Princess Anne is Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II's
only daughter of the couple's four children. Anne, or the Princess Royal as she is known,
is the second oldest child after Prince Charles. Once a headstrong toddler, now a fierce adult,
Princess Anne has undergone a stunning, lifelong transformation.
Growing up as the queen's only daughter was rather lonely for Princess Anne,
even as she was surrounded by the trappings of palace life.
She and her siblings were often left at home while their parents traveled. While many children would
no doubt have found such a situation difficult and isolating, Anne understood even as a child
that her parents had royal obligations to fulfill, something she's carried into her own adult life.
The media has sometimes portrayed the queen as distant and uncaring,
but Anne denied this in the BBC1 documentary Queen And Country, saying:
"I simply don't believe there is any evidence whatsoever to suggest
that she wasn't caring. It just beggars belief."
Even though she didn't get to spend as much time with her mother as she would have liked,
the royal didn't feel abandoned. Princess Anne defended her mother
and explained that she and her siblings never had any doubts that Queen Elizabeth
cared for them just as much as any other mother would her children.
Far from a prim and proper princess, Princess Anne was more of a tomboy who preferred the
outdoors — at least when she was little. In the documentary The Real Princess Anne,
family friend Countess Mountbatten of Burma revealed that the young princess was, quote,
"always very full of life" and even had a knack for mischief.
She provided a sharp contrast to her much more reserved brother, Prince Charles. Her father,
Prince Philip, referring to her lifelong love of horses, once said of his daughter,
"If it doesn't fart or eat hay, she isn't interested."
As Princess Anne grew older, she developed a reputation of being somewhat ill-tempered
because of her independent spirit. She was often short with the press
and disliked being questioned. The book Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of
a Modern Monarch noted that Princess Anne was nicknamed "Her Royal Rudeness" by the press
after telling reporters to, quote, "naff off" due to their constant scrutiny of her activities.
Anne would eventually rehabilitate her image through her charity work,
but it would be years before her work outweighed
the perception that she was irritable and prickly in the eyes of the press.
Princess Anne is the only girl out of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip's children,
which may explain why she is something of a daddy's girl. While she has spoken
fondly of both of her parents, she seems to have a particularly close relationship with her father.
As royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith noted in Prince Charles:
The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, Prince Philip could be a rigid parent.
The royal is known for being both blunt and sarcastic, and he was often that way with
his children. Philip's parenting style was hard for Prince Charles, but Princess Anne
felt she knew how to handle their father. Instead of buckling under his criticism,
Anne would often be confident enough to quote, "push back," according to the biographer.
Prince Philip's demanding ways don't seem to have harmed his relationship with his daughter,
in part because they share a certain sensibility.
Eileen Parker, the wife of a close friend of the prince, told the Daily Mail that he, quote,
"always had more fun" with Anne, who is very much like Philip himself.
Princess Anne wasn't just isolated from her parents growing up, she
was separated from most of her family. In 1963, the Princess Royal enrolled in Benenden School,
an all-girls boarding school. In the documentary The Real Princess Anne, royal expert Penny
Junor revealed that the school's headmistress claimed Princess Anne suffered from extreme nerves
on her first day of school. She was so nervous that she reportedly became physically ill.
Nevertheless, Anne settled into school and ended up thriving in the company of other young girls.
"I did volunteer to go to school,
I have to say. And I was thrilled. School was much more interesting."
Princess Anne seems to have been a dedicated student, but after completing her studies at
Benenden School, the princess chose not to go on to university. Instead,
she began to officially represent the royal family, throwing herself into the same kind
of work that she continues today. According to her profile on the royal family's website,
Princess Anne's first official royal engagement was in 1969, when she was just 18 years old.
The following year, the Princess Royal became the president of Save the Children — a title
she proudly retains even decades later. Anne's life has been fully dedicated to public service,
with a record that includes work with more than 300 charities in the UK and around the world,
including several she co-founded, covering all manner of interests and focuses.
"If you can do anything to raise their profile, then you will have achieved something."
Princess Anne went through a couple of relationships before getting married.
The most notable, though, was with Andrew Parker Bowles,
who would later go on to marry Camilla Shand, who, in turn, would go on to marry
Prince Charles after Princess Diana, his first wife from whom he was divorced, died.
The complicated relationship was depicted on Netflix's The Crown,
although the show embellished details to make the relationship more messy than it was in real life.
Royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith told Vanity Fair that Camilla first met Prince Charles in
the early 1970s, after she had been dating Bowles off and on for the past half decade.
Anne became involved with Andrew Parker Bowles in June 1970, but the relationship quickly fell
apart because Bowles was Catholic and they couldn't marry. The two remained friends,
and Bowles would later become the godfather of Princess Anne's daughter, Zara.
On November 14, 1973, Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips in arguably one of the
best royal weddings in history. Vogue noted that it was the first time in 50 years that a member
of the royal family had married a commoner. The couple met through their shared love of horses,
and the former army captain had won an Olympic gold medal in 1972
as a member of the British equestrian team.
