18 things you never knew about Princess Anne

We all know that the British royals have a slew of palaces to choose from. As befits her penchant for privacy, however, the princess royal’s home base is far away from the hustle and bustle of London’s Buckingham Palace. Her preferred residence is Gatcombe Park, an 18th-century manor house set on 730 acres of parkland in Gloucestershire in the southwest of England. When she’s not speeding along the quiet country lanes in her Bentley, Princess Anne reportedly goes riding every day. She also breeds her own horses and has been teaching her four young granddaughters to ride as well. Gatcombe Park is part of Princess Anne’s personal property.

Although in many ways a royal rebel, there’s one tradition Princess Anne is more than happy to uphold: boarding school. Charles reportedly had a terrible time at the prestigious Gordonstoun school in Scotland (which Prince Philip also attended), but she has nothing but fond memories of boarding at Benenden School in Kent. When Princess Anne was younger, she became the first princess to receive schooling outside the home (or palace). “I was ready to go to school,” she told Vanity Fair. “I had a governess and two friends, and that was never going to be enough, really, so I was only too pleased to be sent off somewhere else.”

Despite her good experience at Benenden, she sent her children to Gordonstoun, perhaps to uphold the family tradition. Princess Anne is also a patron of the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation, which takes children from what she calls “chaotic homes” and sends them to boarding school. “You only have to listen to them to realise that it’s absolutely transformed their lives,” she has said.

We may still be reeling over that episode in the fourth season of The Crown in which Tobias Menzies, playing Prince Philip, casually informs his children that Anne is his favourite, but the princess herself hasn’t been watching. She did have one thing to say about Netflix’s hit show, however. Actress Erin Doherty, who plays Princess Anne, said in an interview that it took around two hours to get her hair just right to portray the royal. In a 2020 documentary produced for her 70th birthday, the princess royal expressed disbelief, saying, “How could you possibly take that long? I mean, it takes me 10 or 15 minutes.”

Check out how the actors from The Crown compare to the real-life British royals.

Always timeless and chic, the princess royal has been a style icon since the 1970s. And it turns out she was ahead of her time in another way as well: she’s been recycling for decades, well before the recent second-hand clothing trend. Apparently Princess Anne still wears outfits she’s owned since the 1980s, which makes her the queen of sustainable fashion in our eyes.

Considering she often attends multiple events in one day, she has a preference for hard-wearing fabrics like Harris tweed (from Scotland) and prefers to work with natural, British-made materials. In fact, she often has clothing made for her at home rather than buying from abroad. The current editor of British Vogue, Edward Enninful, says that she “wears a tailored suit better than anyone else I can think of.” He may have been thinking of her second wedding – she reportedly wore a chic white suit to marry Timothy Laurence in Scotland.

In one hilarious episode of The Crown, Prince Philip uses the Buckingham Palace tannoy system to call ‘Sweetie’ to his office. But it’s not the queen he’s looking for; it’s his daughter.

Apparently the scene was rooted in truth: Princess Anne’s father really did call her Sweetie. Given that Prince Philip’s other nicknames for his family included things like Cabbage, the princess got off easy with the adorable moniker.

Check out the royal family’s nicknames they use for each other.

Princess Anne was “reputedly Philip’s favourite child, sharing his sharp tongue, irreverent wit and athletic talent,” says Gullace. She needed his favour to survive in a patriarchal system based on male primogeniture. In fact, Gullace adds, “some rather unkind commentators have speculated that it would have ‘been better for the monarchy had Anne been born a boy, and Charles a girl,’ meaning that she had more of her parents’ grit and strength and would have been a stronger monarch than her brother.”

Though he’s now taken the throne, many Britons didn’t want Charles to become king – and not just because they object to the crown’s history of colonialism and the continuation of the monarchy overall. Thankfully for Charles, he has his sister’s help in shining a positive light on the royal family. The princess royal’s strength and calm are legendary, and there’s no doubt that she is “a major source of strength behind the throne,” Gullace says. “Her profile will undoubtedly rise as she takes a leading role advising her brother and acting on his behalf in Charles’s new ‘slimmed down’ monarchy.”

When it comes to sports, galloping through the countryside isn’t the only activity that gets Princess Anne’s heart racing. She has been the royal patron of the Scottish Rugby Union since 1986. And she almost never misses a home game at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium, where fellow rugby lovers can hear her singing Flower of Scotland, the country’s unofficial national anthem.

Rugby fandom might even run in the royal family: Queen Elizabeth was the patron of the Rugby Football Union for 64 years, while Prince William has been the Welsh Rugby Union patron since 2007. Princess Anne’s daughter, Zara, married former English rugby player Mike Tindall, and her son, Peter, played internationally on the Scottish under-18 team in 1985.

For her 70th birthday, the princess royal guest edited an edition of the British magazine Country Life. In it, she revealed her favourite game recipe: devilled pheasant. She swears it makes for an easy, delicious supper, but the combination of ingredients sounds questionable at best. The magazine showcased John Williams, the executive chef at London’s famous Ritz hotel, making the recipe, but even he couldn’t make it sound good.

Step 1: grab your pheasants. Step 2: poach. Step 3: shred the meat in the poaching juice. Step 4: cover the pheasant with whipped cream mixed with mango chutney and Worcestershire sauce. Heat and eat!

Read on to find out which foods Queen Elizabeth II would never, ever eat.

In her 2020 interview with Vanity Fair, Princess Anne declined to identify as a feminist. But actions speak louder than words, and the princess royal has insisted on equality on more than one occasion, particularly between her and her three brothers. In 1994, the queen appointed Princess Anne to the Order of the Garter, the oldest and most highly ranked order of chivalry in Britain (it dates back 700 years or so).

Knights and ladies of the Order of the Garter are usually recognised for their public service. But when Princess Anne’s turn came, she requested to be installed as a royal knight in order to rank equally with her brothers. She became a knight twice over when the queen knighted her to the Order of the Thistle (the highest order of chivalry in Scotland) in 2000. Thanks to Anne’s trailblazing request (and the queen’s approval), regular women can now be knights of the order, not just royals.

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Source: RD.com