What We Know About Lady Anne Glenconner

Lady Anne Glenconner thinks of herself and the other women who were Queen Elizabeth's maids of honor as "the Spice Girls of their time" (via Daily Mail). FYI: she almost passed out while the queen and Prince Philip were tying the knot but (pro tip) was saved from public embarrassment by smelling salts. Lady Glenconner, née Anne Coke Tennant, wasn't just Queen Elizabeth's bridesmaid. She spent 30 years as Princess Margaret's lady-in-waiting and a lifetime as her BFF (via The Guardian). It was at Lady Anne's wedding to Baron Colin Tennant Glenconner that Margaret met wedding photographer, Tony Armstrong-Jones, her future husband (via Metro). And it was the Glenconner's Caribbean island destination Mustique that Princess Anne would use to (in Glenconner's words) catch "a break" from her husband when things got gnarly (via The Times). "We were like Robinson Crusoe, collecting rainwater to shower with and hunting for lobsters in their holes," Glenconner remembered their early days on the island — the days before Mick Jagger, David Bowie Nelson Rockefeller, Bob Dylan, and the likes partied there with bathtubs full of champagne.

Her own cheating husband once told her that he enjoyed screaming at people to "make them squirm." From him, Lady Anne Glenconner did not consider escaping for 54 years (via The Guardian). "We were brought up not to throw in the towel but to bite bullets and fold towels neatly," she explained in her memoir (via The New York Times).

It's not just her husband's macho hogwash that she put up with. Lady Anne Glenconner has been tolerating the British aristocracy's baloney since the day she was born and her gender determined she wouldn't be eligible to inherit Holkham, the fifth-largest estate in England. "I tried awfully hard to be a boy, even weighing 11lb at birth, but I was a girl and there was nothing to be done about it," she joked to The Guardian.

Grinning and bearing it came with its upsides: a life spent on and off a Caribbean island, 26 trips to India (via Tatler), an accent that The Guardian says resembles the queen's, and a close relationship to The Firm. In 1990 when her husband sold their London house leaving Lady Anne without a home, she bunked with Princess Margret at Kensington Palace for an entire year (via Tatler). Unlike other British aristocratic media personalities (for example those who go by the name of "Lady C"), Lady Anne really does know the royal family. The future king of England Prince Charles, Anne told The Guardian, is "a "proper friend" of hers who pops by often. As for Princess Anne, Glenconner remembers her fondly as "always such fun, she was always thinking such naughty things to do" (via Metro).

Yes, before you ask, she does have an opinion about Meghan Markle. "I think she thought she could drive around in a golden coach. But [being a working royal is] actually quite boring," Lady Glenconner told The Guardian.