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How had the romance burgeoned without anyone outside the royal family being the wiser? Only last month the London Sunday Express solemnly intoned that it was "by no means certain" that Margaret would ever marry. When he went to stay with the royal family at Balmoral last summer and at Sandringham this winter, everyone concluded it was just a case of "Tony's taking some more of his pictures." In contrast with Group Captain Peter Townsend, whom Margaret renounced in 1955 because he was a divorced man, Tony Armstrong-Jones maintained total secrecy about his courtship.
It was the memory of her unhappy 1955 announcement that she "would like it to be known" that she was not marrying Townsend, and the subsequent fear that she might become the unmarried daughter who stayed at home with mother, that made everyone pleased by the news. The Archbishop of Canterbury had no objections this time. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were reported "delighted" because it was "such an obviously happy match." A plainer reaction everywhere was "Thank heaven, Margaret's not going to marry some aristocratic chinless wonder."
The In-Laws. In getting Tony, Princess Margaret will also inherit a bewildering set of in-laws: his mother Anne is now an Irish countess by her marriage to the sixth Earl of Rosse, vice chancellor of Dublin's Trinity College. His father, a Queen's Counsel, after the divorce from Tony's mother married Actress Carol Coombe, and only a few weeks ago took his third wife: a former airline stewardess, Jenifer Unite, who is a year older than her royal daughter-in-law-to-be.
At week's end a happy and titillated Britain was speculating on what Princess Margaret will be called after her wedding. One solution would be for the Queen to ennoble Tony, but short of this, precedent dating back to 1503 (when Cecily, daughter of King Edward IV, married Commoner Thomas Kymbe) would seem to offer but two alternatives to the bride: she can either call herself Lady Margaret Armstrong-Jones, or H.R.H. Princess Margaret, Mrs. Armstrong-Jones. As for Tony, he would then remain plain Mister, and their children would grow up titleless.