STOCKHOLM
Sweden's Princess Lilian, the leading character of one of the most famous love stories in Swedish history, has died at the age of 97.
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt announced the demise of well-loved royal family member Princess Lilian, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer back in 2010.
Princess Lilian fell in love with Prince Bertil whom she had met in British capital London during the Second World War, but the couple had to wait 33 years to get married.
Born in Swansea, Wales in 1915, Lilian had moved to London at 16 and married actor Ivan Craig at 25.
Meeting in London in 1943, Lilian and Prince Bertil fell in love at first sight. Lilian divorced from her husband two years later; however, Gultaf VI Adolf didn't allow the marriage on the grounds that it would endanger the future of the dynasty if Prince Bertil married a commoner.
Lilian and Prince Bertil tried for years to live at a French village out of public gaze.
The couple, marrying only 33 years later in 1976, won hearts of the Swedish people with their fidelity to each other and the sacrifices they made for their love.
Lilian, 61, became the Swedish Princess and the duchess of south-western Swedish province of Halland, marrying Prince Bertil, 64, with a ceremony at the Drottningholm Palace Church in Stockholm.
"If I had to summarize my life with one word, it would definitely be 'love'," Princess Lilian wrote in her book where she told, after Prince Bertil's death in 1997, the difficulties they had encountered.
