Margaret + Roddy = Royal Furor

The princess's reputation was ailing

It was not a good week for Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret, 47, Deputy Colonel in Chief of the Royal Anglian Regiment, Colonel in Chief of the Royal Highland Fusiliers and, among other things, president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Suffering from flu, the princess lay ill abed at Windsor Castle, where the royal family had assembled for an extended Easter holiday. There, according to well-placed reports, Queen Elizabeth II had a serious talk with her younger sister about Margaret's swinging lifestyle. Reason: the princess's reputation, as well as her health, was ailing. Not only was her name being splashed luridly and critically across the headlines of British tabloids, but her government allowance was also under attack, as a result of a flamboyant four-year relationship with Roderick (Roddy) Llewellyn, 30, a sometime disco owner, occasional landscape gardener, and would-be pop singer.

Along with other members of the royal family, Margaret was due for a raise by means of the "civil list," which was taken under consideration by Parliament last week. In all, the Labor government announced a 9.2% increase in the allotment for the royal family, raising the total to $5,290,000, with most of the money going to the Queen. How much of the increase was Margaret's only the Prime Minister and the Royal Exchequer knew, but her raise was estimated at about $10,000, which would bring her annual salary to around $110,000. Parliamentary anti-royalists were unhappy about that. Said Laborite M.P. Willie Hamilton, Commons' most vigorous monarchy baiter: "If any of the increase goes to Margaret, there will be nationwide outrage." Hamilton demanded that each of the royals on the civil list be haled before a parliamentary select committee to justify the stipends.

The public controversy over Margaret's behavior was a field day for London's popular press. The Sunday News of the World bluntly asked its readers: "Do you think Princess Margaret gives us value for our money?" (Three out of four readers answered no.) Even some traditional supporters of the royal family were critical of Margaret and her relationship with Roddy. "I consider Princess Margaret to have completely let the side down," complained one saddened letter writer to the pro-Tory Evening Standard. Declared the Bishop of Truro, Graham Leonard: "If you accept the public life, you must accept a severe restriction on your personal conduct." After some of his fellow clergymen complained that he had been a bit too explicit, Leonard said that he was merely praying that Margaret "should be given the strength to make the right judgment."

The principal complaint against Margaret is that she has embarrassed the royal family by carrying on a more or less open dalliance with a younger man, without seeking a divorce from her estranged husband, Lord Snowdon; the two have been separated since March 1976. The princess first met Roddy in 1974 at a house party in Scotland. As her marriage to Snowdon cooled, Roddy began making ever more frequent visits to Kensington Palace, Margaret's London home. Later the princess and her new companion made a series of unchaperoned holiday visits, without her two children, to the languid Caribbean isle of Mustique. Last month, on the fourth such idyl, the couple were photographed together for the first time upon arriving. On Mustique, Roddy was stricken with a bleeding ulcer and rushed to a hospital in nearby Barbados. Margaret hovered anxiously at his bedside. When Llewellyn returned home, he committed the ultimate indiscretion--in royal circles --of talking directly to newsmen about the lady he coyly calls "P.M.": "Let them all criticize. I don't mind. I would like to see them do all her jobs in the wonderful way that she does. It's the most difficult job in the world."

In fact, one of the complaints about Margaret is that she has been so busy with Roddy that she has not been doing her job all that well lately. Last year she attended only 86 of the civic, cultural or charitable functions that protocol requires her to attend, compared with an average of 115 in the years before her marriage crumbled. So far in 1978 she has made only twelve royal appearances, although her schedule suddenly became busier after Elizabeth's talk at Windsor Castle. Before the flu hit her last week, the princess was due in Edinburgh to attend the annual meeting of the Scottish Children's League, followed by the annual meeting of the Royal Scottish Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

While critics insist that Margaret should either shape up or retire completely to private life (meaning off the public dole), the princess also has some sympathetic defenders. Columnist Peregrine Worsthorne of the Daily Telegraph, a staunch monarchist, insists that "royal black sheep there are bound to be" and argues that it is no crime for a Windsor woman to admire younger men, particularly in England's second Elizabethan age. "Admittedly," adds Worsthorne in afterthought, "Roddy Llewellyn is no Essex or Walter Raleigh, but then she herself is no virgin queen." The princess's defenders also recall Margaret's pathetic trauma of 1955, when she was forced to end her much publicized romance with R.A.F. Group Captain Peter Townsend.

At week's end sources close to the Crown were whispering that Margaret had decided not to relinquish her regal duties, in order to keep her regal perks. Thus the burning question was whether or not she would relinquish Roddy, in the face of public criticism. Chances were that the answer would be no. The princess, after all, had family precedent on her side. When her great-grandfather King Edward VII was Prince of Wales, he had numerous well-publicized liaisons while he waited for Queen Victoria to surrender the throne.

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