Queen Elizabeth II's younger sister, Princess
Margaret, was in poor health for quite a while leading up to her 2002 death. Her obituary in The Guardian said she'd had
pneumonia in 1993, and her first stroke in 1998 led to a slight speech impediment. The following year, she sustained severe burns
on her feet in what the royal family's official website described as "a bathroom accident." Biography notes she made few public appearances
after that and, when she did, she was in a wheelchair. Princess Margaret also experienced depression,
with the Guardian reporting that she sought psychiatric treatment in the 1970s. Royal sources denied rumors that she had another
bout of depression in the early 2000s, when the royal family was reluctant to discuss
mental health issues. Biographer Andrew Morton wrote in "Elizabeth
& Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters," "Let's face it, Margaret had depression and
in the Royal Family you are not allowed to be depressed. They lived in a world where illness was dealt
with by going for a long walk — and mental illness was ignored."
