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'Princess Margaret is my mom'
27/03/2007 17:11 - (SA)
London - An accountant who claims he may be the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret, the late sister of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, was in court on Tuesday trying to prove his royal blood.
Robert Brown, 52, is bidding to force the High Court in London to let him have access to wills made by Margaret and her mother, the Queen Mother, who died in 2002 aged 101, to help his case.
But Frank Hinks, lawyer for the executors of both estates, said Brown had produced no proper evidence to support his claim, which he labelled "scandalous" and based on "an insane delusion".
Royal wills are not usually made public in a tradition which Buckingham Palace says dates back to ancient times but was actually introduced in 1910 to cover up a sex scandal, reported The Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.
The womanising prince Francis, brother-in-law of the future king, George V - himself grandfather of Queen Elizabeth and Margaret - left family jewels to a mistress, leading royals to persuade a judge to make his will secret, said the paper.
Brown's birth mother is officially Cynthia Joan Brown, a model who worked for the queen's former dresser, Hardy Amies, while his father Douglas was in the British army.
'Hush up a scandal'
One theory reportedly being used to back up the claim from Brown is that Joan and Douglas adopted Margaret's illegitimate child to hush up a scandal.
In 1954, Margaret faced controversy over her wish to wed a divorced man, group captain Peter Townsend.
Brown is said to claim that he is the off-spring of this liaison.
Margaret, who died in 2002 aged 71, married photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960 but they were divorced later.
- AFP
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