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The Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, who was seen as a rebellious “party girl”, was often shrouded in scandal from courting with a married man to several well-publicised affairs, but it appears that a royal child was another scandal which plagued her marriage. So what heart wrenching confession did one royal lovechild make about her life?
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Princess Margaret, the Queen’s younger sister, married Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960.
The couple did not have a happy union and by the early 1970s had drifted apart.
Mr Armstrong-Jones, more commonly known as Lord Snowdon, had a reputation as a playboy.
The first years of the couple’s marriage were said to be happy and passionate, leading to the births of two children.
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Royal scandal: Why did Lord Snowdon's lovechild say she it was a 'hard burden to bear'? (Image: GETTY)
Royal scandal: Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon with their two children (Image: GETTY)
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But it appears their children, David Armstrong-Jones and Lady Sarah Chatto, were not in fact Lord Snowdon’s first children.
Polly Fry is the daughter Lord Snowdon fathered before marrying Princess Margaret.
Ms Fry was born just a few weeks before Margaret and Antony walked down the aisle.
She was raised assuming her father, Jeremy Fry, a good friend of Lord Snowdon’s, was her biological father.
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Royal scandal: Polly Fry, Lord Snowdon's lovechild, was born weeks before he married Princess Margaret (Image: GETTY)
However, in 2004, Ms Fry confirmed he was her father after convincing him to take a DNA test.
She told The Telegraph: “When you reach a certain stage in your life, you just want to know.”
At the time, the Earl of Snowdon denied he had taken a DNA test, but he later acknowledge the truth.
Polly Fry reportedly found the experience of learning the truth to be extremely painful.
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But she added that ultimately it did not change her life.
Ms Fry told the Daily Mail: “Finding out at the age of 45 that the man I had idolised and put on a pedestal higher than Nelson’s Column since I was a small child was not in fact my father was a hard burden to bear.
“Moving the parental goalposts in adulthood requires a substantial adjustment if one is to stay in the game and play by the rules.
“It did, however, clarify where to send Father’s Day cards in future.”
Royal scandal: Lord Snowdon had a total of five children overall (Image: GETTY)
She added: “Rather than being twisted with guilt and shame at what I’ve done in uncovering a secret that I should have been told long ago, I can just carry on being little old me, the person I am today.
“I can nestle back into my role as a modern-day Mrs Bennet and feel blessed to have married the most adoring father our brood of daughters could wish for, and get on with the job in hand: that of marrying off my girls to men I deem would make ground-worshipping fathers – and if they are blessed with a hefty bank balance, so much the better.”
Lord Snowdon went on to marry Lucy Mary Lindsay-Hogg in 1978.
The couple had one daughter Lady Frances Armstrong-Jones in 1979.
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However, his second marriage was not the end of his extramarital affairs and from 1976 to 1996, he also had a mistress, journalist Ann Hills, who died by suicide on December 31, 1996.
Lord Snowdon and his second wife separated in 2000 after it was revealed that then 67-year-old had fathered a son, Jasper William Oliver Cable-Alexander, born in April 1998 with Melanie Cable-Alexander, an editor at Country Life magazine.
The former husband of Princess Margaret died aged 96 in Kensington in January 2017.
He reportedly left no money for his love child Polly Fry, however she did attend his funeral at Westminster Abbey.
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