Princess Margaret

Princess Margaret is the Crown's most glamorous and tragic figure — a woman born into extraordinary privilege yet denied the one thing she truly wanted: the freedom to live on her own terms. Vanessa Kirby's early portrayal establishes Margaret as vivacious, witty, and deeply passionate, a natural counterpart to her more reserved sister Elizabeth.

Margaret's forced separation from Group Captain Peter Townsend — a divorced man the Church of England would not allow her to marry — sets the template for her life: desire thwarted by duty, passion crushed by protocol. This formative heartbreak never fully heals and colors every relationship that follows, including her turbulent marriage to photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones.

Helena Bonham Carter's middle-years Margaret is a woman oscillating between fierce intelligence and self-destructive behavior. Her drinking, her affairs, her cutting remarks — all mask a profound loneliness and the bitter knowledge that she will forever be "the spare." Yet Margaret is no mere victim; she is sharp, funny, and capable of devastating honesty, often saying what others only think.

Lesley Manville's later Margaret faces declining health and increasing irrelevance with characteristic defiance. Her story becomes a meditation on what happens to a life defined by "what if" — the paths not taken, the loves not pursued, the potential never realized. Margaret's death in the final seasons is one of the show's most moving passages.