- Unlike her brother, yes, we mean Prince Andrew, Princess Anne likes to stay out of trouble. Princess Anne was brought to centre stage at the end of 2019 after speculation ran rife when a viral video showed her shrugging at her mother, Queen Elizabeth II, at Buckingham Palace’s NATO reception. Donald Trump was in attendance, so the media assumed the Princess was simply shrugging off the President. “Princess Anne” was soon top of UK Twitter trends. However, on further investigation it looks as though Princess Anne was simply waiting in line to be addressed by her mother and brother, Prince Charles. Replying ‘just me’ to her mother’s encouraging shrug.
From Princess Anne… to gossiping world leaders – not everything at Nato's UK gathering has followed the script
[tap to expand] https://t.co/ZlrD9Xf2RI pic.twitter.com/N0UFOcmVth
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 4, 2019
2. She is true to her word and her duty. According to Buckingham Palace, Princess Anne has “one of the busiest working schedules of any member of the royal family” – involved with more than 300 charities, organisations and military regiments, the princess spends a lot of her time on official engagements and visits, both at home and overseas.
3. She was the first royal Olympian! Riding the Queen’s horse, Goodwill, the Princess Royal attended the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games.
#FBF Princess Anne training with her horse 'Goodwill' before competing in the 1976 @Olympics Three-Day Event pic.twitter.com/G9CF0szJnj
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) November 13, 2015
4. Anne became the first member of her family to appear as a contestant on a television quiz-show. In 1987, she competed on the BBC panel game A Question of Sport.
5. Princess Anne also famously became the victim of a kidnapping attempt in 1974, when a pistol-waving man, Ian Ball, blocked her car on Pall Mall in London and demanded her to get out of it. The royal initially answered “not bloody likely” before reportedly hitting her attacker and leaving the limousine from the other side to rush to safety.
6. She has a fabulous sunglasses collection, and according to Vogue, she “beat every Instagirl to the next big sunglasses trend” with her sporty lenses. When the Princess attended the Chelsea Flower Show in 2018, she wore a cream coat and brown pumps that she coolly accessorised with a pair of Adidas sunglasses. The frameless aerodynamic sunnies, which boasted mahogany red polarised lenses and are more often worn by UV-conscious athletes than an event-hopping royal, added just the right amount of contrast to the princess’s otherwise very prim look.
7. She married the Queen’s personal assistant, Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, in 1992. Princess Anne married Mark Phillips in 1973 and had two children, Peter and Zara. However after the couple divorced, the Princess married Laurence. Fun fact: at the time, the couple couldn’t get married in their home country because the Church of England “didn’t allow divorced people to marry in its churches if their former spouse was still living”, according to the Sunday Post.
8. She loves sailing! She and her husband revel in sailing their specially adapted Rustler 44 yacht, Ballochbuie, through Scottish waters, making a point of visiting lighthouses, a passion of hers – she’s patron of the Northern Lighthouse Board and is keen to ‘bag’ all 205 of Scotland’s main navigational beacons.