Princess Margaret Was a Brownie, Plus 7 More Facts About the Queen's Late Sister

Princess Margaret was born on August 21, 1930, four years after the birth of her sister, the future Queen Elizabeth II. At the time, she was titled Princess Margaret of York, as her father was only a second son and her uncle Edward was expected to be king. Of course, in 1936, Edward became Edward VIII but quickly abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, leaving Margaret's father to become George VI and Margaret to simply become "The Princess Margaret."

Although she was the daughter of a king from the time she was six years old, Margaret's parents tried to give her and her sister Elizabeth some elements of a normal youth. Among the highlights: they arranged for a Brownie pack at the palace, and Margaret graduated to Girl Guide and Sea Ranger. From 1965 until her 2002 death, she was the president of Girlguiding UK.

Although the couple's fairy tale wouldn't last, it did set one trend: televising royal weddings. The wedding of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones was the first royal wedding to be televised, and had an audience of over 300 million viewers.

While her sister spent time with prominent politicians and fellow royals, Princess Margaret kept a much more eclectic social circle. She famously hung out with celebrities (such as Elizabeth Taylor, pictured here in 1969) and partied with a decidedly un-aristocratic set.

Princess Margaret picked up the habit of smoking as a young teenager and refused to quit, even after her father died partly due to lung cancer from habitual and so-called "therapeutic" smoking. Unfortunately, she wound up with a cancerous skin lesion in 1980 and had to have part of a lung removed in 1985 due to cancer.