Life For Princess Anne After Her Divorce

While the royal family isn’t exactly known for displays of emotions, Princess Anne is considered the most stoic. She embodies the stiff upper lip and has dedicated her life to the monarchy on a level even King Charles III can’t compete with. During all this, she keeps her personal life very quiet.

Princess Anne is the second child and sole daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, who recently passed. Thrust into the public eye since birth, Princess Anne has always faithfully worked with her mother, along with being an accomplished equestrian in her younger days. Today, you can find her on many committees and boards with her current husband Timothy Laurence. Her hairstyle has been the same for several decades, and while she’s known for her steely demeanour and the discreet nature of her private life, she was once at the heart of some serious tabloid drama.

Along with Prince Charles and Prince Andrew, Anne got divorced. In the 1990s, her marriage to Captain Mark Phillips finally ended. Despite formally separating and getting divorced, Anne maintained her career and her military-esque poker face, but that’s not to say that life wasn’t hard for this royal post-divorce.

The separation that shocked the royal family

Although the tension between these spouses was no surprise, the announcement of their separation still shocked Buckingham Palace and the public. She made the decision in 1989 and started a trend of several royal marriages going downhill. The palace confirmed that Mark would move out of their Gloucestershire home, where Anne would remain with her two kids, who were only 11 and 8 years old.

The media harshly scrutinized her decision to separate and divorce

As we know from Meghan Markle’s experience, the media isn’t always kind. Her personal letters were stolen and given to the press, making for one of the UK’s biggest scandals. To get themselves out of a lawsuit, the Sun published a story with the headline, “PALACE THIEF STEALS ANNE’S LETTERS…SUN TO THE RESCUE.”  In the story, they exposed the fact that Anne was writing intimate letters with someone other than her husband, whom she was estranged from at the time.

Anne, Princess Royal, in Austria during a state visit with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, May 1969. (Photo by Terry Disney/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

She embraced the drama when her brother was struggling in his own marriage

We don’t often see this stoic princess opting for drama, but what else can you do when it follows you wherever you go? Her brothers were experiencing their own separations at the time, and Andrew Parker Bowles accompanied Anne at the Royal Ascot that year. Many people considered this to be controversial, as Bowles was her ex-boyfriend and was married to Camilla Parker Bowles at the time.

Thanks to her brother’s drama, the spotlight went off her slightly

Right as news of Princess Anne’s separation began to die down, the public shifted its attention to Charles and Diana, who in 1992 announced they would be separating. This was three years after Princess Anne made her own announcement. The public revered Diana, but their marriage was filled with affairs and unhappiness. While Anne started to live normally again, her brother’s relationship fell into complete disarray.

England’s Prince Charles & Princess Anne on balcony during trooping of the Colour ceremony at Buckingham Palace. (Photo by Ken Goff/Getty Images)
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