Royal watchers have long known Princess Anne to be a dutiful daughter. However,
Anne's work ethic has often been overshadowed by her love life.
Here are some details you may not know about Anne's second marriage.
Princess Anne's second marriage started with a scandal. By 1989,
the deterioration of her first marriage was an open secret — she and Mark Phillips
tended to travel separately and, when they did travel together,
stayed in separate rooms. Around that time, rumors began to swirl that she had become romantically
attached to someone else —Timothy Laurence, a naval officer serving the royal family as
an equerry, another name for a military officer serving as a special assistant.
When the British tabloid The Sun reported that year that the publication
had received four handwritten letters addressed to Anne,
royal watchers were intrigued — was this the evidence they'd been waiting for? It was:
Buckingham Palace itself revealed that Laurence, in fact, had sent the letters to her.
While the exact content of the letters has never been made public,
an inside source told People magazine that, while the letters were openly
romantic, they weren't erotic.They were more endearingly dorky.
"I know what you mean."
The source told People,
"They are very boring and ramble on. They are the sort of letters 18-or 19-year-olds write
to one another, thoughts about life and rather philosophical,
discussing how beautiful a field is in the sunshine with a stream running through it."
While brides typically go out of their way to choose a unique and memorable wedding dress,
most lean toward fairly generic engagement rings — unless a bride receives a family heirloom, she's
likely to choose a simple diamond solitaire. But the engagement ring Princess Anne received from
her second marriage — like her marriage itself — was unusual. According to Hello!, it wasn't
a diamond, but, rather, a dramatic oval sapphire cabochon framed by three diamonds on either side.
Anne's fondness for sapphires apparently goes back a long way — her first engagement ring,
likewise, featured a sapphire, but a traditional square-cut gem instead.
Princess Anne's first wedding, to Mark Phillips, was a blowout by any standard:
About 1,500 people attended the Westminster Abbey ceremony, while another 500 million
watched on television. In contrast, her second wedding to Timothy Laurence,
was an intimate and discreet celebration that featured 30 guests, mostly family members.
While it's common for second weddings to be smaller and more relaxed than first weddings,
public awareness of their scandalous romance — which was known to have started as an
extramarital affair — may have prompted them to keep an intentionally low profile.
Instead of Westminster Abbey, they held their ceremony in Scotland at the modest Crathie
Kirk church near Balmoral Estate, one of the royal homes. Modest as it was, it was still
a royal wedding, which means it attracted a lot of curiosity, and there were plenty
of onlookers and well-wishers waiting outside the church to catch a glimpse of the newlyweds.
Princess Anne and Timothy Laurence had a more pressing reason to marry in Scotland than just
to get away from London-based paparazzi and pearl clutchers: They weren't allowed to marry at any
of the usual royal wedding spots, since, at the time, the Church of England banned divorced people
with former spouses who were still living from remarrying. Thus, if they wanted to marry at all,
they had to marry outside the Church of England — hence, the destination wedding in Scotland.
It is ironic that the Church of England posed this obstacle, given its origins.
The Church of England was founded by Henry VIII to facilitate a split from his wife at the time,
Catherine of Aragon. While royal divorces became more common over time,
Anne was the first child of a British monarch to remarry.
Marrying into the royal family can be a fraught proposition. Along with its
privileges comes great responsibility, not to mention relentless public scrutiny. Even worse,
the pressure does not come from only the press and the public:
Some of the most brutal pressure can come from one's royal in-laws and their handlers.
Timothy Laurence, fortunately, had a much smoother transition into royal family life.
The fact that he had worked in the royal household for years,
was trusted and well-liked by the royal family, and had plenty of professional experience
navigating high-pressure social situations, no doubt helped him.
Thus, he entered into his marriage with Princess Anne with realistic
expectations — and was pleasantly surprised by what he discovered. He said in an ITV documentary,
"One of the great surprises for me, when I first went to Balmoral and
to Sandringham and Windsor was that these places are full of laughter."
Royal watchers have long chatted about the close relationship between Princess Anne and
her late father, Prince Philip, as well as the similarities between them. According to Hello!,
she was allegedly his favorite child and shared many of his personal traits,
including a passion for sports and a strong sense of duty. As a family friend told the magazine,
"[Prince Philip] always had more fun with Anne. Charles is more like the queen,
while Anne is very like Prince Philip."
Timothy Laurence, however, sees things a little differently. As equerry to the queen, he spent
his working days in direct contact with the royal family and likely got to observe their character
quirks more closely than most people. And having worked with the queen in an official capacity,
he sees some striking similarities between her and her daughter. As he told ITV,
"The similarities with her father are much talked about, but what is less spoken about
is the similarities with her mother, the queen [...] the common theme is humor, fun."
And Anne's wit is indeed well known in royal circles. In a 1980 TV interview,
she was even able to joke about an armed kidnapping attempt several years earlier.
