Royal Bust-Up In London

MARGARET AND TONY TO PART? wondered the London Sun in banner headlines. Scarcely 24 hours after Harold Wilson's sudden resignation announcement, Britain's front pages were taken over by a zinging royal marital drama. At week's end a pair of terse announcements confirmed the breakup of the long-troubled 16-year marriage of Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon. A clipped bulletin from Kensington Palace, the Snowdons' London residence, stated that the two "have mutually agreed to live apart. The princess will carry on her public duties unaccompanied by Lord Snowdon. There are no plans for divorce proceedings." A spokesman for Margaret's older sister Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace added that the Queen "is naturally very sad."

The news did not surprise the royal couple's chums; the real question was not whether the marriage was in trouble but when the two would split--and how. Margaret and Tony have been going their separate ways for several years. Snowdon, now 46, an accomplished photographer, traveled a lot and could hardly complete an assignment with a comely fashion model before the gossip columns reported a romance.

Silver Stud. Tales of Margaret's independent habits also got around. Most recently, the stories have focused on the close companionship between the princess, now 45, and Roderic ("Roddy") Llewellyn, 28, a brewery owner's son. Llewellyn, who sports a silver stud in his left ear and favors jeans and tank tops, recently accompanied Margaret--for the third time in three years--on a vacation to the Caribbean island of Mustique, where the Snowdons keep a four-bedroom retreat. Back home, according to London's News of the World, Roddy has had Margaret out on weekends at his country digs, a seedy manor house near Bath that he and friends have turned into a commune.

Margaret's roller-coaster romantic history goes back to the 1940s, when, as a coltish teenager, she developed a serious crush on Group Captain Peter Townsend, a handsome World War II flying hero and aide to King George VI. The crush developed into a full-fledged romance. When she was in her mid-20s, and Townsend had divorced his wife, a wedding seemed to be the next thing on Margaret's agenda. But Queen Elizabeth, as head of the Church of England, could not sanction the marriage of her younger sister, then third in line to the throne behind Prince Charles and Princess Anne, to a divorced man.

In 1955, the princess gave up Townsend. "Mindful of the Church's teaching that marriage is indissoluble," she announced, "and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before any others."

That painful decision, say some who know Margaret, drove the unhappy princess into her marriage to Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960. Margaret was bitter following the Townsend bust-up, and seemed intent on getting even by finding a partner whose marital status was suitable but who conspicuously lacked the usual aristocratic Establishment credentials. For this scenario, Tony Armstrong-Jones seemed perfect: well-enough educated (Eton, Cambridge) but more than a little bohemian, a trendy, fast-living commoner who dared to court Margaret by inviting her--so friends said--to a balconied flat he had rented overlooking the Thames docks in south London.

The match between Margaret and Tony at first cheered the royal family, who were glad to see the princess, then 29, at last heading for the altar. But even before the ceremony, some royal doubts were heard about Tony's eclectic circle of friends--a lissome Chinese model who had once been his closest companion, other photographers, assorted designers and decorators and fashionable young marrieds who spent more time apart than together. Nevertheless, the wedding in Westminster Abbey was a dazzling state occasion. Apparently genuinely in love, the couple sailed off in the royal yacht Britannia to a honeymoon in the West Indies, where a rich friend was to give them a parcel of land on his private island--Mustique.

Old Flame. Margaret and her husband, newly created the Earl of Snowdon, set up housekeeping in a large Kensington Palace apartment and soon became fixtures on the club and party circuit of swinging London. They had two children: David, Viscount Linley, now 14, and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, now eleven.

Before long, they began swinging apart. By 1967, stories began turning up in the columns that Lord Snowdon, then back at work as a photographer, was mixing pleasure with business. One rumored object of affection--quickly denied--was a Chinese model who recalled Tony's old, pre-Margaret flame.

Talk of a royal rift was fanned when first Tony, then Meg, entered a hospital for routine stays, and neither visited the other.

Leggy Lady. At the time, Snowdon brusquely disputed any talk of a tiff. But new signs of deep trouble in the marriage kept turning up. Tony took over a country place in Sussex, where he, Margaret and some of his pals gathered on weekends. But the princess soon tired of what she called Snowdon's "leather jacket" cronies, who bridled at calling her "Your Royal Highness." When Margaret stopped going to Sussex, Tony took fashion models along on assignments. Another reported companion, from the nearby estate of the Marquess of Reading, was the Marquess's daughter, Lady Jacqueline Rufus Isaacs. Lady Jackie, pouty-lipped, leggy and then 24, was said to have seen Tony both in the country and in London, but she steadfastly denied any romance.

Meg was making her own rounds with her own escorts, and by 1971, stories of an imminent split-up were rife. The split was headed off only, acquaintances insist, because the Queen intervened and urged Margaret and Tony to go their own ways as discreetly as possible. Friends found that entertaining the two, when they did get together, could be painful. Margaret had become especially fond of gin-and-tonics. She would at times airily ignore Tony. When he invited guests to Kensington Palace, she would breeze through the room, stopping long enough only to cast a chill on the festivities. To many Britons who had learned to love the impish princess in her younger days, she had become an imperious snob who performed her chores disinterestedly. "We got all of the noblesse," groused one Londoner last week, "and none of the oblige."

As the Snowdons' circle of friends narrowed, Margaret called an old chum in Scotland one day in 1973 and announced she was coming for the weekend. There she met Roddy Llewellyn.

Margaret's increasingly public outings with Llewellyn apparently led to the long-building breakup. Humiliated and angry, Snowdon--friends said--wanted a divorce, which remains a problem for the royal family: the Queen is head of the Church of England, and the Church still considers marriage indissoluble. Where civil divorce occurs, remarriage in the church is refused. Thus Margaret's uncle, King Edward VIII, had to abdicate his throne in 1936 to marry "the woman I love," the American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson, and Margaret had to forget Peter Townsend.

For the Snowdons, a legal separation was by far the simplest solution. No appearances in court are necessary; lawyers handle all the details. After two years, British law provides that an uncontested divorce could be granted. A divorce would not imperil Margaret's standing in the succession, her $70,000 annual allowance, or her other royal perquisites--so long as she did not try to remarry. If she did, she would have to renounce any claim to the crown and the titles and privileges that accompany it.

Doting Parents. One major reason that Margaret and Tony might have agreed to a simple separation is their concern for their children. For all the couple's differences, they are both doting parents. Lord Linley and Lady Sarah will continue to live in Kensington Palace. Lord Snowdon will have unlimited visiting privileges.

The concern for the children--and a certain residual affection between the parted pair--was apparent in Lord Snowdon's comment on the separation last week from Sydney, Australia, where he is opening a show of his own photographs. He told a press conference that he wanted "to pray for the understanding of our two children, to wish Princess Margaret every happiness for her future, and to express with utmost humility my love, admiration and respect I will always have for her sister, mother and indeed her entire family." After such a sad and stormy marriage, it seemed a gallant goodbye.

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