behind the scenes.

NARRATOR: Prince Charles's
god-daughter, India Hicks,

was one of the five bridesmaids

and witnessed
the feverish speculation

surrounding the wedding dress.

There were extraordinary...

An extraordinary experience
for a 13-year-old child.

Whenever we turned up
for dress fittings,

the organisation
of the car coming up,

and the world's press descending
and trying to get any snap.

When we were actually
inside the Emmanuel's studio,

I remember they had blocked out
a lot of the windows

because, of course,
cameras had camped out

on neighbouring buildings,
with long lenses to spy inside

to see what the greatest fashion
secret was going to look like.

There was a feeling of fun
around it all.

We would be on the floor above,
she would be on the floor below.

What I do remember is
as the weeks passed

Diana became thinner
and thinner and thinner,

and they had to take the dress
in and in and in and in.

And so, there was
a lot of scurrying around

to make sure
that dress was fitting her.

You got pretty close
to Diana during those times,

and there was always this feeling
of Diana being the head girl,

and we were in awe of her.

And looking back, you think:
"My god, she was 19,

she was just a child herself".

But as a 13-year-old,
I was quite impressed by her.

During the dress fittings,
this beautiful silk taffeta

felt very princessy
and very fairy-tale-ish.

Of course, what no one had tested
or anticipated

was cramming that amount of fabric
into a very small carriage.

Her father, herself,
her dress and her 25-foot train

trot gloriously down The Mall
as the world watches.

The carriage draws up,
and the trumpeters, the horses,

and the atmosphere was sensational,
and the crowds are going crazy.

And the carriage door is opened
by the footman and she steps out

and of course the train
then begins to unfold itself

and we realise
this is a horror story.

It is just 25 feet
of crumpled mess.

And so, Sarah Armstrong-Jones
and I just set to work

and really all he would see
of me was my bottom in the air

as I'm bending down
trying to undo this.

There was a great ball
afterwards at Buckingham Palace

and I was so excited that was
going to be my first ball.

And after Charles
and Diana's wedding,

we went home and I lay down
for a moment, just a moment,

and I woke up to discover
my family had gone to the ball

and I had been left alone
in the house. I was livid.

I was so cross.
Why had they not woke me?

My mother thought: "She's so tired,
we'll leave her behind".

I thought: "Bloody hell,
I've missed the ball".

NARRATOR: In contrast
to the extravagance

of Charles and Diana's wedding,

when Elizabeth and Philip
got married in 1947,

the country was
in the grip of post-war gloom.

PIERS: People felt that they
hadn't had the rewards

that they should have got
as a result of victory.

And all of a sudden,
this great event took place,

the marriage
of the future Queen of England.

And it was, as Churchill said,
a great flash of colour

in a period of grim, grey,

dark, gloomy austerity.

People were standing in queues.

Rationing.

People really had
not enough to eat.

NARRATOR: In keeping
with the straightened times,

the Prime Minister refused
to make the wedding day

a national holiday.

The royals themselves wondered
whether a private ceremony,

out at Windsor maybe,
would be more appropriate.

NARRATOR: Robert Hardman has sifted
through dozens of documents

at The National Archives

that show a government
determined to economise.

ROBERT: It's two years
after the Second World War,

the country's broke,
there's no money for anything,

and what you see here
is the extraordinary extent

to which the government
is going to try

and scrimp and save on everything.

This is October, one month to go,

and the Palace are
finally approving

a press stand, 275 pounds.

6-foot red carpet from the
West Door to the Sacrarium steps.

There's a debate going on about
whether they're gonna have

new blue carpet
in Westminster Abbey for 100 pounds,

or there's
a second-hand red carpet

that might be used
which would 83 pounds,

although someone else has found
another red carpet that might do

for 75.

NARRATOR: While other couples
couldn't afford to get married,

there were inevitably concerns
about wasting money.

ROBERT: Here is
a letter of complaint

from a branch of the Labour Party

saying there can be
no undue expense on anything.

This has got to be
an austerity wedding.

"Intolerable for any
substantial quantity

of labour or materials to be
diverted". "Justified indignation".

"The British people will be
discouraged in the immense efforts

"they are making
towards economic recovery

"if this wedding is made
the occasion

"for displaying a vast inequality of
sacrifice".

NARRATOR: But in the end,
the public didn't have the appetite

for a wedding done on the cheap

and they wanted to play a part
in making it a day to remember.

Wedding gifts were sent
from all over the world,

and displayed
at St James's Palace.

And huge numbers of people
turned up to see them.

ROBERT: A lot of people abroad
thought Britain was starving,

so a lot of people
sent the Princess food.

