Queen Showed Off "Harsh Side" to Beloved Aide After "Unforgivable Betrayal," Says Report
The Queen was betrayed, says the source, when someone revealed details about kids.
Loyalty is perhaps the most important quality someone could have when it comes to working for the Royal Family. After all, the Royals are notoriously private about everything from what they eat to the many scandals that have plagued the family for hundreds of years. When loyalty is broken, the family is known to freeze out those who wronged them, and sometimes things can get ugly. One beloved employee of the family learned this the hard way, when she exposed some deeply private royal secrets, betraying Her Majesty herself, at least according to one source. Read on for the full details.
Marion Crawford worked as the governess for Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. She was so close to the family that the girls called her "Crawfie." She was such a beloved member of the family that when she got married and retired in 1947, she was allowed to live in Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace.
After retiring, Crawford was given the opportunity to write for Ladies Home Journal. Elizabeth, who was now Queen Mother of England, wrote her a letter asking her to refrain. "I do feel, most definitely, that you should not write and sign articles about the children, as people in positions of confidence with us must be utterly oyster. If you, the moment you finished teaching Margaret, started writing about her and Lilibet, well, we should never feel confidence in anyone again," she said. Later it was agreed that she would write the articles, but refrain from using her own name, and would not leak any information that was not agreed upon.
However, when the articles were published, the Mother Queen was horrified at the information that had been leaked. A new Channel 4 documentary, The Real Windsors, details the aftermath of the "betrayal" – which included Crawford going on to publish the book The Little Princesses, writing a regular column, and writing stories about the Mother Queen, Queen Elizabeth, and Margaret. "To us, it all seems perfectly innocuous stuff, even rather bland. But that didn't matter to Princess Elizabeth, and [Queen] Elizabeth II as she became, Crawfie had betrayed her," royal historian Robert Lacey says in the documentary.
The family "cut ties" with Crawford, and the former governess being forced to move back to her native Scotland. "It also noted that, to this day, there is no record that [Queen] Elizabeth II ever made contact with her old nanny again," the documentary states. "The Queen does have this harsh side when it comes to defending the principles that she thinks matter," Lacey added. "It was a formative experience that contributed to the seriousness with which she always approached her job," adding, "ruthlessness, some people may call it."
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"The breaking of trust, at a very early age, I think, was a real lesson to the Queen," added Eve Pollard, former editor at the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Express. "Don't get too close to people you are not sure of, make sure that you can rely on them, make sure they will never tell. Make sure there's a loyalty there, and often, make sure they're from a background that would be as horrified about kiss-and-tell, as you would yourself."
