December 2017 saw the release of the second season for the much-anticipated Netflix Original — The Crown.

The show, keeping with its structure of portraying all the important members of the Royal Family, went deeper into the character of Princess Margret, picking off from her failed romance with Group Captain Townsend (romance that did not culminate in marriage).

Season 2 was more favorable for Princess Margret. She had her fun of “modernity," keeping with the changing times of the era; she got married to not a “boring” or chosen member of the Royal Family, but to a man of her choice, a man who represented her mood of the time (a lack of defining borders) to photographer and filmmaker Antony Armstrong Jones and she became a mother.

While these would represent happiness and the good on a general scale, nonetheless Princess Margret was never happy. What really stood out to me in this season’s portrayal of the Princess was her lack of happiness. Not that she was a depressed young woman sobbing into her pillow all the time. She did have her moments of happiness, she did have her fun, but nothing that stuck. Not even her marriage to controversy man Antony Jones, the one main mission and goal of Season-One-Princess Margret could keep her spirits high.

Living on a diet of cigarettes, booze, and men, she was constantly looking out for spaces that made meaning to her, to define her. When she did not find it in being the sister to the Queen, she tried marriage, when she did not find it there, she tried it in the renovation of her house, she then tried to find it in childbearing and the cycle went on until her sickness-filled death (which The Crown has not yet come to).

Witty, beautiful and charming, to the outside eye she had everything; yet she turned out to be empty and, ironically, it is these very things that made her look to the outside.

Being overshadowed by her sister, not only in terms of title, but in terms of having constant attention, Princess Margret craved for the spotlight. She wanted The Buckingham Palace and the London to be about her all the time.

Perhaps it was this lack of attention and the constant foreshadow-ness that made her unhappy. While she did try to grab it whatever chance she could — being a fashion icon, her controversial romance, her seemingly naked pictures that were published in the newspapers, her constant partying and keeping the company of non-Royals and hippies, none of them was enough. She tried everything she could think of at the time and failed.

Maybe she would have been successful if it wasn’t for the tumultuous and changing times of the era, if London and the U.K. were quieter times then and did not see the Suez Canal Scandal or the scandals around the lifestyle of the Duke of Edinburg, Prince Philip or even the rising importance of the public perceptions toward the Monarchy, perhaps Princess Margret might have had her chance to shine and find some happiness and in turn herself.

It is indeed sad that someone who had a life worthy of envy, constantly envied the other. Actually, she did not even know whom to envy—her sister or the layman outside who was not bogged down by roles and definitions.

Being born with titles and roles, she either wanted those iron-clad titles to change and grow along with her, to keep defining her throughout her life of “modernity” or she wanted to define herself within the ambits of those titles in a unique way that was not allowed by the Monarchy and the Church.

This constant tussle made her feel lost, her feeling that she was there somewhere in-between them but could never find it. Not even the shining light of a controversy could bring it out for her.

She truly was victim of Freud’s hypothesis of man as a function of his external environment and not of his internal.

How this would pan-out to her very lifestyle killing her is yet to be shown in the upcoming seasons of The Crown and I for one cannot wait.

While I would root for her, being a historical figure and already knowing where her life is headed, no amount of rooting can save this character now.

Her death, like her title, was written, and nothing can change that.