She received something
like 500 tins of pineapple.

A lady in Brooklyn
sent a turkey.

She also received
148 pairs of stockings.

And a couple of kittens,
sent by a pair of district nurses.

Highbank Council decided
it'd be a good idea

to send her a sewing machine.

Oh, and Gandhi sent a tray cloth
that he'd spun on his own loom,

and old Queen Mary, famously,
thought--

mistook it for a loincloth,
and complained about the indelicacy.

NARRATOR: Hundreds of sympathetic
women across the country

sent in clothing coupons
for the wedding dress.

Designed by Norman Hartnell,

it was an exquisite
austerity miracle,

complete with 15-foot train.

LADY MARY: Oh, look at all that!
I love that dress.

It was a beautiful sort of satin,

and I think there was
a huge lily somewhere,

and it was embroidered
with sequins.

I just remember it being
lovely for her.

NARRATOR: Lady Mary Colman

is the Queen Mother's niece,
and the Queen's cousin.

She's never spoken about
the Queen in public before.

Now, at 87, she's agreed to remember
that joyous day back in 1947.

We were 14, my twin and I,
we were at boarding school.

And...

the thought of coming
up to London

was dread instead of excitement.

Because it was sort of unknown.

I remember the whole thing,

the crowds,
they were just so enthusiastic.

You just gasped when you saw them all
waving their flags.

You know, after the war,
it was such a break

to have some happiness.

The ceremony was very touching.

The Archbishop said
that in many ways

this was just like the wedding
of an ordinary couple,

in all the Yorkshire Dales.

(organ plays wedding march)

LADY MARY: She looked
as if she could almost see heaven,

she was really happy.

It was wonderful,
and he looked happy too,

so that's good.

I remember being glad
that we were there.

REPORTER: Following the King
and Queen in the procession,

Princess Andrew of Greece,
Queen of the Hellenes,

and the Boy King of Iraq.

SARAH: The people who
couldn't come to the wedding,

rather tellingly,
were Prince Philip's sisters,

because
all of his surviving sisters

had been married
to German nobility,

who played an active part
in the Nazi cause,

so they couldn't possibly
make an appearance.

It was that close to the war.

There was a great feeling
of euphoria suddenly,

a release of tension, a feeling that
things could only get better.

REPORTER: Seldom
has a bride and groom

received such a tumultuous
expression of goodwill.

ROBERT: We could look forward
as a nation, instead of looking back,

and it was a turning point
for the monarchy, no question.

NARRATOR:
But in just a few years,

Princess Margaret's love
for a married man

would threaten to undermine

the bright new era
for the royal family.

People were very shocked,
they felt he'd taken advantage.

PIERS: The Queen's Private
Secretary said to Townsend,

"You must be either mad or bad".

NARRATOR: Ken Lennox
photographed the royal family

for over half a century
and took the first grainy photograph

of Diana with Charles on the
banks of the River Dee in 1980.

He got to know Lady Di
trying to capture her on camera

outside her Earl's Court flat.

KEN: I couldn't give away
photographs of the royal family

before Diana came on the scene.

When Diana came along,
all that exploded.

NARRATOR: Ken was
to photograph the Princess

for the rest of her life.

KEN: This is
the honeymoon photocall

of the couple, locked up,
sat in a little style,

and really full of affection.

They answered questions and they were
hugging in front of the cameras.

We'd never seen royals do
an official photocall like that.

It's not only an age difference,
but there's a mind difference

between the way
they thought life should be.

Prince Charles was worried
about so many things,

and Diana was young, and wanted
to have a young woman's life

and I think Charles
found that quite difficult.

I think that Diana was genuinely

in love with Prince Charles
at the beginning,

but Prince Charles
didn't respond.

I think they were incompatible
characters was the basic problem.

NARRATOR: Ken was part
of the royal press pack

for their first overseas tour of
Australia and New Zealand in 1983.

Before Diana got on the scene,

it was Prince Charles who was
the most photographable royal.

He was Action Man, and there was
choruses of girls crying out for him.

I felt sorry for Charles now,
because no one wanted to see him.

This time, Charles would work one
side of the street

and Diana the other, and, at Charles,
they would just say to him,

"Sir, can you get your wife
to come over here?"

And from being "Mr Popular"

to "Mr Please-can-you
bring-your-wife-over-here"

was not a happy situation for him.

I'm about four feet
from the Princess

and I'm trying to get a bit of the
Opera House in the background

and some of the crowd,

and Diana burst into tears,
and wept for a couple of minutes.

