ROYALS

Princess Margaret’s Morning Routine Proves She Was Really a Queen

Princess Margaret had a morning routine that rivals Marie Antoinette.

Oct. 23, 2017

Lisa Sheridan

Princess Margaret, the late younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, lived a luxurious life with a decadent morning routine that could have given a young Marie Antoinette a run for her money. In Craig Brown’s Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, a biographical portrait of the dazzling and chic Princess Margaret, her daily schedule is recounted in detail.

The playful Princess with no filter would begin her days at 9 a.m. with “breakfast in bed, followed by two hours in bed listening to the radio, reading the newspapers (‘which she invariably left scattered over the floor’) and chain-smoking.” Surely, if anyone could start the day with breakfast in bed they would, and the reports of scattered newspapers on her bedroom floor offer a nice visual touch, positioning a radio blasting, chain-smoking 25-year-old Princess Margaret more in relation to a badass contemporary teen than an artifact of a bygone era.

At 11:00, the Princess would take a bath (not a shower, because showers are for people who are rushing out the door to get to work), “followed by hair and make-up at her dressing table,” and “a vodka pick-me-up” at 12:30 because—as we all know to still be true in 2017—a midday cocktail is practically essential after waking up to immediately read the world news for two hours. Princess Margaret also “never wore any of her clothes more than once without having them cleaned,” lest she be labeled an outfit repeater.

By 1:00 in the afternoon, Princess Margaret would join the Queen Mother for a four-course lunch that included “half a bottle of wine per person,” which seems positively dainty compared to what’s come before, as well as fruits and cheese. It’s been reported by Harper’s Bazaar that even to this day, Princess Margaret’s older sister, Queen Elizabeth, still enjoys a liquid lunch.

If this excerpt is just the morning routine, ending at lunch, one could only imagine what her afternoon schedule must have entailed. Speculating on how many steps were part of her nightly skincare regimen, and whether or not she ever got bored with such a repetitive morning schedule, Twitter users naturally felt inspired when this description of Princess Margaret’s mornings made the rounds. Between casually horseback riding on the castle grounds, and meeting with figures of Hollywood royalty Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Billy Dee, Princess Margaret’s afternoons and evenings must have felt a little freer than her unchangingly luxurious mornings.

Princess Margaret died at the age of 71 in 2002, after developing lung complications from smoking incessantly at a young age and a bout of pneumonia that could have been caused by a heavy drinking habit.