By that time, he'd already befriended Princess Margaret: Irish art historian Homan Potterton wrote in his memoir Who Do You Think I Am? that Jennings "dazzled" the Princess.Īccording to author Noel Botham's book, Margaret: The Last Real Princess, Margaret actually wanted to convert to Catholicism but did not due so out of loyalty to Elizabeth. However, he later converted to Catholicism and became so enamored with his new faith that he decided to enroll in the priesthood. Jennings was raised in the Church of England and worked as a civil servant in the British Government’s Department of the Environment. So Henry decided to become the head of his own religion - the Church of England - of which Queen Elizabeth II is now the de facto leader. The family broke away from the Roman church in the 16th Century because King Henry VIII wanted to annul his marriage and marry someone else, but the Pope at the time refused to grant one. There's plenty of evidence that the two were close friends, but it seems Jennings' interest in the Princess may have been more spiritual than physical, as he had hoped to convert her to Roman Catholicism.įor context, the British Royal Family are adherents to the Church of England, which has a lot in common with Catholicism but does not recognize the Pope as having any authority. In real life, Jennings did become a priest, but it's unclear if he ever had a fling with Princess Margaret before doing so. "Nah! She went past me and ran out of the room her little bare feet running across the floor," he told the Independent.Among the many tangled relationships featured in The Crown Season 4 is the one between Princess Margaret and Derek Jennings, aka Dazzle, who begins Episode 7 by informing her he's joining the priesthood. While the Netflix drama (and many accounts of the incident reported at the time) shows Fagan enjoy a sit-down convo with Her Royal Highness before he is escorted from the premises, Fagan himself claims he was barely with her for more than a minute. What The Crown neglected to include was that Fagan was pretty high on mushrooms at the time, or so he tells it. Astoundingly, Fagan (Tom Brooke) had no real plan on how to bypass what we'd assume is stringent security, but nonetheless managed to scale a 14-foot wall topped with barbed wire and shimmy up a drainpipe undetected. As is accurately depicted in episode 5, he only reached the queen's sleeping quarters on his second visit. In the summer of 1982, Michael Fagan, an unemployed labor worker in his 30s, broke into Buckingham Palace-not once, but twice. Is one slightly better than the other? You decide.īetter believe it-though it's likely some details were amplified for dramatic effect. However, another royal insider, Penny Junor, claims that although Charles did gift such a bracelet to Camilla, the initials actually stood for Girl Friday, meaning a reliable female assistant, and that Charles sent similar items to other women he'd been close to perviously, as a means of thanking them before embarking on life as a married man. Some say that the letters stood for Gladys and Fred, Camilla and Charles' nicknames for one another, and that Diana then realized her husband-to-be and ex-girlfriend were at the very least having an emotional affair. (The show opts to depict this moment as Diana discovering a drawing of the piece of jewelry rather than the bracelet itself). According to taped interviews biographer Andrew Morton conducted with the late Princess, Diana was in the office of one of Charles' members of staff when she opened a parcel to find a bracelet engraved with the initials G and F. The note goes on to remind the Prince of the importance of building his destiny with some "sweet and innocent well-tempered girl with no past who knows the rules and will follow the rules," and that this is his duty and "most important task." While we can't know for sure if such a specifically timed or themed letter ever existed, it's not too much of stretch to assume communication on that matter did take place between the two men, since Mountbatten was in frequent contact with his great nephew, offering advice on such things. "The choice of a woman was the issue around which the last Prince of Wales came to grief, and it's astonishing to me that 40 years after the abdication, you are making so little attempt to conceal your infatuation for another man's wife," writes Mountbatten, referencing Charles' ongoing relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, in a letter in episode. In the season 4 premiere, right before his death, Lord Louis "Dickie" Mountbatten ( Charles Dance) pens a letter to his great-nephew/honorary great-grandson encouraging him to settle down.
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