This Photographer Entered the Royal Family as a Commoner and Left It an Earl, a Baron and a Prince’s Godfather With One of the Century’s Biggest Scandals

You in all probability acknowledge his face from a dozen royal
documentaries, or perhaps you’ve got scrolled previous one in all his iconic
portraits with out even figuring out who was behind the lens. Antony
Armstrong-Jones is a type of figures who lived on the actual
intersection of artwork and aristocracy – a person who was not born noble,
but ended up reshaping how we see the British royal household. His
story, tangled with love, scandal, and artistic brilliance, is way
extra layered than any headline a couple of property itemizing might ever
recommend.

The commoner who married into the crown

Born on March 7, 1930, Antony
Armstrong-Jones got here from a fractured however well-connected household.
His father was Major Ronald Armstrong-Jones, and his mom was
Anne Messel. The two divorced in 1934, and by 1935 his mom had
remarried Michael Parsons, the sixth Earl of Rosse, changing into the
Countess of Rosse. On his father’s facet, his paternal grandfather
was the Welsh doctor and psychiatrist Sir Robert
Armstrong-Jones.

Despite these distinguished
household ties, Antony himself held no noble title. Until effectively after
his marriage, he carried solely the suffix “Esquire” – a designation
synonymous with gentleman however firmly exterior the ranks of British
the Aristocracy. So how did a person with no peerage find yourself changing into one in all
essentially the most talked-about members of the royal circle?

The reply arrived on May 6,
1960, when Antony Armstrong-Jones married Princess Margaret of the
United Kingdom, the youthful sister of
Queen Elizabeth II. Slightly greater than a yr later,
on October 6, 1961, the Queen granted him titles by letters patent,
making him the first Earl of Snowdon and Viscount Linley, of Nymans
in Sussex. With these titles got here the honorific Right Honourable
and a seat within the House of Lords. The couple went on to have two
youngsters collectively.

A photographer who modified the lens on royalty

Long earlier than the marriage,
Armstrong-Jones had already constructed a popularity behind the digicam.
He first gained recognition for his portraits of the royal household
throughout their official go to to Canada in 1957, and he continued
photographing them effectively into the 2000s. During the Nineteen Sixties, he served
because the creative director of the Sunday Times journal complement,
shaping the visible language of one of the vital influential
publications of that period.

His vary was outstanding. He shot
movie star portraits printed in magazines like Vogue and Vanity
Fair, tackled trend images, and ventured into documentary
work, together with a notable collection on folks institutionalized for
psychiatric issues. In 1979, he photographed Serge Gainsbourg in
a session that produced the picture used for each the back and front
cowl of the album Aux
armes et caetera. We have a tendency
to think about royal in-laws as ceremonial figures, however
Armstrong-Jones was genuinely creating artwork that
mattered.

In 1964, when Prince Edward was
born, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip selected Armstrong-Jones as
one of many little one’s godparents, alongside Prince Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, and Prince Louis of Hesse. It was a gesture that
underscored simply how deeply embedded he had turn into within the internal
workings of the royal household.

Scandal, separation, and a sophisticated legacy

The fairy-tale narrative didn’t
final. By 1976, the Earl and Countess of Snowdon separated after

Princess Margaret‘s infidelity grew to become public information
and Antony’s personal quite a few affairs got here to mild. Their divorce was
finalized in 1978, marking one of the vital high-profile royal
breakups of the 20th century.

Armstrong-Jones wasted little
time. In December 1978, he remarried Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, born
Davies. Together they’d a daughter, Frances Armstrong-Jones, born
in 1979. But outdated patterns repeated themselves. The couple separated
and divorced in 2000, once more resulting from Lord Snowdon’s quite a few
infidelities. From a relationship with Melanie Cable-Alexander, a
son named Jasper was born in 1998. And in 2004, a DNA take a look at revealed
that Lord Snowdon was additionally the daddy of Polly Fry, who had been
born simply days after his 1960 wedding ceremony to Princess
Margaret.

Even as his private life
unraveled, his institutional ties to the monarchy remained intact.
On November 16, 1999, Queen Elizabeth II created him Baron
Armstrong-Jones by means of a royal warrant. This was a life peerage –
a non-hereditary title – designed particularly to permit him to
retain his seat within the British Parliament after hereditary friends
misplaced their automated proper to take a seat within the House of Lords.

What we will take away from a life lived between two
worlds

Antony Armstrong-Jones navigated
a world most of us solely glimpse by means of tv screens and
tabloid pages. He entered royal life as a commoner and left it as
an earl, a baron, and a godfather to a prince. His images gave
us among the most enduring photographs of the 20th century, whereas
his personal life reminded everybody that titles don’t protect you
from human complexity. If there may be one factor his story makes clear,
it’s that the road between extraordinary expertise and extraordinary
scandal may be impossibly skinny – and typically, the identical individual
walks each side of it.