A renowned royal author has claimed that Princess Margaret “was a deeply Christian woman” who “desperately” wanted to make her marriage to Antony Armstrong-Jones work.

This claim was made by Andrew Morton, who recently wrote a book about the late royal titled “Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters,” for which he talked to some of Margaret’s closest confidants.

“It was incredibly difficult for Margaret,” Morton told Fox News, referring to her divorce. “She was a deeply Christian woman who had her own desires that often conflicted with her faith. And she struggled. She desperately wanted the marriage to work, but there were too many challenges.”

Margaret married Antony in 1960 in the first televised royal wedding. They would go on to have a son the next year and a daughter in 1964.

Unfortunately, the marriage was not a happy one, as Armstrong-Jones had multiple affairs. When Margaret and Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener and aristocrat 17 years her junior, were pictured frolicking on a private island with one another, Antony used this as an excuse to end the strained marriage.

“He was [also] having an affair with the wife of his best man and he was bisexual,” Morton claimed of Antony. “So after the marriage, he was having casual affairs. The queen and the queen mother were not as sympathetic as one would think. They adored Armstrong-Jones and called him charming. So the royal family wanted to keep the marriage together, especially for the sake of the children. But eventually, it became too much to bear. Margaret was lonely. And the whole thing of both parties seeing other people just became an open secret.”

“It was a mess,” he continued.

The couple finally split in 1978 in the first royal divorce since King Henry VIII, and Margaret never got married again.

“Princess Margaret’s personal life was one of sadness,” said Morton. “The reality is, Margaret was a much more serious person. I was just talking to somebody who described how religious she was. He recalled seeing her praying on her own and leaving Westminster Abbey on her own. I think that image of her with a cigarette burning brightly with a bottle of Famous Grouse while partying until the early hours makes great television, but there was another side to her that was much more reflective and serious.”

Margaret died in 2002 at the age of 71, and Antony passed away in 2017 at the age of 86.

“I hope my book will give readers a sense of who Princess Margaret really was,” said Morton. “She endured many challenges and heartbreaks, but ultimately, it’s a story of devotion of not only to her sister but to the crown.”