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35.

Our family was no longer getting larger. There were no new spouses on the horizon, no newbabies. My aunts and uncles, Sophie and Edward, Fergie and Andrew, had stopped growing theirfamilies. Pa, too, of course. An era of stasis had set in.

But now, in 2002, it dawned on me, dawned on all of us, that the family wasn’t static after all.

We were about to get smaller.

Princess Margaret and Gan-Gan were both unwell.

I didn’t know Princess Margaret, whom I called Aunt Margo. She was my great-aunt, yes, weshared 12.5 percent of our DNA, we spent the bigger holidays together, and yet she was almost atotal stranger. Like most Britons, I mainly knew of her. I was conversant with the general contoursof her sad life. Great loves thwarted by the Palace. Exuberant streaks of self-destruction splashedacross the tabloids. One hasty marriage, which looked doomed at the outset and ended up beingworse than expected. Her husband leaving poisonous notes around the house, scalding lists ofthings wrong with her. Twenty-four reasons why I hate you!

Growing up, I felt nothing for her, except a bit of pity and a lot of jumpiness. She could kill ahouseplant with one scowl. Mostly, whenever she was around, I kept my distance. On those rarer-than-rare occasions when our paths crossed, when she deigned to take notice of me, to speak tome, I’d wonder if she had any opinion of me. It seemed that she didn’t. Or else, given her tone, hercoldness, the opinion wasn’t much.

Then one Christmas she cleared up the mystery. The whole family gathered to open gifts onChristmas Eve, as always, a German tradition that survived the anglicizing of the family surnamefrom Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. We were at Sandringham in a big room with a long tablecovered with white cloth and white name cards. By custom, at the start of the night, each of uslocated our place, stood before our mound of presents. Then suddenly, everyone began opening atthe same time. A free-for-all, with scores of family members talking at once and pulling at bowsand tearing at wrapping paper.

Standing before my pile, I chose to open the smallest present first. The tag said: From AuntMargo.

I looked over, called out: Thank you, Aunt Margo!

I do hope you like it, Harry.

I tore off the paper. It was…

A biro?

I said: Oh. A biro. Wow.

She said: Yes. A biro.

I said: Thank you so much.

But it wasn’t just any biro, she pointed out. It had a tiny rubber fish wrapped around it.

I said: Oh. A fish biro! OK.

I told myself: That is cold-blooded.

Now and then, as I grew older, it struck me that Aunt Margo and I should’ve been friends. Wehad so much in common. Two Spares. Her relationship with Granny wasn’t an exact analog ofmine with Willy, but pretty close. The simmering rivalry, the intense competition (driven largelyby the older sibling), it all looked familiar. Aunt Margo also wasn’t that dissimilar from Mummy.

Both rebels, both labeled as sirens. (Pablo Picasso was among the many men obsessed withMargo.) So my first thought when I learned in early 2002 that she’d been taken ill was to wishthere’d been more time to get to know her. But we were well past that. She was unable to care forherself. After badly burning her feet in a bath, she was confined to a wheelchair, and said to beswiftly declining.

When she died, February 9, 2002, my first thought was that this would be a heavy blow toGan-Gan, who was also in decline.

Granny tried to talk Gan-Gan out of attending the funeral. But Gan-Gan dragged herself out ofher sickbed, and shortly after that day took a bad fall.

It was Pa who told me she’d been confined to her bed at Royal Lodge, the sprawling countryhouse in which she’d lived part- time for the last fifty years, when she wasn’t at her mainresidence, Clarence House. Royal Lodge was three miles south of Windsor Castle, still in WindsorGreat Park, still part of the Crown Estate, but like the castle it had one foot in another world.

Dizzyingly high ceilings. Pebbled driveway winding serenely through vivid gardens.

Built not long after the death of Cromwell.

I felt comforted to hear that Gan-Gan was there, a place I knew she loved. She was in her ownbed, Pa said, and not suffering.

Granny was often with her.

Days later, at Eton, while studying, I took the call. I wish I could remember whose voice wasat the other end; a courtier, I believe. I recall that it was just before Easter, the weather bright andwarm, light slanting through my window, filled with vivid colors.

Your Royal Highness, the Queen Mother has died.

Cut to Willy and me, days later. Dark suits, downcast faces, eyes filled with déjà vu. Wewalked slowly behind the gun carriage, bagpipes playing, hundreds of them. The sound threw meback in time.

I began shaking.

Once again we made that hideous trek to Westminster Abbey. Then we stepped into a car,joined the cortège—from the center of town, along Whitehall, out to the Mall, on to St. George’sChapel.

Throughout that morning my eye kept going to the top of Gan-Gan’s coffin, where they’d setthe crown. Its three thousand diamonds and jeweled cross winked in the spring sunlight. At thecenter of the cross was a diamond the size of a cricket ball. Not just a diamond, actually; the GreatDiamond of the World, a 105-karat monster called the Koh-i-Noor. Largest diamond ever seen byhuman eyes. “Acquired” by the British Empire at its zenith. Stolen, some thought. I’d heard it wasmesmerizing, and I’d heard it was cursed. Men fought for it, died for it, and thus the curse wassaid to be masculine.

Only women were permitted to wear it.