Yes, she’s ‘the hardest working royal’. But Anne, The Princess Royal, is a lot more – or sometimes less – than that.
The word ‘princess’ is the key, weighted with expectations in the way ‘prince’ can never be. And for all the value she places on that royal role – for all the commitment she has put into it – the ‘princess, brackets fairytale’ tag is one she has not found easy. Anne has had a rocky road to being, well, the Royal Family’s ‘rock’.
Then again, our expectations of what it means to be a princess have changed fairly radically. Anne was born in 1950, into a time when a Disney princess meant Snow White or Sleeping Beauty – passive as they were pretty, waiting for their prince to come. Now, as she prepares to turn 75 on Friday, she could be channelling Elsa or Moana … Or they could be channelling her, maybe.
A blinking cursor on a fresh blank page can be intimidating for even seasoned writers. Here are some tips from our Partnerships team on how to go about your first Substack post:
No 2
From the start, Anne knew what it was like to be second in importance. To be the ‘Spare’ has always been even harder than to be the heir. Perhaps it’s lucky that she – unlike her aunt Margaret and her nephew Harry – was still a child when she was pushed further down the line of succession by the birth of Andrew and Edward: younger brothers who would, by the rules of the day, outrank her. (It may seem ironic that it was only in the devastatingly capable Anne’s lifetime, and not retrospectively, legislation was passed giving daughters equal place in the succession with sons.) Perhaps consciousness of their lesser status – as well as their similarities in temperament – is why she and her father Prince Philip were so close. Another tough-minded, high-achieving individual who resolutely accustomed himself to walking two steps behind…
Forget the Fairytale
The very word ‘princess’ conjures up a host of images, aspirations, fantasies …Almost all of which the young Anne with her natural impatience, her deep tones and brusque turn of phrase, was ill-equipped to embody. Subsequent princesses-by-marriage (Diana, Kate) have been chosen in part for their ability, and willingness, to embrace that fantasy. But it was draped like a halter around Anne’s neck and, doughty as ever, she shouldered it as best she could. Bizarrely it’s only now, in her 70s, that her determinedly practical, British, style, her passion for recycling garments down the years, sees her hailed as a fashion icon for Generation X. ‘The chicest woman in the world’, said designer Silvia Fendi, who based a collection on her last year. Anne surely had a wry smile for that one.
A Good Sport
Literally. To have won the individual gold medal at the 1971 European Eventing Championships, to represent Britain at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, would be the crown of most careers. All credit to her for having notched up genuine achievement beyond court parameters. But you can apply the tag to Anne way beyond her equestrian achievements. Who can forget the well-worn ‘it’s all for the family’ smile with which she royal-waved her way through the 1987 tv debacle It’s A Royal Knockout, set up by her younger brother Edward? And there is a more serious side to her toughness, too. She recently forged through what was in fact a serious head injury (a blow from a horse, as she went to feed the chickens at her home, Gatcombe Park). While just fifty years before, a would-be kidnapper’s demand she get out of her car was met with a stroppy ‘Not bloody likely.’ Indeed, as Ian Ball (the convicted kidnapper now released) admitted from Broadmoor: “I was more scared than she was.”
“Not bloody likely”
Wife and mother
Her first husband Mark Phillips was a fellow denizen of the horse world; her second, Vice-Admiral Timothy Laurence, was a royal equerry. Andrew Parker-Bowles was an ex, she’s alleged to have had an affair with a former bodyguard. But if her men have been found within royal circles, the way she’s handled her relationships is something else. Refusing the earldom offered to Mark Phillips on their marriage in 1973, refusing titles and royal circus roles for their children Peter and Zara. She managed, unlike her aunt Margaret, to divorce her first husband on good terms and has been happily married to her second for more than 30 years, as witness the newly-released double portrait – and the fact that they’ll be sailing the Scottish islands together for her birthday.
Feminist or fury?
The press once dubbed Anne ‘Her Royal Rudeness’ – she famously told photographers to ‘naff orf’ at the Badminton Horse Trials. Ungracious, unladylike, doesn’t-know-which-side-her-bread-is-buttered, they said. But that’s dwindled away since she grew into her current role. In interview, Anne has refused to call herself a feminist , but she asked to be created a Knight rather than a Lady of the Garter; broke tradition, after her mother’s death, by keeping the Vigil of the Princes with her brothers; and has made a trousered, rather than a feminised, version of her many uniforms a feature of her later years.
Princess Royal
The flip side of the down-to-earth quality she exhibits both in private life and public engagements is that Anne does care about her royal status; witness claims that she refuses to curtsy to Queen Camilla. Or, you might say, is determined not to be done down by a system that assaults her self-respect, and ranks a woman solely by the man she’s married to …Is there’s a case for saying that Anne’s being granted the title of Princess Royal in 1987 marked the start of the years when she seemed easier in her own skin? The title, born for life, is one that can only be bestowed on the eldest daughter of the sovereign, and of which Anne is only the seventh holder.
Rock
There are not many women or men who can say they’ve been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, as Princess Anne was in 1990, for her work with Save the Children. There are surely even fewer of those who can also say they’ve qualified as an HGV driver from sheer necessity, shifting goods around her working farm. On Wogan in 1982, Terry Wogan asked, “What would you do if royalty was abolished?” She didn’t miss a beat: “I’d have to work even harder on the farm.”She performed a chart-topping 474 royal engagements in 2024; acts as advisor to the king-brother to whom she has always been close; was the family member at her mother’s deathbed, and had the ‘honour and privilege’ to accompany Elizabeth II’s final journey. No wonder she doesn’t think a slimmed down royal family is practicable: she recently had all too much cause to feel it was already verging on anorexic, as – with Harry departed, Andrew disgraced, and Charles and Kate labouring under cancer diagnoses – she strove to take up the slack.
“as a young princess
I was a huge disappointment to everyone“
Anne has said that ‘as a young princess I was a huge disappointment to everyone’, precisely for her failure to fit the fairytale role. No-one is disappointed now. But it remains to be seen whether those same expectations will be imposed on a new generation of girls born with the label ‘princess’ round their neck – on Princess Charlotte, say. If not, then Anne – even as she canters into the last quarter of her century – will already have established her legacy.