After it was over, I went to see
the press officer

for the Prince and Princess at that
time, and I said, "What happened?"

And he said, "Ken, mozzies
and jet lag and heat and so on".

So I just accepted that.

Charles, I don't think noticed it
at that stage, you know.

If he has, typical of him
to look the other way. (laughs)

But it was the first sign
of something was wrong,

and we then began to see
other things happening later on.

DICKIE: You could tell
by the mid-'80s

that things were not particularly
good. It wasn't hostility,

but it was just the sense
that everything wasn't right.

PATRICK: The idea that there could be
actually anything

seriously wrong
with the marriage was unthinkable.

It had to work.
And it was our job to make it work,

or at least appear to work.

NARRATOR: Patrick Jephson was
equerry and Private Secretary

to The Princess of Wales
for eight years,

with responsibility
for her household,

and he witnessed the problems that
were not yet apparent to the public.

As professional Royal performers,
they were unbeatable,

but behind the scenes,
it was quite different.

They didn't talk to each other,
there was the minimum of eye contact,

they were short-tempered
with each other.

Diana, of course, being who she was,

enjoyed upstaging her husband.

And if she was laughing
or smiling or...

it wasn't just
because she was happy and smiley,

it was also because
she knew it got on his nerves.

I remember on one particular occasion
in Seville,

he was looking one way,
and she was looking the other way,

and you could have driven
a double-decker bus

between the two of them,
such was the hostility.

PATRICK: We went to Glasgow
for the Glasgow Garden Festival.

Charles and Diana were seen happily
together among the crowds,

but they had actually arrived quite
separately in different aeroplanes.

We were living a lie,

we were covering up for the fact
that the marriage was dead.

The piece de resistance, in terms of
the ending of the marriage

was South Korea.
They looked like "Mr and Mrs Glum".

They looked like two people

who didn't want to be
in each other's company,

and who didn't particularly
want to be in South Korea.

It says just how bad it had got that
divorce, even to Queen Elizabeth,

looked like the solution,
not the problem.

JANE: The Queen intervening to say

"enough is enough, the time has come
to divorce"

was really giving closure to
something that was going to happen

at some point
in the near future.

NARRATOR: The idea of the Queen
ordering her son to divorce

would have been unthinkable
in a previous era.

In the early 1950s, the possibility
that her sister might wed

a married palace equerry
with children

led to a crisis that ended
with the Princess giving up

the man she loved.

LADY GLENCONNER: I remember Peter
Townsend was very good looking,

he was a war hero,
the King adored him,

he was like sort of proxy son.

Princess Margaret said that it was
very romantic because, every evening,

they all went riding off
into the sunset.

And that, I think,
was the first time

that, you know, they sort of,
I suppose, fell in love.

NARRATOR: Lady Glenconner has known
the royal family her whole life.

She was the Queen's
maid of honour at the coronation,

and Princess Margaret's
lady-in-waiting and close friend.

LADY GLENCONNER:
Here's a picture of me,

Princess Margaret, the Queen,

and Princess Margaret
is looking at my feet.

And when she was staying with me,

we were looking at old photographs,

I said, "Why are you
looking at my feet?"

And she said, "Well,
because you had silver shoes,

I had brown ones, I was so
jealous of your silver shoes".

Anyway, Princess Margaret
and I did have great fun,

and in those days, we had
this nursery footman,

and we were always
hiding behind doors to go "boo",

you know, when
he came along with his tray.

And I can remember
the Queen saying,

"Margaret and Anne, what are
you doing? Are you behaving?"

Of course, we weren't.

The traditional picture
of Princess Margaret

is that she was the naughty one,

while her eldest sister
was the goody goody two-shoes.

And there's a lot of truth
in that.

HUGO: Her father
absolutely adored her,

he couldn't believe he'd
created this beautiful creature,

and he always used to say,
"Lillibet is my pride,

"and Margaret is my joy".

PIERS: It's difficult to think back

as to the extraordinary glamour
and good looks.

She was a pocket Venus,

she was absolutely
the Princess Di of her age.

NARRATOR: Margaret had
the world at her feet,

but it came crumbling down
when her father died

and her sister became Queen.

I remember at the coronation

we arrived back
at Buckingham Palace

and the Queen
skipped along the passage with us,

and then behind her, came the Duke of
Edinburgh and the Queen Mother,

and then behind that,
Princess Margaret looking so sad.

I remember saying,
"Ma'am you look so sad".

And she said, "Of course I do.
I've lost my beloved father

"and my sister".

Because she was Queen, she'd moved
into Buckingham Palace.

She said: "I've got to live at
Clarence House with my mother".

