Ode to Princess Anna, the royal we like best (and the busiest)

Numbers don’t lie. AND the Princess Anna, 71 years old, is the member of the royal family who was most “engaged” in 2021. With 368 official events which he has attended for the last twelve months, the only daughter of the queen Elizabeth II, as the British press tells us, beat all the rest of the royal family. Including the brother Carlo. The future king has reached 360. Anna’s last royal duty dates back to last Friday, when she represented the sovereign mother at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst parade.

Official visits, inauguration ceremonies, sporting events, concerts and charity events. But also lunches, banquets and breakfasts. In the count of the annual ranking that crowns Anna as the most committed royal, there is a bit of everything. Including the investiture ceremonies which, age and health permitting, would be due to the mother queen. Only since last July the indefatigable princess has completed 13.

Numbers we are used to by now. In recent years Anna has also been at the top of the ranking of the busiest royals. “He always runs around the country, I am always surprised by what he does in a day,” commented royal expert O’Donovan in 2018. Yes why, the princess, patroness of over 200 charitable organizations, she has always been a very active type. And if in the past her somewhat brusque manners, “sharp tongue” and annoyance with the spotlight had made her unpopular today she is one of the most beloved British royalty. The Telegraph, for example, a couple of years ago he called her “the best of us all: tenacious, practical, hardworking, diligent and reserved”. Lively and no frills, we add. She escaped (never complaining in public) to a tragicomic attempted kidnapping in 1974; made a career in the military; has always had one great passion: horses. She owns several, and was an equestrian champion, the first royal to take part in the Olympics (in Montreal, 1976). “When I appear in public, people expect me to whinnyShe used to say some time ago, showing that she had inherited the sense of humor of Papa Filippo, Duke of Edinburgh. Father and daughter have always been very close precisely because they are united by a similar character. Straightforwardness and harshness of ways understood.

She got married twice, Anna. The first with the captain Mark Phillips, also passionate about sports and horses, with whom he had two children Peter (born in 1977) e Zara (1981). It was a wedding in style, in November 1973, at Westminster Abbey. But then it was time to say goodbye. Anna in 1985 discovered that the husband also had a secret daughter, conceived with a New Zealand girl when he was already married to her. Four years later the couple announced their separation. And Anna, with the official divorce in 1992, became the first of the Windsor brothers to cause scandal by breaking up their marriage.

Not even a handful of months and the very modern Anna was married again. This time with Timothy Laurence, to which he said yes with a decidedly subdued wedding – only 30 guests arrived at a church near Balmoral, the only one that also accepts divorcees – December 12, 1992. At Buckingham Palace, he has always supported gossip, the vice admiral never liked anyone. Not even to the British press, which has long called him “The royal kept”. Anna and her discreet (almost invisible) consort went straight on their way. And yesterday, Sunday 12 December, they have celebrated – out of the spotlight, as they like it – 19 years of marriage. Just on the weekend when the princess won the most committed royal record. Deserving, in the British press that once did not love him very much, the title of “warrior of the royal family».