The British royal family doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to love. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip fell in love as teenagers and were married for over 70 years until the prince’s death. However, three out of four of their children had marriages that ended in divorce.
Queen Elizabeth II’s younger sister, Princess Margaret, also struggled a great deal with love. When she wasn’t allowed to marry the man she loved in the 1950s, she settled for someone who didn’t make her happy.
In contrast, Prince Harry has left behind the only life he’s ever known for love and happiness on his own terms.
Prince Harry and Princess Margaret have a lot in common
At first glance, it might not appear that Prince Harry and his great-aunt, Princess Margaret have much in common. However, when you look closer, they have a lot more in common than one might expect. The younger siblings and the spare to the heir, Harry, and Margaret, struggled to find their footing in the royal fold.
Both royals were more personable than their elder siblings and neither was afraid to push the envelope. Prince Harry’s “bad boy” teen years are well documented. He was involved in incidents that included a Nazi costume, a naked game of pool, and other antics.
Princess Margaret also had a rebellious streak. She was a huge party queen, and she helped birth the paparazzi. However, the princess did not give up her royal status for love.
Princess Margaret refused to give up her royal status for love
Princess Margaret was 17 when she fell for her father, King George VI’s equerry, Peter Townsend. The British air force officer was a married father at the time, but the pair were determined to see out their love story once Townsend got a divorce.
Though Queen Elizabeth was sympathetic to her sister, Parliment refused to cosign on the union. Instead, they told the princess she would lose all of her funding and royal status if she went through with the wedding.
“Margaret put duty before herself,” biographer Andrew Morton wrote in his new book, Elizabeth & Margaret: the Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters, via People. “The wheel turns, 70 years later, and we have another couple having to make a decision: Do they put duty first or their own ambitions and desires first? And they put their own ambitions and desires first. That is the change we have witnessed during the Queen’s reign.”
“None of us should be comfortable with thinking we can be fine when so many others are suffering…We must look beyond ourselves, with empathy and compassion for those we know, and those we don’t.” Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex at #VaxLive pic.twitter.com/hBA6pGl2U5
— Global Citizen (@GlblCtzn) May 9, 2021Prince Harry gave up royal life for Meghan Markle
Having a deep understanding of his great-aunt’s plight, as well as a front-row seat his parents, Prince Charles, and Princess Diana’s crumbling union, Prince Harry decided to choose his personal happiness over royal life.,
Seeing how vulnerable Meghan, Duchess of Sussex was in the royal fold, Prince Harry resigned from his royal duties, choosing a more private life halfway across the world. He now has a Netflix deal, a Spotify podcast, a charitable foundation, is CFO of a multimillion-dollar company and he owns his own production company
Princess Margaret’s life never panned out exactly how she wanted. She was the first royal to get divorced in a century. However, Prince Harry refused to accept the same thing for himself.
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