If we’ve learned anything from the first two seasons of The Crown, it’s that being married to a royal is no easy task. In the season 3 finale of the Netflix series, we also learn that divorcing a royal is no cake walk, either.
After 18 years of turbulent marriage, the relationship between Princess Margaret and her husband, photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, came to an apoplectic end after both parties engaged in affairs. Armstrong-Jones, also known as the Earl of Snowden, began a relationship with producer Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, while Princess Margaret took up with landscaper Roddy Llewellyn.
So, who was Lindsay-Hogg? Here’s what we know.
The assistant
Lindsay-Hogg’s first husband was the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg; he’s best known for making early music videos with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The couple were married from 1967 to 1971.
Lindsay-Hogg met Lord Snowdon at a dinner party in Chelsea, London in 1972, a year after her divorce and 12 years into his marriage to Margaret. According to Anne de Courcy’s book Snowdon: The Biography, Armstrong-Jones needed an assistant and Lindsay-Hogg had experience as an assistant producer on eight different film projects and worked as a television researcher, so she seemed like a natural fit.
According to de Courcy, their relationship started soon after Lindsay-Hogg started working for him. “Tony found her shy, gentle, loyal and kind, less physical than the Princess, but far more prepared to dedicate herself to the happiness of those she loved,” she writes.
A divorce and a wedding
Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret finally split in 1976 after tabloid news revealed her affair with a much younger man named Roddy Llewellyn. Their divorce was finalized in 1978 and Lord Snowdon married Lindsay-Hogg in December of that year. They had a daughter, Lady Frances Armstrong-Jones, in 1979 and stayed together for 22 years.
Snowdon’s affairs
In 2000, Lindsay-Hogg divorced Lord Snowdon after she discovered that he’d had a son named Jasper out of wedlock with the journalist Melanie Cable-Alexander, according to The Telegraph. The exes remained close, however, and were even spotted having lunch together after the split. But that’s not the only extramarital affair in which Lord Snowdon took part. According to The Telegraph, he had an affair with Ann Hills for nearly 20 years, until her death in 1996.
And it came out much later that Lord Snowdon was also father to Polly Fry, who was born in 1960 at the same time he was on his honeymoon with Princess Margaret, according to The Telegraph. Fry herself took a DNA test in the 2000s to end years of rumors.
Though he cooperated with her request for a DNA test, Lord Snowdon infamously didn’t include Polly in his will. After his death in 2017, the £3.2 million estate (a little over $4.1 million) was split among his four other children, including Jasper.
The Crown is streaming on Netflix now.