NARRATOR: Princess Margaret had
turned to Peter Townsend

in her distress.
When he divorced his wife,

she told the Queen she
wished to marry this man

16 years her senior.

In those days, being divorced
was a really big, you know. no no.

And people were very shocked,
they felt he'd taken advantage.

Princess Margaret was
so much younger than him.

And of course,
Peter Townsend was staff.

PIERS: When the Queen's
Private Secretary, Tommy Lascelles,

heard about this, he said to Townsend
"You must be either mad or bad.

Your intruding in this way
into the royal household

constitutes a danger
to the monarchy".

NARRATOR: Less than 20 years
after the abdication,

the very mention
of the word "divorce"

in Palace, government and church
circles caused grave concern.

Townsend was sent to Brussels,

and the Queen asked
Margaret to wait a year.

And so, the traditional story
begins to unfold

of an unhappy Princess thwarted
in love by the establishment.

But documents released
by the National Archives

rewrite that history.

ROBERT: What we see here
is that, actually, by 1955,

Anthony Eden, himself a divorcee,

and his government have decided
that actually she can marry.

In fact, they're gonna give her
some more money.

"The civil list have provided
that she should receive

"on her marriage
a further sum of 9000 a year

"in addition to the 6000 a year
which she has already".

This is the government's plan in
the event that Princess Margaret

and Group Captain Townsend
are gonna get married.

And she would have been
aware of this.

"Ministers understand that
it is Princess's Margaret's wish

"that despite her renunciation
of her right to the Succession,

"she should continue to live
in the United Kingdom

"and carry out her public duties
as member of the Royal Family".

So, what they're saying is

"We're happy with her
carrying on being Royal,

"we're happy with her staying in
the country and this marriage.

"The one thing that has to change
is she herself cannot be Queen

"and nor can her children".

Life would really not have changed
very dramatically at all

for Princess Margaret.

But what we do know from other
correspondence in this file,

including the remarkable letter
from the Princess herself,

is that it wasn't a sort of
crazy love affair by this stage.

This is the Princess
writing to the Prime Minister.

It's a very honest letter,
it's really rather touching.

She's saying, "I'm not going
to see him during this time,

"but in October I shall be
returning to London,

"and he will then be
taking his annual leave,

"and only really then
can I make up my mind".

She says here, "It's only
by seeing him in this way

"that I feel I can properly decide
whether I can marry him or not".

I think, inevitably,
as a young woman

who was initially head over heels
in love with this man,

but possibly
after all this time now,

having had all these people
poring over her relationship,

maybe it's started to rub off.

Maybe she's started to think,
"You know what? I'll think again".

Within a couple of months,

the couple would have
made up their mind

and the Princess issued
her famous statement

to say, "Mindful of the teachings
of the Church,

"she's not going to go ahead
with it." It doesn't happen.

Some people said absence
makes the heart grow fonder,

but I think it does
make you think

exactly what you're going to give up.

I think during the wait,
she started to enjoy herself again,

her friends rallied round...

I think personally,
if the King had lived,

she would have married
somebody more suitable.

And I did once ask Princess Margaret
about her set.

"Among all of them, who
would you might have married?"

And she said Sunny Blandford,
so she would have had Blenheim.

I think that would
have been more suitable.

She would have had a palace,
of course.

NARRATOR:
The demands of the crown

would not only pit
sister against sister,

but husband against wife.

He wasn't even allowed to call
his children by his own name.

He became emasculated.

It really sounds
as though it threw him

into something like
a depression.

NARRATOR: When George VI died
aged just 56 in 1952,

it sent shock waves
through the entire family.

Not only did Princess Elizabeth

take on the heavy responsibility
of the Crown,

but her husband had
to give up the career he loved.

This posed a massive strain on the
Queen's marriage to Prince Philip,

because Prince Philip imagined,
with good reason,

that he was going to have
a good career in the navy.

PENNY: Suddenly, she went from
being a naval wife to Queen.

And he went
from being a naval officer

in command of his own ship,
to being a consort,

to walking
three steps behind his wife.

Which totally, totally
went against the grain

for this man
who is the ultimate alpha male.

PIERS: He wanted to modernise
and streamline the monarchy,

and, of course, the courtiers
weren't having any of this.

Prince Philip came up against

plenty of opposition
from the Palace old guard.

He used to refer to these
establishment figures

as the "men with moustaches".

And he's not allowed
anywhere near red boxes,

he's not allowed anywhere near
prime-ministerial audiences,

he's very much kept
at arm's length.

He wasn't even allowed to call
his children by his own name.

