Inside Princess Anne’s Unique Royal World

Princess Anne Debuts New Hair for First Time in 50 Years

Princess Anne was almost kidnapped 51 years ago.

But the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip remained so consistent in her senior royal role that a recent twist in her usual updo was enough of a change in the almost-75-year-old’s routine to compel a closer look.

Because if anyone had reason to decide this royal life—which due to the rules in place at her birth time meant her younger brothers and their kids leapfrogged her place in line to the throne—was getting to be a little much, it could have been Anne. Instead, she’s been the most stalwart of them all, regularly out-appearing everyone in the family, including her older brother, King Charles III.

The Princess Royal has stoically handled everything from divorce (hers and, more recently, her son Peter Phillips‘), tragedy, family scandal and general world upheaval to her own brushes with serious injury.

On March 20, 1974, she was on her way to Buckingham Palace with her then-husband Mark Phillips after a film screening, when their maroon Rolls Royce was waylaid on the Mall by a white Ford Escort.

Anne’s Scotland Yard-issued bodyguard, Inspector James Beaton, got out of the car and was shot in the shoulder by Ian Ball, a 26-year-old unemployed laborer from north London. Beaton fired back once but then his gun jammed. Ball approached the Rolls and ordered Anne to get out—or he’d shoot.

“Bloody likely,” the then-23-year-old princess retorted.

Ball then shot chauffeur Alexander Callendar in the chest and Beaton, who managed to get back into the car to shield the royal couple, was hit again in the hand. Ball grabbed Anne by the arm and Phillips—”I was frightened, I won’t mind admitting it,” he later said—held onto her by the waist. Her dress was ripped down the back in the struggle.

She craftily thought that might get Ball to abandon his position and as he ran toward the other side of the car, she got back in and closed the door. Russell managed to land a punch to Ball’s face, after which he took off running. Detective Constable Peter Edmonds caught up to Ball and tackled him in St. James’ Park.

Days later, the Marxist-Leninist Activist Revolutionary Movement sent a letter to authorities taking credit for Ball’s brazen actions, but Scotland Yard determined he acted alone.

In the Escort he’d rented under an assumed name, Ball had stashed Valium, two pairs of handcuffs and a ransom note addressed to the queen demanding £2 million. Ball pleaded guilty to attempted murder and kidnapping and was remanded to a mental health facility. 

All of the wounded men survived and each was honored by the Queen that September. Russell recalled getting the George Medal from Her Majesty, telling the Eastern Daily Press in 2006 that the monarch told him, “‘The medal is from the queen of England, the thank you is from Anne’s mother.'”

Recalling her exchange with Ball, Anne told Michael Parkinson later in the 1980s, “We had a sort of discussion about where or where not we were going to go. Well, he said I had to go with him—I can’t remember why…I said I didn’t think I wanted to go. I was scrupulously polite, ’cause I thought, silly to be too rude at that stage.”

The audience was in stitches.

“And we had a fairly low-key discussion about the fact that I wasn’t going to go anywhere, and wouldn’t it be much better if he went away and we’d all forget about it,” Anne continued, before asking Phillips, “It got slightly rougher, didn’t it, at one stage?”

“I mean, public figures have always been in danger to some degree…” the ever-unflappable Anne continued. Though myriad threats were directed at the royal family over the years, she mused, “perhaps your greatest danger is still the lone nut case who has just got enough to put it together. But it would be fair to say that if anybody was seriously intent on wiping one out, it would be very easy to do.”

The party line shortly after the attack was that the royal family “had no intention of living in bullet proof cages,” least of all Anne, who resumed her usual routine the next day.

Speaking about Anne’s guarded nature, Doherty explained, “I think that’s where the armor came from—because she was subject to this pressurized environment of people commenting on her.”

The steely resolve that has defined the monarchy for generations positively courses through the Princess Royal, who despite having her fortunes inextricably tied to her storied heritage has managed to live life largely on her own terms, lone nut cases—or public opinion—be damned.

So it’s no wonder she’s always been one of the most popular members of the family—and, quite often, the busiest, logging a field-crushing 217 events by November 2024, despite being waylaid by a concussion and brief hospitalization.

But Anne was born ready on Aug. 15, 1950, joining then 21-month-old Charles in the family fold. That November, then-Princess Elizabeth returned to Malta to be with her husband, Philip, who was still stationed there with the Royal Navy, while the children remained in England with their grandparents King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

Anne and Charles remained especially close to their maternal grandmother, the Queen Mother (her moniker after her daughter Elizabeth was crowned), till her death in 2002 at the age of 101.

