The Crown season 5 episode four featured Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend's reunion in 1992, with the pair even sharing one last kiss before going their separate ways — but did any of it really happen?
"Annus Horriblis" tells the story of the year in which Windsor Castle burned down, Prince Andrew separated from the Duchess of York and Prince Charles made it clear his marriage to Diana was effectively over.
The Queen memorable described it as the worst year of her life and Netflix will be looking at the tumultuous period through the eyes of Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) who's reminded of her love affair with royal equerry, Group Captain Peter Townsend (Timothy Dalton).
Margaret wasn't allowed to marry Townsend in the 1950s, as he was a divorcee and remarriage was frowned upon by the Church of England at the time, so she's surprised to receive a letter from him several decades later.
Nevertheless, the pair share a touching reunion and even exchange a kiss, before going their separate ways once more in The Crown season 5. But what was the real-life story behind the pair's reunion and did Margaret really carry a torch for Townsend for the rest of her days?
Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend's final kiss — did the reunion in 1992 really happen?
Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend said during a 1970 book tour that he and Margaret hadn't seen each other since a "friendly" meeting in 1958, which corresponds with the events in The Crown.
However in October 1993, a friend of Margaret revealed the Princess had met Townsend the previous year, for what turned out to be the last time before his death in 1995.
Yet rather than meeting him in public, as Margaret did in the Netflix drama, she decided not to attend the reunion they'd both been invited to, for fear it might be picked up by the press and invited him to lunch at her apartment in Kensington Palace.
Margaret is reported to have said that Townsend, who was then aged 77, looked "exactly the same, except he had grey hair". They are thought to have spent the afternoon chatting like old friends, yet other guests at the event are said to have found him disgruntled and convinced that in agreeing to part, he and Margaret had set a noble example which seemed to have been in vain.
There is no evidence that they shared one last kiss, as was depicted in The Crown.
Did Princess Margaret keep all of Peter Townsend's love letters?
In The Crown season 5 episode 4, Peter Townsend says he kept every single one of Margaret's letters to him and offers to return them to him to prevent them falling into the wrong hands. She in turn reveals that she still has all the letters he sent to her during the height of their romance.
In reality, the Princess and Townsend didn't correspond at all in the decades after their split and the letters they exchanged are now in the royal archives. They will not be available to the public until 100 years after Margaret's birth, in 2030.
Furthermore, in 1959 Margaret wrote to Townsend in response to him informing her of his remarriage plans, accusing him of betraying their vow not to marry anyone else and requesting her love letters to him be destroyed.
Townsend has always claimed he complied with her wishes, but kept that final letter and an envelope of burned ashes of the vow she'd sent, before eventually destroying these also. He was apparently unaware Margaret had already broken the pact by her engagement to Billy Wallace, an event that wasn't revealed until many years later.
Was Margaret heartbroken over her split with Townsend for the rest of her life?
After finally breaking off her relationship with Townsend, Princess Margaret accepted a proposal from Billy Wallace, one of the dwindling number in her circle who was still single, and who had proposed to her constantly.
The engagement was never formally announced and short-lived, ending when he naively confessed to a holiday fling while in the Bahamas during their courtship.
Wallace would later say: "The thing with Townsend was a girlish nonsense that got out of hand. It was never the big thing on her part that people claim. I had my chance and blew it with my big mouth, or she would have become Mrs Wallace and I would have been able to handle her."
In 1959 Margaret became engaged to fashionable young photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones. Their engagement caught the nation by surprise. Some close friends believed it had been precipitated by Townsend's plans to remarry, this time to a young Belgian woman named Marie-Luce Jamagne.
She had received his letter informing her of this while at Balmoral with Armstrong-Jones. But she was later to confide to a close friend that she knew Armstrong-Jones was about to propose and begged him not to on that day. He duly obliged, but proposed shortly after and was immediately accepted.
Cracks in Margaret and Armstrong-Jones' marriage began to appear shortly after the birth of their daughter, Lady Sarah, beginning with his infidelity, while in 1966 Margaret embarked on her first extra-marital affair with Antony Barton, a Bordeaux wine producer and a godfather to Lady Sarah.
The following year she had a short but intense romance with Robin Douglas-Home, an aristocratic piano-player and nephew of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, former Conservative prime minister.
The affair lasted just one month, ending when she decided to try to save her relationship with Snowdon and eighteen months later Douglas-Home committed suicide by taking a drugs overdose.
Princess Margaret's next romance with Roddy Llewellyn, 17 years her junior, began when her husband was in a relationship with his assistant, Lucy Lindsay Hogg, who was to become his second wife.
At the height of her distress, and unable to sleep, she took a handful of Mogadon tablets and anxious staff found they were unable to wake her. Friends have always denied that it was an attempt at suicide and she is reported to have said: "I was so exhausted because of everything that all I wanted to do was sleep . . . and I did, right through to the following afternoon."
Armstrong-Jones and Margaret divorced in 1978 and in the same year, 23 years after his love affair with Princess Margaret ended, Townsend released his first autobiography, "Time and Chance" and described their relationship thus..
"She could have married me only if she had been prepared to give up everything — her position, her prestige, her privy purse," he wrote. "I simply hadn't the weight, I knew it, to counterbalance all she would have lost."
Peter Townsend died in 1995 at the age of 80, with a Buckingham Palace spokesman relaying that Princess Margaret was "sad" at the news. Margaret herself died seven years later, in 2002.
The Crown season 5 is available now on Netflix
