A bombshell DNA test has confirmed that Antony Armstrong-Jones, the late Earl of Snowdon and former husband of Princess Margaret, fathered an illegitimate daughter born during his honeymoon with the royal, in a revelation that has reopened one of the most scandalous chapters in modern British royal history.
The confirmation, which emerged in 2004, established that Polly Higgson is the biological daughter of Armstrong-Jones and that she was conceived and born while he was on a six-week Caribbean honeymoon with Princess Margaret following their historic 1960 wedding. The timing of the birth places the ๐ถ๐ป๐ป๐ถ๐พ๐ squarely within the earliest days of the royal marriage.
But the identity of the child’s mother proved even more devastating than the existence of the child itself. Polly’s mother was Camilla Fry, the wife of Jeremy Fry, Armstrong-Jones’s closest friend and the man who had nearly served as best man at his wedding to the princess. The revelation meant that Armstrong-Jones had not merely cheated on the royal family, but had done so with the wife of his own best friend.
For decades, Polly Higgson believed her father was Jeremy Fry, a member of the wealthy family behind Fry’s Chocolate. She was raised within that understanding, shielded from the truth that would eventually dismantle the carefully constructed narrative surrounding one of Britain’s most notorious social climbers.
Both Jeremy Fry and Armstrong-Jones initially denied the story when questions arose. It was only after Fry’s death that Armstrong-Jones finally admitted the truth, confirming what DNA testing had already established beyond doubt. The admission came too late for those who had already been wounded by the deception.
The revelation capped a lifetime of infidelity that had already been laid bare in spectacular fashion years earlier. In the late 1990s, the suicide of journalist Anne Hills ๐ฎ๐๐น๐ธ๐ผ๐ฎ๐ญ a twenty-year ๐ถ๐ป๐ป๐ถ๐พ๐ that Armstrong-Jones had conducted throughout his entire marriage to his second wife, Lucy Lindsay-Hogg. Hills left behind diaries detailing every aspect of their relationship, and when newspapers published their contents, Lucy learned the full extent of her husband’s betrayal.
That discovery was followed by another: Armstrong-Jones had fathered a child with magazine editor Melanie Cable-Alexander, a woman nearly thirty years his junior. The cumulative weight of these revelations finally ended his second marriage, though remarkably, he and Lucy remained friends afterward, and she cared for him in his final years.
The pattern of betrayal traced back to the very beginning. Born into upper-class respectability rather than nobility, Armstrong-Jones’s fortunes rose when his mother married Lawrence Parsons, the sixth Earl of Rosse. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he studied architecture until failing his second-year exams set him on a different path entirely.
He became a photographer, building a reputation through fashion work and portraits of stage stars from his studio on Pimlico Road. His parties there became legendary, and rumors of affairs with both women and men followed him for years. He had many gay friends, and speculation about his own sexuality persisted throughout his life, with one biographer claiming he later admitted to being bisexual.
His connection to the royal family began when Queen Elizabeth II tapped him to take portraits of her family. His relaxed style was controversial but pleased the queen, and he soon became a welcome presence in royal circles. It was during this period that his friendship with Princess Margaret deepened into something more.
The princess took delight in disguising herself to sneak away and see him, asking his opinions on his work. The royal family, determined to avoid a repeat of Margaret’s failed relationship with Peter Townsend, required a major sacrifice from Armstrong-Jones: he would have to abandon his career if he wished to marry her. He agreed and quietly extricated himself from his professional commitments.
In 1960, the engagement was announced. His father reacted with characteristic coldness, expressing doubts that his son was suited to the role and comparing his temporary residence at Buckingham Palace to being confined to barracks. The couple married on May 6, 1960, in a ceremony that made history as the first royal wedding ever televised, drawing twenty million viewers.
Traditional segments of the British press disapproved of the union between a princess and a commoner. Armstrong-Jones faced snobbery from all sides, including from servants who treated him rudely because he was not equal to the other royals. Prince Philip, already cold toward him, developed a pronounced distaste after the marriage, their personalities clashing sharply.
Princess Margaret gave birth to a son in November 1961, and Armstrong-Jones accepted the title Earl of Snowdon. A daughter, Sarah, followed in 1964. On the surface, they appeared to be the perfect family.
