Anne, Princess Royal
1950 – · Generation XXXVIII · Olympic equestrian · House of Windsor
Anne, Princess Royal, was born at Clarence House in London on 15 August 1950, the second child and only daughter of the future Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. She is the sister of King Charles III. After lessons at Buckingham Palace she went to Benenden School in Kent from 1963 to 1968, and she carried out her first public engagement in 1969, at the age of eighteen.
Her first fame was as a sportswoman. In 1971, aged twenty-one, she won the individual European eventing championship at Burghley on her horse Doublet and was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year. She took individual and team silver medals at the European championships of 1975, and at Montreal in 1976 she became the first member of the British royal family to compete in an Olympic Games, riding the Queen’s horse Goodwill in the three-day event. She fell on the cross-country course, suffered concussion, remounted and finished. She was president of the International Equestrian Federation from 1986 to 1994, has been a member of the International Olympic Committee since 1988, and as of 2026 is president of the British Olympic Association.
On 14 November 1973 she married Captain Mark Phillips, an army officer she had met in 1968 at a gathering of horse lovers, at Westminster Abbey. They made their home at Gatcombe Park. Their children, Peter, born in 1977, and Zara, born in 1981, were given no titles. The marriage was dissolved in April 1992, and on 12 December that year she married Commander Timothy Laurence of the Royal Navy, now Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, at Crathie Kirk near Balmoral. She has five grandchildren.
On 20 March 1974, as she and her husband were being driven back to Buckingham Palace, an armed man forced their car to stop and tried to kidnap her for ransom. He shot and wounded her police protection officer, her chauffeur, a journalist and a police constable who came to help. The princess refused his order to get out of the car, and the attacker was chased down and arrested. He pleaded guilty to attempted murder and kidnapping and was detained in hospital. Her protection officer, James Beaton, was awarded the George Cross.
Queen Elizabeth II gave her the title Princess Royal in June 1987. Her working life has been one of the fullest in the royal family: she has carried out more than 20,000 engagements and is associated with over 300 charities, organisations and regiments. The longest connection is with Save the Children, whose president she became in 1970 and whose projects she has visited in Africa and Asia. She has been Chancellor of the University of London since 1981 and of the University of Edinburgh since 2011, founded the Princess Royal Trust for Carers in 1991, and in 2023 became president of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In September 2022 she stood guard beside her mother’s coffin at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, the first woman to take part in the Vigil of the Princes.
Place in the family
- Anne, Princess Royal is a daughter of Queen Elizabeth II.
- Anne, Princess Royal is the second of 4 children of Philip Mountbatten and Queen Elizabeth II recorded in this archive.
- The archive records 7 of her descendants, across 2 generations.
Images
- Anne with her parents and her brother Charles, October 1957. (Unknown photographer / Library and Archives Canada, public domain)
- Anne, at right, at the discus medal ceremony of the 1974 Commonwealth Games. (Archives New Zealand, CC BY 2.0)
- Anne competing at the international horse trials at Boekelo in the Netherlands, October 1980. (Marcel Antonisse / Anefo, CC0)
- The Princess Royal with her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, in 2014. (The United States Army Band, CC BY 2.0)
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One of 53 people of House of Windsor (from 1917) in this archive. The present house — it renamed itself Windsor in 1917, setting aside the German title Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots → King James I → Elizabeth Stuart → Sophia of Hanover → King George I → King George II → Frederick Prince of Wales → King George III → Edward Duke of Kent → Queen Victoria → King Edward VII → King George V → King George VI → Queen Elizabeth II → Anne, Princess Royal.
Parents
- Philip Mountbatten (1921 – 2021)
- Queen Elizabeth II (1926 – 2022)
Siblings
- King Charles III (1948 – )
- Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (1960 – )
- Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh (1964 – )
Partners
- Married Mark Phillips (1948 – ) in 1973; the marriage was dissolved in 1992 — 2 children together
- Married Timothy Laurence (1955 – ) in 1992
Children
- Peter Phillips (1977 – )
- Zara Tindall (1981 – )
Life
- 1950 — Born
- 1973 — Married Mark Phillips
- 1992 — Separated from Mark Phillips
- 1992 — Married Timothy Laurence
Sources
- Anne, Princess Royal · Wikipedia
- The Princess Royal · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
- When Princess Anne made history in Montreal 50 years ago · Team GB (British Olympic Association)