Steamy love letters, cheating allegations, and a child out of
wedlock. If you're wondering why Princess Anne got divorced from Mark Phillips,
the details are even juicier than you may have suspected.
A couple of years before Princess Anne said "I do" to equestrian Mark Phillips, the young royal
was reportedly smitten with another professional rider. According to the 2021 documentary Princess
Anne: The 7 Loves of Her Life, the princess first found love with Richard Meade, a three-time
Olympic gold medal-winning equestrian, when she was 20 years old. They reportedly hit it off
thanks to their shared love of horses and built a strong bond based on their passion for riding.
Indeed, Anne began competing professionally when she was just 11 years old and went on to become
an accomplished equestrian, winning gold at the 1971 European Eventing Championships. Her athletic
aspirations even took her to the 1976 Olympics, where Meade was also competing. Unfortunately,
despite their connection, Princess Anne's family reportedly wasn't supportive of the
match due to the pair's age difference, seeing as she was 12 years Meade's junior. According to the
documentary, Anne's father apparently encouraged Meade to walk away. They weren't instantly
dissuaded from seeing one another, but eventually parted ways less than two years later.
Princess Anne's love life and passion for horses have always been deeply intertwined. In fact,
she was 18 when she met her future husband, army captain Mark Phillips,
at a 1968 horse-riding event held in Mexico City,
Mexico. Captain Phillips came from a British military family and had no royal connections,
but it seems his equestrian aspirations were enough to draw Anne to him.
"Horses have been my hobby for most of my life."
While rising through the military ranks, Phillips simultaneously pursued an equestrian career that
took him to the 1968, 1972, and 1988 Olympics. According to the official Olympics website,
he won the team gold medal in 1972 and team silver medal in 1988. He
and Anne were even teammates at the 1971 European championships,
but despite their shared passion, they didn't pursue a relationship right away. At the time,
Anne was tied to a number of other romantic partners, including, as reported by the Mirror,
former Cavalry officer Gerald Ward, polo player Sandy Harper, and Andrew ­Parker Bowles.
Before Princess Anne settled down, she was notably linked to Andrew Parker Bowles. Yes, the
same Andrew Parker Bowles who would go on to marry future Queen Consort Camilla [kuh-MILL-ah]. Sally
Bedell Smith, author of Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life,
explained their relationship timeline to Elle, saying Anne and Bowles' families had known each
other for a long time and that the couple shared their first date at the 1970 Royal Ascot. Anne,
who was 20 at the time, reportedly had a brief fling with Bowles, who was 11 years her senior.
However, age wasn't the problem — rather, it was religion that reportedly got in the way.
According to the documentary The Real Princess Anne, Anne was linked to Bowles and Richard Meade
at the same time, although she never confirmed either relationship. That may have been for the
best, as her union with Bowles was doomed from the start. That's because, according to The
Act of Settlement of 1701, only Protestants could succeed to the throne, and Bowles was a Catholic.
"The big issue with Andrew Parker Bowles was that he was a Catholic."
But there were no hard feelings, and the pair remained lifelong friends.
After plenty of public speculation surrounding whether Princess Anne
would settle down with Richard Meade or Andrew Parker Bowles,
the princess went ahead and tied the knot with Mark Phillips. The pair announced their engagement
in May 1973 and married at Westminster Abbey on November 14 of that same year.
The 23-year-old princess wore a high-necked wedding dress and the very same tiara that
mother Queen Elizabeth had donned when she tied the knot with Prince Philip
nearly three decades earlier. Princess Anne and her new husband soon started a family,
welcoming son Peter Phillips in 1977 and daughter Zara Phillips Tindall four years
later. Unfortunately, however, the couple's marriage proved to be anything but a fairytale.
Cracks may have been visible from the beginning of Anne and Mark Phillip's marriage. According
to Brides, when the princess was asked at her engagement announcement if she was
sure her marriage could stand strong under public scrutiny, she quipped,
"Can? It's got to, hasn't it?"
Unfortunately, it couldn't. According to Express, the birth of their second child,
Zara, in 1981 marked a turning point. The outlet reports that's when the married
pair started to spend much less time together while seemingly moving in opposite directions.
"Indeed, you know, we are apart quite a lot of the time."
