Details About Princess Margaret's Life At Mustique Island Revealed

After she shuffled off this mortal coil in 2002 at the age of 71, tragic details about Princess Margaret's death began to emerge. The feisty royal and younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, had been in the public eye since childhood. Her entire life — and ultimately, her sad decline — were on display to the entire world. In fact, what Princess Margaret's final years were really like was no secret, as her health deteriorated after a series of strokes — the first of which came during a vacation on her beloved home on the Caribbean island of Mustique.

Margaret's story will always be inextricably tied to Mustique, where she regularly visited during the final three decades of her life. Part of the Grenadines archipelago, the tiny island — measuring just 3 miles in length, and a half-mile wide — is situated about 100 miles from Barbados. 

A private island, Mustique was owned by the eccentric British aristocrat, Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron of Glenconner. When he purchased the island in 1958 — for a measly £45,000 (about $60,000) — Mustique was far from luxurious. That changed when Princess Margaret began vacationing there, as her presence transformed the island from rustic retreat to sought-after enclave for the rich and famous.

Following Princess Margaret's wedding to Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960, the newlywed Earl of Snowdon and his royal bride embarked on a six-week honeymoon, cruising through the Caribbean aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia. The pair spent time in Trinidad, Antigua, and Mustique, welcomed to the latter by two old friends: Colin Tennant and his wife, Lady Anne Glenconner, who later become Margaret's lady-in-waiting. According to royal lore, Tennant forgot to purchase a wedding gift for the couple, an omission he rectified by offering her a 10-acre piece of land on Mustique.

That was no skin off Tennant's teeth, as the saying goes. By the late 1950s, Mustique was a tropical wasteland, and the sugar plantations that had once fueled the island's economy long since abandoned. In 1958, Tennant impulsively purchased the entire island without even having set foot on it. At the time, the desolate island had no electricity or running water, and was overrun by poisonous manchineel trees — so toxic that consuming its fruit can be fatal, while the white sap oozing from its bark causes painful skin blisters. 

Writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, Lady Glenconner recalled thinking her husband had gone off the deep end. "When Colin turned to me and asked what I thought, I didn't hold back. 'Colin,' I said, 'this is sheer madness!' He looked at me defiantly. 'You mark my words, Anne,' he said. 'I will make Mustique a household name,'" she wrote.

While Princess Margaret was initially enchanted by Mustique, it would be several years before she returned. By 1968, her marriage was disintegrating, so she contacted her old friend, Colin Tennant. "A few years later, Princess Margaret called Colin out of the blue and asked: 'Is it true, did you really mean it about the land? And does it come with a house?'" Lady Glenconner wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Tennant insisted it was true, but there was no house. Margaret decided to build one, taking a hands-on approach by traveling to Mustique in order to supervise the construction. According to Lady Glenconner, Margaret never complained about the rustic conditions at that time, and basic meals of tinned food and fresh fish from the ocean. "She arrived with no fuss a few months later, happily using the bucket of water in the trees to shower, just like we did," Lady Glenconner told Caribbean Beat.

Overseeing the home's design was Oliver Messel, renowned set designer for theater and film. Once completed, the five-bedroom oceanfront home was named Les Jolies Eaux, French for "the beautiful waters." Messel's design highlighted the spectacular views, and included several trapezoid-shaped guest houses and two swimming pools. The princess was thrilled with the final result. "I'm very pleased with what Oliver did for Les Jolies Eaux," she once said, per Elle Decor.

Once construction had been completed on Les Jolies Eaux, Princess Margaret began making frequent visits to Mustique. These trips were regularly scheduled, twice each year, with Margaret fleeing the cold London winter in October or November, and again in February.

Lord Snowdon's absence was conspicuous during those sojourns. The truth is that while Margaret loved Mustique, the same was not true of her husband. In fact, Lord Snowdon had so despised the brief time he'd spent on the island that he refused to return, even coining an unflattering nickname for the place: "Mistake."

Basil Charles tended the bar at the island's only watering hole, Basil's Bar, and came to learn many secrets when serving cocktails to the glitterati who favored the island. Discussing Lord Snowdon, he told ramp.space, "He hated Mustique because it was Margaret's island." According to Charles, Lord Snowdon resented the fact that Tennant had given the land not to the couple, but to Margaret alone. "Lord Snowdon understood it was a gift just for her," Charles explained. 

As a senior member of Britain's royal family, Princess Margaret could avail herself of any of the Windsor family's many homes. As for what the royal family's homes really look like, they ranged from grand castles to humble cottages. Margaret's Mustique home, however, bore the rare distinction of being the only one that was hers outright, with no connection to any of her royal relatives. "This is my house," she once said (via Elle Decor), "the only square inch in the world I own."