Anne’s mother became Queen Elizabeth II in 1952 when George VI died at the age of 56. After her June 2, 1953, coronation, the she and Philip embarked on a nearly seven-month-long tour of the commonwealth, again without their children—who were famously greeted with handshakes upon their parents’ return.

Charles, then the Prince of Wales, enjoyed a special bond with his bold, confident sister, who was eight years older than their next-youngest brother, Prince Andrew. Prince Edward, the baby of the family, was born in 1964, when their eldest brother was already off at boarding school. As a child, the sensitive, artistically inclined Charles felt the weight of his parents’ frequent absences, but if Anne ever felt similarly, we’re unlikely to ever know.

“Her predecessors had traveled enormously, that was the expectation,” Anne pragmatically summed up her mother’s commitment to the crown in an interview for the BBC’s 2018 special The Queen: Her Commonwealth Story. “And they’d been away for very long times and that again was part of the expectation…And of course it was made worse by her father dying so early on in her career that she didn’t have the option really to spend more time at home.”

The princess, who was quick to defend their mother when Charles told an interviewer in the 1990s that the queen was a distant parent—”just beggars belief,” Anne fired back—was more like their father than Charles was, and Philip appreciated his daughter’s athleticism, fearlessness and dry wit.

But while their temperaments differed, Anne was supportive of Charles, attending his plays at boarding school and, once they were older, hitting the international circuit with him to represent Britain, including a trip to Washington, D.C., in 1970 (during which President Richard Nixon tried to set the prince up with his daughter Tricia Nixon).

Anne also gave her big brother riding lessons when, as an adult, he wanted to get over his fear of jumping so he could join in traditional foxhunts.

Anne shared a particular love of horses with the queen, a love that she later passed on to her own daughter, Zara Tindall. The Princess Royal forewent university in favor of pursuing her equestrian career and won the European Eventing Championship in 1971, after which she was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Anne met champion rider Mark Phillips, then a lieutenant in the British Army, during the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico and they bonded instantly, traveling to events together all over England. He won a gold medal in three-day eventing at the Munich Games in 1972 and they got engaged in April 1973, after both competing in the horse trials at Badminton. 

Their betrothal was formally announced on May 29, 1973, and Anne’s parents were said to be “delighted.”

But not everyone was thrilled.

“I can see I shall have to find myself a wife pretty rapidly, otherwise I shall get left behind and feel very miserable,” Charles wrote to a friend upon hearing the news, per Sally Bedell Smith‘s 2017 biography Prince Charles.

And his sister’s engagement wasn’t the only one plaguing the bachelor.

Four months before Anne got married on Nov. 14, 1974 (Charles’ 26th birthday), his former girlfriend Camilla Shand married Andrew Parker-Bowles. The dashing British Army officer had previously dated Anne and, remaining friends, Anne was in the front row along with the Queen Mother at Andrew and Camilla’s July 4 wedding.

More than 10,000 spectators camped out along the procession route to get a glimpse of the newlyweds on their way to Buckingham Palace, chanting “We want Anne!” and singing “Happy Birthday” for Charles.

The queen gifted her daughter and son-in-law Gatcombe Park, a country estate in Gloucester that remains Anne’s main residence to this day, and they divided their time between that home, an apartment at Buckingham Palace and Mark’s military posting at Sandhurst.

Meanwhile, Anne’s riding career remained a priority. Anne won silver medals in both individual and team disciplines at the 1975 European Eventing Championship atop her horse Doublet, and she became the first member of Britain’s royal family to compete in the Olympics when she rode in the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal.

She recalled seeing a “sea of hats” at the Opening Ceremony.

On the second day of three-day eventing, Anne fell off her horse—Goodwill, from the queen’s stable—and suffered a concussion. She got up again to jump the next day, but she matter-of-factly said later that she didn’t remember much of it, which, she called “irritating.” 

“My father went back to look afterward and he found four huge holes about three strides out from the fence,” she recalled to the BBC in 2011. “What [the horse had] done is got bogged, basically…At least we landed the right way up, because that’s the sort of fall that does a lot of damage.”

Anne insisted that finishing the event, let alone being an Olympian at all, was perfectly satisfying.

As Prince Philip once quipped about his daughter, “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, then she isn’t interested.”

“It was based on a historical military perspective that was based on having a horse that was obedient, well-trained, brave enough to cross any piece of country that they were asked to cross,” Anne explained, “but also fit enough to fight the next day.”

Sounds like an event she was bred for.

Son Peter was born on Nov. 15, 1977, and daughter Zara arrived on May 15, 1981.

While Anne walked the usual photographed walk upon leaving the hospital with her newborns, in general she’s shown little patience for certain kinds of pomp amid the circumstance.