While Phillips put all his efforts into equestrian-themed business ventures,
like opening a riding center in Scotland, Anne made royal duties a priority. They reportedly
traveled separately for the most part and when they did travel together, they're said to have
slept in different rooms. Jump to the spring of 1989, and People was reporting that the couple's
marriage had actually begun to crumble 10 years into their nuptials. According to the outlet,
Anne and Phillips only stayed together after that for their kids. All the while,
they were also plagued by rumors of infidelity, which they denied. In the end, Princess Anne
and Captain Phillips announced they would separate, but not divorce, in September 1989.
Through their many years of marriage, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips were
plagued by countless rumors of infidelity, on both sides. According to the Chicago Tribune,
Phillips had a number of alleged affairs and was linked to TV journalist Angela Rippon,
former Miss India Pamella Bordes, and Toronto public relations consultant Kathy Birks. Phillips
denied all accusations. However, there was one extramarital transgression he couldn't explain
away, and it turned out to be the final straw in his marriage to Princess Anne.
It was 1991 when Heather Tonkin, a New Zealand art teacher, claimed she had given birth to
Phillips' child, a daughter named Felicity, in 1985. While he initially denied her claims,
a paternity test soon revealed otherwise, and he was forced to pay a reported settlement of
£350,000. Captain Phillips and Princess Anne had initially agreed not to divorce,
but his lovechild with Tonkin changed that. The couple's divorce was finalized in 1992.
Mark Phillips wasn't the only one accused of being unfaithful. According to rumors, Princess Anne may
also have sought love outside of her marriage on numerous occasions. For one, People reported in
1989 that Commander Timothy Laurence, the Queen's Equerry, had been writing her letters, which some
claimed were of a romantic nature. Indeed, one of Laurence's pals alleged that Laurence and Anne
shared a physical attraction to one another, as well as a special bond. The insider told People:
"Tim has filled a loneliness in her life and given her a shoulder to cry on when she
needed someone to tell her troubles to [...] He cares for her in the way her husband does not."
That's not all. Princess Anne was also linked to actor Anthony Andrews and Detective Sergeant
Peter Cross, the latter of whom worked for a short time as her bodyguard in
1979. According to reports, Anne and Cross had an alleged affair despite both being married,
and Cross actually opened up about their supposed indiscretion in 1984 when he sold
details of their relationship for £600,000 to News of the World. Cross claimed to the
tabloid that he and Anne were "extremely close friends" who had shared a "special relationship."
In 2002, it was revealed in the documentary The Real Princess Anne that, once his superiors
found out about the alleged affair, Cross lost his job as the princess' bodyguard.
Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips' divorce was finalized in April 1992, after 18 years of
marriage. As Buckingham Palace confirmed, a judge granted Anne's divorce filing request
from earlier that month in less than five minutes. It was reportedly a mutual decision, and the exes
agreed that their two children would live with Anne, but that their dad could see them anytime.
Anne and Phillips' divorce came just one month after Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson announced
their separation and right as rumors were intensifying that Prince Charles' marriage to
Princess Diana was falling apart. Even so, that didn't stop Anne from moving on with her life.
She married Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence — yes, the man who allegedly wrote her secret
love letters — on December 12, 1992. The ceremony took place at Crathie Kirk in Scotland, and was
only attended by 30 guests. It was the first time the princess didn't share an equestrian passion
with her partner. As Laurence confessed in the 2020 documentary Anne: The Princess Royal at 70,
"Sadly, I've never been bitten by the horse bug."
He also quipped that his wife liked a man in uniform, saying,
"It's quite amusing that she married first an army officer and then a naval officer,
so there must be something about the military that attracts her."
Queen Elizabeth II watched three of her four kids — Prince Charles, Prince Andrew,
and Princess Anne — get divorced, and a 2022 royal biography titled Queen of Our Times: The
Life of Queen Elizabeth II claimed that it pained her. The book's author, Robert Hardman, noted:
"Outwardly stoical, as ever, the Queen was finding the divorce talks deeply upsetting."
However, despite the family turmoil, Queen Elizabeth never paused in her duties, and her
former press secretary, Charles Anson, praised her for remaining calm through the separations.
However, in the years that followed and before her tragic death, it seems the queen came to terms
with her kids' love lives. In February 2022, she publicly stated that Camilla Parker Bowles was to
be called Queen Consort when Prince Charles became king. And in May 2022, she bestowed a real honor
on Princess Anne's second husband, as he was the only non-royal allowed to join her on the
Buckingham Palace balcony to watch Trooping the Color during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
It was an especially poignant decision, as royals like Prince Andrew, Prince Harry,
and even Princess Anne's children were not invited to appear on the balcony alongside the monarch.