He became emasculated. I mean, he
said at one point, "What am I?

Just, am I nothing more
than a bloody amoeba?"

SARAH: It really sounds
as though it threw him

into something like
a depression.

He began living
this slightly raffish life.

His membership
of the famous Thursday Club,

a lunch club, you know,
with other young men about town,

but also with
a certain number of party girls.

It must have been
a very difficult period for her.

She knew that her husband was hurting
and that it was difficult for him

and that some people were
not treating him very well.

NARRATOR: A solution seemed to lie
in the newly-completed Britannia.

Philip would open
the Olympic Games in Australia,

and then tour the far-flung islands
of the Commonwealth

aboard the Royal Yacht.

It was to fly the flag,
of course,

but perhaps it was also
to give Prince Philip

a little time back at sea

and a little time away
from the constraints of his role.

REPORTER: Everyone
was dressed up to kill.

Indeed, not so long ago
that really was the big idea.

- But that all went wrong when one of
the close associates of the Prince,

Mike Parker,
was summoned back to England

to appear in the divorce courts,
and that tar spread.

NARRATOR:
The divorce of his close friend

coupled with Philip's
four-month absence

was enough to open
the floodgates of speculation

about the state of the
royal couple's marriage.

There were rumours that not
everything was right in the marriage.

NARRATOR: For the first time ever,

the Queen issued an official denial

saying it was quite untrue
that there was a rift,

and for added emphasis,

she made the Duke a Prince
on his return home.

JANE: It must have been
a crisis in the early marriage,

and it's the sort of crisis that
is only possible to negotiate

if you actually love
the person you're married to.

ROBERT: It has been
the great Royal love story,

it's the longest Royal marriage
in history.

It's one of the many records
that the Queen can lay claim to.

I suspect it's probably
the one she holds most dear.

WESLEY: I remembered the Queen,

if the Duke was arriving
back from an engagement,

she would sort of perk up a bit,

and become sort of smiley
and relaxed.

The Duke of Edinburgh would
start fiddling with his hair

or adjusting his buttons when he
was going in to see the Queen.

Unlike some of the other
Royal marriages

she took on
somebody her own size,

and I think she's appreciated
over the years the fact that

he is the one person who can actually
say exactly what he thinks to her.

There's a lot of intimacy

almost in crowds is
that you're these two people

on this very strange journey,
and with this unique life

and I think that there's
a very, very powerful bond.

As Harry famously said,

"I don't think she could
have done it without him".

NARRATOR: Today, the young Royals
have more freedom than ever before

to marry who they want.

KATIE: William, without a doubt,
tore up Royal history

because Kate was a commoner.

She was a regular girl
from the home counties.

NARRATOR: But putting duty first

is still the number one quality
in any Royal marriage.

KATIE: There is a sort of
tick list that has to be met -

discretion, duty,

and putting duty before self,
most importantly.

And the Queen has very much been
the personification of that.

Prince William must look at
his grandparents' relationship,

which has endured 70 years,

a great example of a successful
matrimony.

And I'm sure he hopes that
for himself too.

NARRATOR: William certainly
seems to have had this in mind

when he proposed to Kate.

I do think that William
always has one eye

to the fact that he is
going to be King,

so whomever he married
is going to be Queen.

I think it helped
that Catherine was a personality

who is quite publicly closed,
is quite careful,

she never puts

a nude-court-shoe-heeled foot wrong
does she?

Prince William lives
next door to me up here,

I see them shopping.

Duchess of Cambridge
has done a really good job,

she hasn't put herself forward,

which was what happened
with the Princess of Wales.

And she's glorious-looking

and sweet and perfect,

but she lets Prince William
take the lead

and I think that is
what the Duchess of Sussex

may have to learn,

that, you know, that's
what we want in a Royal family.

NARRATOR: Kate had the benefit
of ten years knowing William

to size up the demands of
Royal life before they married.

For Meghan, it was different.

EMILY: Meghan has had
a normal life. (chuckles)

If an acting, Hollywood career
can be called a normal life.

I think they're massively in love,

and together they are
a very powerful couple.

I think they both realise
they have this public position.

It's global.

And I've been told by aides that
they want to change the world.

CROWD (cheering): Meghan! Meghan!

I think the challenges
for the Sussexes

will be balancing
that sense of duty

and the life they want
as private people,

as a family.

NARRATOR: Like the Queen,
both William and Harry

have chosen partners
who are their equals -

women they love, but who share their
vision for a relevant monarchy

that's a positive force
in the world.

But the challenge remains.

Will they be able to live
with the conflicting demands

of love and duty?

Only time will tell.