The year in royal work: Princess Anne
The King's sister is the focus of Day 4 of my year-end work analysis
HRH THE PRINCESS ROYAL
First, a declaration: Princess Anne is my favourite royal. (For more, read my 2014 piece, “6 reasons why Princess Anne is the best royal” in Maclean’s.)
So this turned out to be a bit longer than planned.
This year started off as one like any other for Princess Anne. Until suddenly it wasn’t.
Like every year, Princess Anne was the first royal to return work after the holidays. On January 4, she attended the Oxford Farming Conference as its honorary president. Six days later, she and her husband, Tim Laurence, were in Sri Lanka to commemorate the 75th anniversary of United Kingdom-Sri Lanka bilateral relations. It would be the first of seven trips that she’d make in 2024 to realms, Crown dependencies, and foreign nations.
Everything seemed normal. Then suddenly the four most senior royals were dealing with surgeries and cancer diagnoses. The focus of royal life switched to Windsors often considered “supporting players” — dutiful, loyal, and hardworking but not the “stars” of the royal constellation. Through it all, the only sister of King Charles III did what she always does: work.
By May, she’d done nearly one-third of all royal work to date in 2024. Her schedule hadn’t increased noticeably; instead, so many other royals were off their regular schedules that her share of the shrunken pie could not help but grow. (By the end of November, Princess Anne had completed 22 percent of all royal engagements.)
With that outsized presence in the Court Circular, which records all official engagements, came a spurt of attention from the media and public. In May, large crowds turned out to see Princess Anne at the commissioning ceremony of the new Arctic patrol vessel, HMCS Max Bernays, in Vancouver. She wore her Royal Canadian Navy uniform in her role as commodore-in-chief for the Canadian Fleet Pacific.
Then she and her husband stayed onboard overnight as the ship went to its home at CFB Esquimalt (why go by air or ferry when you can go by ship!). There, she and her husband, Tim Laurence, a retired vice admiral, did even more engagements, again in front of large crowds.
That her husband often accompanies her on foreign trips is a notable change in recent years. He’s also increasingly taking part in her work within Britain. In 2019, Tim Laurence accompanied her to nine percent of all her engagements. By 2022, that share had increased to 27 percent. To date, it’s 24 percent this year.
After a year dominated by the illnesses of the King and Princess of Wales, June 24, Buckingham Palace announced that Princess Anne had been injured on her estate of Gatcombe Park and taken to hospital. She had a concussion after being hit in some way by a horse (she doesn’t remember what happened). It took her a while to recover and she did not restart any work until three weeks later. That medically necessary gap no doubt affected her overall total of engagements for the year, but not her position atop the House of Windsor work leader board.
Normally, King Charles III and Princess Anne are far ahead of the rest of the working Windsors in terms of total engagements. Between 2017 and 2023, only an average of 30 engagements separated their annual tallies. This year, Princess Anne jumped to an early lead and never relinquished it, even as the sovereign returned to public-facing duties. By early December, the gap between sister and brother was more than 90 engagements, three times the usual gap.
The year in royal work
Day 1: Princess Alexandra and the Duke of Kent
Day 2: The Duchess of Gloucester
Day 3: The Duke of Gloucester
My latest appearance on Global TV’s The Morning Show on December 2:
My latest article for Zoomer: ‘Cooking & the Crown’: Inside Tom Parker Bowles’ New Cookbook, Plus 4 Royal Recipes
“You may be surprised by the simplicity of many of the recipes,” explains Parker Bowles in his book. Indeed, his first breakfast option is the porridge that his mother, Queen Camilla, eats every day in winter along with a teaspoon of honey from royal beehives. “Food is the great leveler. I want to strip away the pomp and circumstance and get right to the meat of the matter – a collection of wonderful recipes that you really want to cook from over two centuries of regal eating.”
Anne is my favourite too. I'm really enjoying these daily mini-posts!