The couple's wedding was a lavish affair,
from the fashion to the pageantry. The ceremony was held at Westminster Abbey and televised live,
with an estimated 500 million viewers tuning in to see the princess get married.
While Princess Anne grew up into a refined young woman,
she remained outspoken and strong-minded, balancing her sense of duty with her sense
of personality. In 1974, not long after her wedding to Mark Phillips,
this strong will proved handy when Anne thwarted an attempted kidnapping. According to BBC News,
a young mentally ill man named Ian Ball cornered Princess Anne in her car, asking her to come
with him so he could hold her long enough to collect a ransom of two million pounds.
Rather than going along with his demands or waiting for someone to intervene,
declassified papers released by the National Archives report that the royal replied, quote,
"not bloody likely." Princess Anne later called the incident, quote, "infuriating," saying that
she had no intention of getting out of the car and going with the man. Still, she kept her cool.
"We had a fairly low key discussion about the fact that I wasn't going to go anywhere."
Ball was eventually apprehended by a police officer. He pled guilty to attempted murder
and kidnapping and, under the Mental Health Act, was imprisoned for an indefinite sentence.
Princess Anne's tomboy ways paid off big time in the late '70s, when she became a famous athlete as
well as a famous royal. A lifelong equestrian, Anne had been passionate about horses since
childhood and had quite a bit of success on the competition circuit. In 1976, she made history as
the first member of the royal family to compete in the Olympics during the summer games in Montreal.
Her profile on the official website of the royal family noted that, while the princess didn't medal
at the Olympics, she did rack up some pretty big awards over the course of her equestrian
career. In 1971, Princess Anne won a gold medal in the individual discipline in 1971's European
Three-Day Event Championships. In 1975, she won a silver medal in individual and team disciplines.
Years later, Princess Anne's daughter, Zara Phillips, went on to become a champion equestrian,
winning a gold medal at the World Championships in 2006 and a silver medal at the Olympics in 2012.
In April 1992, Princess Anne filed for divorce from Mark Phillips after
a separation of more than two years. The split made the Princess Royal only the second member
of the royal family to divorce their spouse in the 20th century — following her aunt,
Princess Margaret — but she wouldn't be the last.
The year 1992 would end up going down in history as Queen Elizabeth's, quote "annus horribilis,"
so-named because of all of the scandalous things that happened that year. Five weeks before
Princess Anne filed for divorce, her younger brother, Prince Andrew, separated from his wife,
Sarah Ferguson. That summer, a book called Diana: Her True Story claimed that Princess Diana was
trapped in a loveless marriage with Anne's older brother, Prince Charles, and revealed her eating
disorder and struggles with depression to the world. Prince Charles' affair with Camilla Parker
Bowles also came to light later that year, and the turbulent period came to a close with a fire
at Windsor Castle in November. So, in the end, perhaps Anne's divorce wasn't too bad.
While Princess Anne gracefully accepted her place in the royal family, it seems that she wanted her
children to have more freedom than she had growing up. When the princess married her first husband,
Mark Phillips, he turned down the offer of a royal title from Queen Elizabeth. The Queen
then offered to give royal titles to Princess Anne's children, but the offer was again declined.
This allowed Princess Anne's children to grow up without as much pressure on them — something they
are grateful for. Anne's daughter Zara later said she felt she was allowed to be, quote,
"more adventurous" than her royal cousins, and had less public attention growing up.
"I think it made us fight harder as well, to try and be as successful as we could be."
It's an upbringing Anne's children have opted to keep up with their own families.
In fact, not one of Princess Anne's grandchildren have royal titles.
In 1992, not long after her divorce from Captain Mark Philips was finalized,
Princess Anne married again. She and second husband Timothy Laurence,
a commander in the Royal Navy, tied the knot in December of that year in Scotland,
for a very specific reason. While it seems like a romantic place to hold a destination wedding,
the reason they were married in a Scottish church was because, per the rules of the Church of
England, divorcées were not permitted to remarry in any of the sect's churches.
Many may think that, as the head of the royal family, Queen Elizabeth II
would be the busiest of the British royals. Her children, however, are far busier. As a
senior royal, Princess Anne is consistently one of the busiest members of the clan,
based on the number of official royal engagements she takes part in.
The Princess Royal completes hundreds of engagements each year. The Telegraph noted
that in 2019, she did 506 of the family's 3,567 official engagements that year,
while her brother Prince Charles did 521, and the Queen attended 295. The younger royals are less
busy; Prince William was at 220 royal engagements, while his wife Kate Middleton was present at 116.
While the number of engagements each royal takes on varies from year to year,
Vanity Fair noted that Princess Anne and Prince Charles have been taking on most of
the workload since the 1990s, when their aging parents began to cut down on royal engagements.
In 2017 and 2018, Princess Anne did more engagements than her brother,
but Prince Charles was officially the busiest member of the family in 2016 and 2019.
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