Princess Anne: Overshadowed royal plays stoic role as U.K. mourns queen

“I was fortunate to share the last 24 hours of my dearest Mother’s life. It has been an honour and a privilege to accompany her on her final journeys,” Anne said in a statement late Tuesday. She said the experience on the queen’s final stretch among the crowds was “both humbling and uplifting,” and she offered her “thanks to each and every one who share our sense of loss.”

Detailed plans for the ceremonies after Elizabeth’s death have been in the making for decades, with Elizabeth weighing in on her preferences. Commentators said that the queen probably requested that her only daughter be the one to escort her coffin in these circumstances.

“They were very close,” said Robert Lacey, a royal biographer. “It’s always said, though never confirmed, that Andrew was her favorite, but I always thought that events showed that there was a particular closeness between Anne and her mother at the heart of the royal family.”

A glimpse of that closeness could be seen during a video call in the summer of 2020, when Anne was seen helping her mother figure out a Zoom call.

On Wednesday, Anne, 72, known as the Princess Royal, marched somberly behind her mother’s cortege. Although she never served in the military, she holds ceremonial titles and was wearing military dress. (Prince Harry and Prince Andrew, who served in the army, were unable to wear a military uniform as they are not working members of the royal family.)

Anne has “always been hard-working, no nonsense,” Dickie Arbiter, a royal commentator and former press spokesman for the queen, told The Washington Post on Wednesday. “She’s been absolutely stoic and tremendous” since the death of her mother last week, he added.

Anne is often called the hardest-working member of the royal family. In an annual tally of engagements, it is Anne who is often at or near the top of the league tables.

In Arbiter’s view, Anne has not been “overshadowed” as much as she has been overlooked and “ignored by the media.” He recalled that she would add stops on trips to and from London to pack in extra work opportunities or visit charities, always arriving home late.

Anne, who undertook her first public engagement as a teenager, is involved with over 300 charities and military organizations, especially the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. Among the causes she supports are home aides, protection of cattle, heart health and the improvement of public transport. Most notably, she was a long-serving president and is currently the patron of the nonprofit Save the Children.

On top of her royal duties and raising children Zara and Peter, a young Anne represented her country as an accomplished equestrian.

She competed in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal as a member of the British equestrian team and still works to support riding for disabled people across the Commonwealth, according to Buckingham Palace. She also took part in London’s successful bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Her first husband, army Capt. Mark Phillips, was also an Olympic equestrian, and their daughter, Zara Tindall, followed in both her parents’ footsteps. Tindall won a silver medal in the London Games.

Anne also made tabloid front pages after being apparently scolded by her ever-diplomatic monarch mother during a 2019 visit to the United Kingdom by President Donald Trump. A video went viral online of the queen appearing to chastise her daughter with a subtle side-eye glance when greeting Trump and first lady Melania Trump at a Buckingham Palace reception.

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“She was funny,” Arbiter said of Anne, who often shared humor with her outspoken father, Prince Philip, with whom she was close. Queen Elizabeth was “proud” of her achievements, he added, and the two enjoyed “a very good relationship.”

“As the queen got older, [Anne] became a great companion and a great comfort to the queen,” Arbiter said. She also has fairly good relations with her elder brother, Charles, despite a “rocky period” after his divorce from Princess Diana in 1996, he said. “Underneath it all, there was always a good relationship,” Arbiter added.

This week, Anne, who is 16th in line to the throne, thanked her mother for her “contribution to our national identity.” She added in a statement: “I am also so grateful for the support and understanding offered to my dear brother Charles as he accepts the added responsibilities of The Monarch.”

Anne famously declined to give her two children royal titles. “I think most people would argue that there are downsides to having titles,” she once said.

She also survived an attempted kidnapping in 1974 after her vehicle was pulled over by a gunman near Buckingham Palace. As the attacker told her to get out, she reportedly replied, “Not bloody likely,” before she eventually escaped.

Like many royals, she has not been immune to having her romantic life publicized in the press. She divorced Phillips in 1992 during the queen’s “annus horribilis” and eight months later married Timothy Laurence, a navy commander charged with caring for the royal family’s horses.

In 1989, love letters that Laurence wrote to Anne, while she was still married, were stolen and leaked to the Sun newspaper. The tabloid publicly pledged not to publish them and handed them over to British authorities, but it continued to print speculation about the extramarital relationship.

Laurence walked behind his wife and the queen’s coffin in a procession through central London on Wednesday from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall, where the late monarch will lie in state until her funeral on Monday.

Millions are expected to flock to London to catch a glimpse of the historic farewell to the queen.

In her statement on her late mother, Anne said: “Witnessing the love and respect shown by so many on these journeys has been both humbling and uplifting.”

Annabelle Timsit and Ellen Francis contributed to this report.