PRINCESS Lilian of Sweden, the "beautiful girl" from Swansea who met and married a handsome prince, has died at her home in Stockholm at the age of 97. At first glance, her life seems like a fairytale, but it was far more complicated than that. Here are five things you may not know about the Welsh-born royal who waited 33 years to marry her prince.Her origins were humble. Lilian Davies was a "blue-eyed beauty" born in Swansea in 1915, says the Daily Telegraph. At the age of 16, she moved to London where she worked as a fashion model and took small parts in films. It was in London that she met the British actor Ivan Craig, whom she married in 1940.
She met her prince during World War II. After Craig was drafted into the British army, Davies worked in a factory making radio sets for the merchant navy. She first saw Prince Bertil of Sweden shortly before her 28th birthday at the London club Les Ambassadeurs. Davies invited Bertil to a cocktail party at her apartment, but it wasn’t until he picked her up in his car after an air raid that their romance began to blossom. "He was so handsome, my prince. Especially in uniform. So charming and thoughtful. And so funny," she wrote in her 2000 memoirs.
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