All The Details About Their Relationship

For so long, it seemed as though details about Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend's relationship would only exist in whispers and stolen moments. So much happened behind closed doors, was spread over continents, and was ultimately sacrificed to the firm's rules. However, in 1978, Townsend opened up about a number of aspects of their relationship in his autobiography, "Time and Chance," recounting not only the process that went into their breakup but also what it was like to fall in love with the princess.

After her father died and the two started spending even more time together, Townsend and Margaret's feelings developed at pretty much the same rate — luckily for them, it happened at the same time, too. "It was then that we made the mutual discovery of how much we meant to one another," he wrote (via Today). "She listened, without uttering a word, as I told her, very quietly, of my feelings. Then she simply said: 'That is exactly how I feel, too.'"

Just as he shared what it was like to develop feelings for Margaret, Townsend also shared how difficult it was to pull the veil over their relationship. "We had reached the end of the road, our feelings for one another were unchanged, but they had incurred for us a burden so great that we decided together to lay it down," he wrote (via The Telegraph).