For Margaret, who was forced by the circumstances of her birth to depend upon her older sister for literally everything, owning her own retreat was no small thing. "Margaret told me Les Jolies Eaux was the only property she had ever owned in her entire life. It was hers," the late princess' Mustique friend, Tatiana Copeland, told Town & Country. "She felt inordinate love and pride that this was not from the royal family, it was not her sister's, it was not grace and favor," Copeland added. "She loved the fact it was her own."

There was another reason why Margaret felt so connected to owning something that was hers and only hers. "It was the only house she ever owned and it made her very happy, because apart from being beautiful it provided her with an independent base from her husband," Lady Glenconner told Caribbean Beat.

One key reason why Princess Margaret kept returning to Mustique, year after year, was the freedom she was able to experience there. Far from Buckingham Palace, she could — at least temporarily — ignore the royal rules and protocols that had governed her life since infancy. At the time she started becoming a fixture on Mustique, the island was not what it would become, home to just a dozen or so families. 

Margaret would typically spend her days swimming, something she absolutely loved, and would usually undertake with Lady Glenconner. "We'd swim for miles; it was our favourite pastime," Lady Glenconner wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. "We'd also collect shells and have sundowners at Basil's Bar, watching for the green flash over the sea at sunset."

Those idyllic days of sun and surf made way for evenings of revelry, with homeowners on the island competing to see who could throw the most memorable parties. These soirées went on far into the night, dancing and drinking. As Margaret's Mustique neighbor, Tatiana Copeland, recalled for Town & Country, Mustique in the early 1970s was inhabited by a party-hearty crowd. "Nobody sane comes to Mustique," she said. "All the people who come are totally unusual, striking, and eccentric. I think that's what attracts them to the island."

Interviewed for Town & Country, Tatiana Copeland revealed that those who invited Princess Margaret to one of their Mustique parties had to make some preparations for the guest of honor. When Her Royal Highness arrived, she expected to be greeted with a glass of whisky — and not just any old whisky, but her favorite, The Famous Grouse. "You had to make sure you had it when she came to your house," said Copeland, insisting that not having that particular beverage on hand was a serious social faux pas. "If you didn't have her whisky then that was probably the last time she would go to you. If you couldn't be bothered to know what she liked to drink, she probably wouldn't be bothered to come back to you."

That said, obtaining The Famous Grouse was no mean feat on the tiny island, which is all of three miles long and a half-mile wide. Because it couldn't be purchased on the island, savvy socialites knew to bring a healthy supply with them when they arrived.

Things like that, in fact, determined how positive the experience of entertaining Margaret would become. As a source told El Pais, "She could be very wild and unrestrained" under the right circumstances. Under the wrong ones, however, she would easily slip on her royal airs, and become difficult. "She liked to be spoiled and taken care of," the source added. "If she felt well cared for, she was fun."

It was true that Mustique residents who invited Princess Margaret to a soirée could never be sure which Margaret would show up until she arrived, the prim and proper royal, or the wickedly witty party girl version out to have a good time. However, when Margaret did cut loose, it was a sight to see. "She liked partying, late nights, and to dance," Basil Charles of Mustique's Basil's Bar told Town & Country. 

"It could be very wild and unrestrained," Tatiana Copeland told the magazine of what a night with Margaret was like. "She liked nothing more than to sit and drink and sing a ditty at the piano," she recalled. According to Copeland, Margaret's raunchy sensibility would be on full display, as she sang bawdy songs while a piano player accompanied her. "She had a very ribald sense of humor," Copeland added. 

Among the wildest stories from Princess Margaret's party days in Mustique is the time she approached John Bindon, a one-time London mobster who'd drifted into a career as an actor. Unabashed, the princess confronted Bindon with rumors she'd heard that he was exceptionally well endowed, and requested that he offer proof, then and there. "Then he took out his appendage," Bindon's then-girlfriend, Vicki Hodge, told The Sun. "The Princess examined it, rather like a fossil. We all gasped."

Another way that Princess Margaret liked to cut loose while vacationing on Mustique was by surrounding herself with handsome younger men — often significantly younger. One of these was Roddy Llewellyn, whom she'd met when he'd worked as a landscaper for Colin Tennant and his wife at their estate in Scotland. Llewellyn was 25 years old, while Margaret was 43 — and still very much married to Lord Snowdon. They'd been seeing each other clandestinely for a couple of years when a trip to Mustique created a royal scandal. 

When photos of the two cavorting in the sea — Margaret in a pink bathing suit and Llewellyn festooned with a Union Jack swim brief — were published, the scandal exploded. Margaret and Lord Snowdon ultimately split up, and their divorce was finalized in 1978. The princess made ignominious history as the first senior British royal to be divorced since King Henry VIII. With the cat out of the bag, Margaret and Llewellyn took their romance public, and continued to see each other for eight years. 