"What did he say?
"Well, he said I had to go with him — can't remember why."
Princess Anne and her first husband, Mark Phillips, were brought together by their
common love of horses — they met at a party for horse lovers, and both were Olympic equestrians.
Their shared passion, however, was not enough to keep their marriage from deteriorating.
In contrast, Anne's second husband, Timothy Laurence,
admits to knowing nothing about horses. He told Tatler,
"It's not something I share with her. Sadly I've never been bitten by the horse bug."
What they do have in common, Laurence told the publication,
is a shared fondness for the Scottish rugby team. He explained,
"We both follow, with great enthusiasm,
the Scottish rugby team [...] as you may have noticed, they don't always win."
When picturing a royal residence, most people conjure up images of marble floors,
crystal chandeliers, and gold-plated everything. But a rare peek into the home of Princess Anne and
Timothy Laurence reveals a much-less glamorous, and, probably, much more comfortable, reality.
An Instagram post shared by the royal family shows the pair comfortably
relaxing on an overstuffed couch in their living room while watching a rugby match.
Their attire is distinctively un-royal: He's wearing a plaid flannel shirt and dad jeans,
while she's wearing a red knitted pullover topped with a thermal vest—and they both look delighted.
It's the kind of place where you can easily picture your aunt and uncle hosting Thanksgiving.
It's unclear which of their residences this is, but Country Living hypothesizes it's
their estate in Gloucestershire, since Anne is known to spend much of her time there.
Princess Anne's passion for horses is well known, as is Timothy Laurence's interest in
historic preservation and English history. So it's not surprising their primary home,
Gatcombe Park, is a historic country home and working farm in Gloucestershire.
Built in 1771, the home maintains most of its original character — according to Historic
England, no significant alterations have been made to the structure since the 1820s. The royal
family's presence in Gatcombe Park, however, is fairly recent: As Country Living reports,
the queen bought the property in 1976 for Anne and her first husband as a wedding present.
Anne's first marriage may not have lasted, but her dedication to her home and to country
living persists. Gatcombe Park's 730 acres allow her plenty of room to breed horses,
raise cattle, and host riding and equestrian events,
such as the annual Festival of British Eventing, from the comfort of home.
But Gatcombe Park is not just a rural hideaway — the hard work of farming and hosting events
also enables the sprawling estate to be self-sustaining. She told the BBC,
"Being able to take on a place like this – for me, I've got to make it work. This
is not something that comes free, this has got to pay its way, otherwise I can't stay here."
As an equerry to the royal family,
Timothy Laurence no doubt saw snippets of Princess Anne's first marriage firsthand,
which must be a bit awkward. To his credit, he's secure enough about himself to be able
to joke about it. In a 2020 ITV documentary celebrating Anne's 70th birthday, he observed,
"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."
Express also reported another notable similarity between the two men:
In contrast to the strong-willed, outspoken Anne,
both her husband and her ex-husband are known to be soft-spoken and quiet.
All marriages have occasional stormy moments, but if you're part of a royal couple,
the slightest hint of marital strife will be enough to get tongues wagging and tabloids
speculating — whether or not there's anything of substance to speculate about.
In 2014, Princess Anne and Timothy Laurence had their turn under the media microscope as rumors
swirled that their marriage was on the rocks. An unsigned article in the Daily Mail hinted that the
couple had been living separate lives and that Laurence had to be ordered by the royal family
to attend his wife's investiture as Lady of the Most Noble Order of the Thistle, an honor accorded
to her for her charity work. The Daily Mail also claimed — without offering any supporting evidence
— that the couple was only staying together to protect the reputation of the royal family.
An Independent article from the same time period also acknowledged these rumors,
suggesting any awkwardness in their marriage may have stemmed from Laurence's inability
to shed his old role as a royal retainer. Royal watcher and author Theo Aronson told the outlet,
"Once you've been an equerry it's difficult to get out of the mold.
I suspect he was an equerry in public, at home, and in the bedroom."
Still, the publication ultimately asserted that
rumors that Anne's second divorce was on the horizon were "ill informed."
Princess Anne has always seemingly been more focused on getting things done than worrying
about what anyone thinks of her. Still, she must be pleased that those who are gossiping
about her failing marriage and waiting for the other shoe to drop are still waiting. In 2017,
she and Timothy Laurence celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.
So, despite their relationship's scandal-ridden beginnings, the couple seems to be going strong.
Rumors of the demise of their marriage could have stemmed from the fact that
Laurence continued to have his own career and philanthropic interests after marriage and that
he may not have shown up at royal events with his wife as much as some spectators would have liked.
No one can really know what's going on inside someone else's marriage — but,
in this case, it seems that one way to keep a marriage going is to ensure that
each party has room to live life on their terms.
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