True Story of Princess Anne's Relationship With Andrew Parker Bowles in 'The Crown'

Catching up on previous seasons of The Crown before diving into season five? If you're curious about the real life relationship between Princess Anne and Andrew Parker Bowles, read on for our story from 2019:

In the third season The Crown, the Queen and Prince Philip have seemingly moved past the marital struggles that plagued them in the show's first two chapters.

“I think they’ve gone into a much steadier phase in the 1960s. They’re older, more mature,” actress Olivia Colman, who took over playing the British monarch, said in an interview with Vanity Fair.

But that doesn't mean Peter Morgan is finished chronicling royal relationship drama—far from it in fact.

Season three introduces viewers not only to Camilla Shand, the future Duchess of Cornwall (played by Emerald Fennell), but also to her first husband Andrew Parker Bowles (played by Andrew Buchan).

And the show suggests that when Camilla was beginning her relationship with the Prince of Wales, her on-again-off-again boyfriend Parker Bowles was sleeping with Princess Anne, creating not a love triangle, but some sort of love polygon, involving the Queen's two oldest children.

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Princess Anne receives a kiss on the cheek from Andrew Parker Bowles at Royal Ascot in 1988.

There could be a grain of truth to Peter Morgan's depiction of events. According to Prince Charles's biographer Sally Bedell Smith, Parker Bowles did have a relationship with the Princess Royal, but given that he was Catholic, he was "an unlikely candidate for marriage to a member of the royal family." In short, it was never going to last.

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"Even when their romance eventually wound down, they remained lifelong friends," writes Bedell Smith, noting that they had much in common, including a shared a love of horses. She also notes rumors that they continued to have a relationship even after both parties were married.

Of Princess Anne's 1992 divorce, Bedell Smith wrote, "They had separated three years earlier after persistent reports that both had been unfaithful—in Anne's case with, among others, Andrew Parker Bowles."

Romantic entanglements aside, Anne and Parker Bowles remain close to this day, and are often photographed together at horse racing events. He's also often seen pictured with his goddaughter, Anne's youngest child, Zara.

But the historian does take issue with how the events of The Crown play out. According to Vanity Fair, Bedell Smith doesn't believe Anne and Parker Bowles's relationship overlapped with that of Camilla and Prince Charles at all.

“The Crown is a fictional portrayal of the royal family,” Bedell Smith said. “And it’s beautifully done, beautifully written, beautifully acted. . .but, because of that, audiences tend to take it at face value. A lot of it is made up.”