WHEN Princess Michael of Kent attended the late Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral at Westminster Abbey three-and-a half-years ago, she owed her a special debt.

Her husband Prince Michael had to get permission from the monarch to marry the former Baroness Marie Christine von Reibnitz, as she was a Catholic and a divorcee.

So, he persuaded Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was Prince Philip‘s uncle and a distant cousin of the Queen, to lobby the monarch, who gave her assent as long as her cousin forfeited his place in the line of succession.

The couple married at Vienna Town Hall in 1978, two weeks after she was divorced from her first husband, the English banker Thomas Troubridge.

And they went onto have two children Lord Freddie Windsor, 46, and Lady Gabriella Kingston, 44, in one of the Royal family‘s most enduring marriages.

However, there is a charming footnote to the story: after Mountbatten described to the Monarch the Baroness’s noble lineage, the monarch pithily replied: ‘Too grand for us.’

Now, as Princess Michael celebrates her 81st birthday today, her relationship with the Royal family has once again come under the spotlight.

In the 48 years, she has been a member of the Royal family, she has been derided, for being ‘more Royal than the Royals’, nicknamed ‘Princess Pushy’, allegedly by Princess Anne, and compared to the extravagant last Queen of France Marie Antoniette.

But, instead of following the late Queen’s mantra ‘never complain, never explain,’ she went on the offensive in a 2000 interview with W magazine claiming that she had more royal blood than any other Royal brides or bridegrooms.

‘The fact is,’ she said, ‘of those who married into the family since Prince Philip, I had more royal blood. It’s just a genealogical thing, a fact of life.’

And refuting claims that she was too grand for the Royal family, she explained that Mountbatten had been amused by the Queen’s remark that he repeated the story and it was turned against her.

‘I was not born a Royal Highness so technically I am a commoner, but I happen to have a lot of royal blood,’ she explained matter-of-factly.

‘So, he was telling the Queen about my grand ancestry, about how I was descended from Charlemagne, this king, that king, this queen.

‘Mountbatten was a genealogist . . . so he laid it on a bit thick until she finally turned to him and said: “Well Dickie, she sounds a bit too grand for us.”‘

However, five years later, the Princess was forced to apologise to the Queen after she made a series of unflattering remarks about senior Royals to an undercover News of the World reporter.

She dropped the clangers as she served tea and cake to the journalist, who became known as the fake sheik, while trying to sell her £6 million Gloucestershire manor house Nether Lypiatt.

In a secretly taped conversation, she accused Prince Charles of using Diana as a ‘convenient womb’ to produce an heir and described Diana as ‘bitter’, ‘nasty’ and ‘strange’.

She also predicted that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall would become Queen, in contradiction to official guidance from Buckingham Palace, and confided that King Charles would never hand over the throne to Prince William.

In his book Princess Margaret: A Biography, author Theo Aronson, described the antipathy between the Queen’s sister Princess Margaret and her cousin’s wife.

‘Equally instantaneous was the strong dislike she took to her cousin’s wife, Princess Michael of Kent,’ he wrote, ‘whom she is alleged to have regarded as a limelight-seeking adventuress far too keen to force her way into the Royal Family’s inner circle.

‘Her antipathy became obvious during one carriage procession at Ascot. The two were seated side by side, and while Princess Michael chatted animatedly in an effort to be friendly, Princess Margaret replied with a series of grunts.

‘Afterwards, she tackled the Queen, complaining: “Why did you put me next to that woman?” Her sister replied: “Because it would give you a chance to do what you like best – concentrate on the two attractive men sitting opposite.”‘

‘Margaret’s attitude seems to have filtered through to her son, Lord Linley, who remarked that as a Christmas gift to his worst enemy he would give “dinner for two with Princess Michael.”‘