In the world of royalty, sometimes the most shocking secrets are not in the headlines, but in the details that come to light over time. And that seems to be the case with Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II.
A new book by biographer Meryle Secrest—a renowned author and Pulitzer Prize nominee—suggests that Margaret may have lived her entire life with fetal alcohol syndrome.
According to this research, the cause would have been the Queen Mother’s alcohol consumption during pregnancy.
The diagnosis was never officially made, and the syndrome was not known in the 1930s, when Margaret was born.
In fact, the term was not coined until the 1970s. But the book points to consistent signs: intense mood swings, frequent migraines, and learning difficulties.
All of these could have been symptoms related to the disorder, although no physical traits were ever manifested to confirm it.
What caught my attention most was a letter written by the Queen Mother in 1952, quoted by The Telegraph, in which she said: “The sight of wine simply turns me up! Isn’t it extraordinary! It will be a tragedy if I never recover my drinking powers.”
She wrote it remembering her first pregnancy, when she was repulsed by alcohol, something that apparently did not happen during her second pregnancy, that of Margaret.
Of course, this is not about blaming her in hindsight. At that time, there was no medical information warning about the effects of alcohol on pregnancy.
But these kinds of revelations do allow us to look with new eyes at certain attitudes or crises that marked the life of Margaret, who was always seen as the “royal rebel.”
What if much of that had an underlying cause that was never fully understood?