Princess Margaret’s only granddaughter, Lady Margarita Armstrong-Jones, has revealed why she wears a very famous royal jewel to special family events.
Lady Margarita told The Daily Telegraph that she adds the ruby and diamond engagement ring belonging to her late grandmother to outfits she picks for major royal spectacles. She tells the paper that ;’I wear it to things I think she would want to be there for.”
Among the most high profile of those events was the Coronation of King Charles III in May 2023.
Lady Margarita clearly treasures the ring, saying that ”it’s a Marguerite shape, a particular floral motif, and just so beautiful. The fact that it shares our name made it feel very magical.”
Margarita was named after Princess Margaret, who died three months before she was born. In fact, her full name is a combination of several of those that belonged to her grandmother, her great grandmother and her great aunt – she is Lady Margarita Elizabeth Rose Alleyne Armstrong-Jones.
It’s long been thought that the engagement ring was designed to look like a rosebud, in a nod to Princess Margaret’s middle name of Rose. There are very few close ups of the ring but it is definitely a floral design featuring rubies and diamonds and it was created by Lady Margarita’s grandfather, Antony Armstrong-Jones, later the 1st Earl of Snowdon.
Princess Margaret and Lady Margarita share a link to both the marguerite and the rose in their names and so the ring can be seen as a double link between the two.
Lady Margarita, who is studying jewellery design in Florence while making her own pieces as well, also spoke of the granny she never met. She said she’d been told her grandmother was ”definitely a big earring woman.”
Princess Margaret was known for her sense of style and her engagement ring reflected that. When she announced she was going to marry Antony Armstrong-Jones, in February 1960, she was seen with the ring in their engagement photos which were taken at Royal Lodge on the Windsor estate, now at the centre of the row around Andrew Mountbatten Windsor who is to leave the property imminently after losing all his royal titles.
The wedding of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones was the first royal marriage to be televised. They wed at Westminster Abbey on May 6 1960.
They went on to have two children – David, now Earl of Snowdon and father of Lady Margarita, and Lady Sarah Chatto – before divorcing in 1978.