As a rule she didn’t stop to shake hands, explaining in the ITV documentary Queen of the World that it was against protocol back in the day when the family started doing walkabouts (rather than just waving from passing cars) around 1970.

“The theory was that you couldn’t shake hands with everybody, so don’t start,” she said with a smile. “So I kind of stick with that, but I noticed others don’t. It’s not for me to say that it’s wrong, but the initial concept was that it was patently absurd to start shaking hands.”

And the walkabouts themselves were bothersome enough.

“We hated them,” Anne—who in the 1970s was overheard lamenting “this bloody wind” during one such outing in Australia—said in The Queen: Her Commonwealth Story. “I mean, can you imagine as teenagers? It’s hardly the sort of thing you would volunteer to do. I mean it gets easier but, can you imagine? I mean how many people enjoy walking into a room full of people that you’ve never met before? And then try a street. I don’t think many youngsters would actually volunteer to do that.”

She doesn’t take the country estate she’s called home for almost a half-century for granted, either. 

“It’s really nice to come back and just be yourself in an area like this,” she told Countryfile about Gatcombe, which is a working farm. “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.”

She remains the patron of numerous charities and organizations, including Save the Children, which she was president of from 1970 until 2017.

Asked if becoming a mother had influenced her advocacy, Anne said in a 1983 interview, “Yes, but I would also remind you that I took on the fund long before I even thought about getting married…Having my own children I don’t think has made that much difference. I may understand their problems a bit better than I did before.” 

She was also asked if, having seen deprivation in the developing world, did she worry about what sort of world her own children would grow up in?

“In the so-called developed world?” she replied wryly.

Her own children at least grew up in a fairly evolved world, for a couple of royals. Breaking with tradition, Anne—the first woman in the family to give birth in a hospital instead of at home—chose to not give son Peter and Zara royal titles, figuring they’d have a better shot at normality if they were just Peter and just Zara, no prince or princess, no HRH.

“I think it was probably easier for them, and I think most people would argue that there are downsides to having titles,” Anne told Vanity Fair in 2020. “So I think that was probably the right thing to do.”

Zara appreciated it, telling The Times in 2015, “I’m very lucky that both my parents decided to not use the title and we grew up and did all the things that gave us the opportunity to do.”

The queen’s rough year closed on an upswing, though, with Anne marrying Timothy on Dec. 12 in a small church ceremony in Scotland, three months after her divorce was finalized.

Zara was her bridesmaid. The bride’s parents were there, as was the Queen Mother. Prince Edward, still a bachelor at the time, was the only brother who attended, the wedding occurring days after Charles and Diana announced their separation. Diana sent her best wishes to the newlyweds.

Like Anne’s first husband, Timothy didn’t take a royal title, but he was knighted by the queen in 2011, and he’s still mixing Anne’s nightly martinis. (And it’s not as if she pinches all her pennies. The couple sail the Scottish Isles every summer aboard their £500,000 yacht, Ballochbuie.)

Peter married wife Autumn Phillips in 2008, but the parents of daughters, Savannah, 14, and Isla, 13, announced they were divorcing in February 2020.

As for how the split news hit Anne, her lady-in-waiting told Vanity Fair after the split, “We had a little conversation about it in the car, but she just rises above it.”

Peter is now engaged to Harriet Sperling.

Zara, an Exeter grad like her brother, secured her first riding sponsorship in 2003.

Though Anne was often reported to be annoyed by Zara’s rugby-playing husband Mike Tindall‘s headline-grabbing antics, usually involving his behavior at bars or on the pitch, the princess and her son-in-law tend to look thick as thieves out in public, particularly at sporting events.

Tindall said of his mother-in-law, “Her advice generally about life has been invaluable. Whenever we may have got slightly above our station she’d be the first one to bring us back down to earth.”

“When she’s in an environment of people that she knows,” he added, “whether it be her organizations or family, friends, she definitely relaxes a lot more and is great fun and is always the one laughing the loudest.”

“She loves a good dance,” Zara noted. “She is good on her feet.”

Zara was named BBC Sports Competitor of the Year in 2006, 35 years after her mother was similarly honored, and competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where she had the honor of accepting a silver medal in team eventing from the Princess Royal herself.

“Her father had been a successful equestrian and won a lot more medals [than I],” Anne told Vanity Fair, “so you do slightly wonder if having two parents who’ve been in that situation helped. Zara was always a natural and it was really a question of whether she felt that was something she really wanted to do, and she did and she was very thorough and applied herself to it. So she was quite rightly very successful.”

All of the grandkids love horses, too, and Anne quipped, “Certainly when they started their riding lives I was the extra hand.”

Aside from Anne’s change in ‘do, read on for more 2025 royal news: