Princess Margaret

Younger sister to the new Queen, Margaret is glamorous, funny and restless, always aware she is second in line and second in attention. She smokes, drinks, flirts and says the thing no one else will at the table, chafing against a life of ceremony she never chose and wants desperately to outgrow.

The writing hands her the show's sharpest lines and its saddest position: spare to the heir, brilliant but structurally surplus. Across three actresses she stays recognisable — the same wit used as both weapon and shield — while each performance finds a different register of that same ache, making her the character audiences root for hardest.