But by 1965, the distance and pressure of royal life had taken their toll.
Armstrong-Jones began spending significant time with married Vogue editor Pamela Colin. Margaret, rather than sinking into depression, decided to respond in kind. She had a fling with her daughter’s godfather, Anthony Barton, and grew closer to actor Peter Sellers.
Rumors swirled about encounters with Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, and Leslie Hutchinson.
Her ๐ถ๐ป๐ป๐ถ๐พ๐ with Robin Douglas-Home, nephew of a former prime minister, carried disturbing consequences. Eighteen months after it ended, Douglas-Home took his own life at thirty-six. The back-and-forth ๐ธ๐ฝ๐๐ถ๐๐พ๐๐ continued for years, making everyone around the couple uncomfortable.
Margaret grew miserable while Armstrong-Jones seemed largely unbothered.
The royal family hoped the couple could lead separate lives quietly enough to spare them the embarrassment of divorce. Margaret bore the weight more heavily, acting out through drinking and rude public behavior. Anti-monarchists began criticizing her and the cost of her upkeep.
On their honeymoon, a friend had gifted the couple a six-acre plot on the Caribbean island of Mustique. Margaret used it as a refuge during the rockiest periods of the marriage. It was there that she took Roddy Llewellyn, the younger son of a famous British equestrian, beginning an ๐ถ๐ป๐ป๐ถ๐พ๐ that would prove catastrophic.
Press magnate Rupert Murdoch sent a New Zealand journalist to Mustique, who posed as a vacationing tourist with his wife. The journalist captured a photograph of Margaret and Llewellyn together. Publication of those photos became the final nail in the coffin, forcing the royal family to acknowledge that the marriage could not be salvaged.
Armstrong-Jones, meanwhile, had been spending more time as a documentarian and working closely with production assistant Lucy Lindsay-Hogg. He had sought a legal separation, but the royal family procrastinated. Fed up with waiting, he announced the separation himself, without the consent or knowledge of Margaret or the royal family.
The couple divorced in 1978. Armstrong-Jones wasted no time, marrying Lucy just five months later in December 1978. But the marriage was not happily ever after.
Somewhere between his separation and divorce, he had begun an ๐ถ๐ป๐ป๐ถ๐พ๐ with married journalist Anne Hills that would continue for two decades.
Hills had always wanted more from him, but with each passing year it became clear she would never get it. She saw other people and had live-in boyfriends, yet still longed for Armstrong-Jones. After being let go from her column at the Guardian in late 1996, with another boyfriend gone and yet another Christmas spent without him, she fell into deep depression and took her own life.
She left a note telling Armstrong-Jones she had always loved him and asking that a family heirloom he had given her be returned to him. Authorities collected her diaries, which contained all the details of their twenty-year relationship. Newspapers splashed the contents across their pages, and that was how Lucy learned her husband had been ๐ธ๐ฝ๐๐ถ๐๐พ๐๐ on her for their entire marriage.
Two years later, Lucy uncovered another bombshell: Armstrong-Jones had fathered a child with Melanie Cable-Alexander. She filed for divorce. Once again, his libido drove him to move on quickly and plentifully.
The 2004 DNA confirmation regarding Polly Higgson brought the story full circle, proving that the infidelity began not years into the marriage but within weeks of the wedding itself. The man who nearly shattered the royal family had betrayed his bride during their honeymoon, with the wife of his best friend.
Armstrong-Jones died in 2017, his legacy forever stained by the revelations that emerged in his final years. The royal family, which had once hoped to avoid ๐๐๐๐๐น๐ถ๐ through quiet separation, found itself confronting a truth far more damaging than divorce: that the man they had welcomed into their circle had been deceiving them from the very beginning.
The story of Antony Armstrong-Jones serves as a stark reminder that behind the carefully curated image of royal respectability, human frailty and betrayal can fester for decades before finally coming to light. The DNA test that confirmed Polly Higgson’s parentage in 2004 did more than establish a biological fact. It ๐ฎ๐๐น๐ธ๐ผ๐ฎ๐ญ the foundational lie upon which one of the twentieth century’s most scrutinized marriages was built.