As the therapist says in the episode, the gene that resulted in Nerissa and Katherine’s condition came from their mother, who was not a blood relative of the Bowes-Lyons. This is obviously a very simplified and abbreviated version just to show the relationships of the royal family to the cousins discussed in this episode, but I hope it helps elucidate the situation. I could not find any family tree that showed all the people relevant to this discussion, so I made my own. I could not find any records that actually named what this genetic disorder was in the 1930s-1940s, they were simply called “imbeciles.” Their defect left them unable to speak and with a mental age of about three. Three of their maternal cousins, Idonea, Rosemary, and Ethelreda, also had the same disorder. The genetic disorder - Nerissa and Katherine had a genetic disorder that passed down from their maternal grandfather, Baron Clinton (Charles Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis). For the record, I don’t have any problem with a frame story like this being concocted to tell the story my big issue is that The Crown lays blame at the feet of the Queen Mother and makes her sound like a friggin Nazi with lines about “the purity of the bloodline,” when in real life, she had nothing to do with it and didn’t even know that her nieces were in a psychiatric hospital until 1982. The entire frame story of Margaret discovering the sisters, getting Dazzle to go into the hospital undercover, and confronting her mother appears to be entirely invented. The therapist’s words about the genetic disorder not actually running in the royal line is completely correct, as I’ll discuss in more depth below. The Royal Family gave only a very brief statement on the issue, saying that the Queen was aware of the situation but that it was a private matter for the immediate Bowes-Lyon family. The story also reported that three other cousins of the sisters (Idonea, Etheldreda, and Rosemary) had actually been placed in the same hospital on the same day as Nerissa and Katherine Rosemary died in 1972 but Idonea and Etheldreda were still in the hospital with Katherine when the story broke. Nerissa had died in 1986 at the age of 66 and had been buried near the hospital in a grave with a plastic marker.
The actual story: In April 1987, The Sun broke the news that the Queen had two mentally disabled first cousins, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, who had lived in a mental institution for almost 50 years, although their deaths had been recorded in the records of British aristocracy (Burke’s Peerage and Debrett’s handbook of British noble families) decades before (Source: Maclean’s - April 20, 1987). Margaret’s therapist reveals to her later that the gene responsible for the cousins’ disability did not run in the royal family line at all. She justified this action by claiming that it was done to preserve the integrity of the royal family’s bloodline after her husband became king. When Margaret goes to speak to her mother about this, it is revealed that the Queen Mother was aware of situation and had kept it a secret from her daughters for their entire lives.
Margaret drives her friend Dazzle to the psychiatric hospital where the sisters live, has him go in undercover to meet her cousins, and discovers that they (and several other more distant relatives - named Idonea, Etheldreda, and Rosemary) had been in the mental hospital back in the 1940s. She checks the Burke’s peerage records with her sister, the Queen, and they find that both cousins were listed as deceased. The story according to the Crown: During her first therapy session, Princess Margaret finds out that she has two mentally disabled cousins - Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon. If you’d like to find photographs of them, you can easily Google them and find them elsewhere.
I have chosen not to include pictures of Nerissa or Katherine Bowles-Lyon here in this blog post, as it does not seem that they were capable of consenting to photographs.
#Dazzle jennings princess margaret series#
Obviously the show is a drama, and people who watch it should realize that without being explicitly told that the series is not a documentary, but I personally think The Crown went too far in this episode. This characterization does not conform with actual historical evidence, but ends the episode with pictures and birth and death dates of both of the actual women discussed here, implying that it IS the true story. Early reviews called out the inflammatory plotline of this episode, which blames the Queen Mother for her mentally disabled nieces being put in a hospital and hidden from their family. To be totally honest, I’ve been dreading blogging about this specific episode since before the season even dropped on Netflix.
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