During that period, Llewellyn continued to accompany Margaret on her regular trips to Mustique. The relationship ended amicably in 1981, and Llewellyn went on to marry Tatiana Soskin — reportedly with Margaret's blessing.

Thanks in large part to the recurring presence of Princess Margaret, Mustique became a destination for the jet-setting elite during the 1970s. Eventually, Margaret's social circle on the island expanded beyond British aristocrats to a new breed of visitors flooding to the island: celebrities. These included British rock stars Mick Jagger and David Bowie, both of whom built their own lavish vacation homes on Mustique, while others who frequented the island included movie stars Paul Newman and Raquel Welch. 

"Celebrities come here because they can act like normal people," Roger Pritchard, managing director of The Mustique Company, told Surface Mag. "It's not exactly polished, what you'd call six-star. It's like a village. Everybody knows each other, and we like it that way." In recent years, one reason why celebs continue to flock to Mustique is that the island has banned both drones and paparazzi, meaning the kind of scandalous scandal that kiboshed Margaret's marriage would not be repeated. "Celebrities come here because they can be themselves and not worry about the cameras or newspapers," Basil Charles, of Mustique's famed Basil's Bar, told the magazine.

It was in 1977 that, arguably, the biggest celebrity ever finally set foot on Mustique: Margaret's sister, Queen Elizabeth II. She and her husband, Prince Philip, traveled to the island and spent a few days relaxing with Margaret at Les Jolies Eaux.

During the years she spent on Mustique, Princess Margaret was the queen bee of the island's social scene, where the buttoned-up social restrictions that governed her life in Britain could be tossed aside. Mustique, rumors claimed, was a bohemian hotbed of wild parties, drugs, excessive drinking, and free love, with Margaret at the center of all of it. She had even, noted The Royal Observer, earned the nickname of "The X-Rated Queen of Mustique."

She was known for starting each day with a stiff gin and tonic, and continued from there as her lengthy vacations became non-stop parties. She also chain-smoked, a lifelong habit that escalated as she grew older; at one point, she was reported to be smoking up to 60 cigarettes a day.

"She comes across as kind of a boozy, cigarette-smoking loose cannon, if you will, who wanted to be much more hip than the queen would ever consider being," Cele Otnes, author of "Royal Fever," told the outlet. "She definitely lived her own life — a very, very big deviation from what was expected."

In Mustique, Princess Margaret had truly found her happy place, where she could let down her hair and live a somewhat normal life, free of the royal trappings that suffocated her in Britain. "This was the place she found everything," Basil Charles of legendary Mustique watering hole, Basil's Bar, told Surface Mag. "She was really happy here."

Charles shared similar sentiments when interviewed for "The Royal Rebel," a 2018 documentary about Margaret. "She wanted to have the [royal] life, but she also wanted to have a normal life," Basil said of the low-key and private lifestyle she was able to enjoy on Mustique. That sense of normalcy was something that Mustique also imparted on her son, Viscount Linley, and her daughter, Lady Sarah Chatto. When examining the royal lives of Princess Margaret's non-royal children, it's notable that both have eschewed the spotlight, establishing themselves in their own careers. 

However, Mustique hadn't grabbed hold of her children the way it had her. Six years before her death, in 1996, Margaret gave her beloved villa, Les Jolies Eaux, to her son as a gift. When he sold it a few years later, she was not thrilled. "The princess was shattered," a friend of Margaret's said, as reported by The Standard. "She told me how much pleasure it gave her to think of her children and grandchildren enjoying it for years to come. But he had other ideas."

Anyone familiar with Princess Margaret's tragic real-life story knows that her life of continual overindulgence began catching up with her in her 60s. Throughout the 1990s, she was perpetually ill with maladies including pneumonia, hepatitis, bronchitis, and laryngitis. In 1998, while attending a party in Mustique, she suffered a stroke. Described as "mild" at the time, it would be the first of several more strokes. 

The following year, Margaret badly scalded her feet when entering a bath in her Mustique home. While a newspaper report claimed she was severely burned, requiring round-the-clock care, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson told BBC News that report had been overstated. "Princess Margaret scalded her feet in an accident on holiday in Mustique a few weeks ago," the source said, noting that "these things do take time to heal."

Sadly, that was the final time she would visit her beloved tropical paradise. Her health deteriorated even further, and she would never have the chance to say goodbye to the island she grew to love. As Tatiana Copeland told Town & Country, Margaret's pride likely prevented her from returning, refusing to endure the pity of her friends. "Her speech became more impacted," Copeland recalled. "I didn't think she wanted people to see her like that. She wanted people to remember how she was."