Royal Governess
Marion Crawford was raised in Dunfermline, Fife and taught at Edinburgh's Moray House Institute. While studying to become a child psychologist, she took a summer job as the governess for Lord Elgin's children. This led her to take a role in the household of Prince Albert, Duke of York, later George VI, whose wife, the Duchess of York, was a distant relative of Lord Elgin. After one year the arrangement was made permanent.
Crawford became the governess of Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose of York. Following the abdication of their uncle, King Edward VIII, in 1936, the Princesses' father became King, and Elizabeth was now the heiress presumptive. Crawford remained in service to the king and queen, and did not retire until 1948 when the Princess Elizabeth, now aged 21, married the Duke of Edinburgh, Crawford herself having married two months earlier. Crawford had already delayed her own marriage for years so as not to, as she saw it, abandon the king and queen.
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