Keep Charles, we'll take Anne

ALASTAIR GRANT/AFP via Getty Images

Being for the most part a secular republican of the French type – and doubly a peasant, in both of my nationalities – I don’t usually spend any amount of time thinking about the royal family. But the YouTube algorithms brought into my account the BBC stream of the Prince Phillip funeral and I watched the first few minutes and then settled into it. The weather was perfect, the pace was glacial, the uniforms positively Gilbert-Sullivan, and the vistas through what must have been an army of drone cameras were glorious.

What caught my eye in the procession of the closest family members was that there was a single woman in it: Queen’s only daughter, Princess Anne. Princess Anne’s son was behind her too, but not her daughter. No daughters are to be included. Apparently it’s extremely unusual to have women in these, and Anne also stood out at the funeral of the Queen Mother in early 00s where she wore a uniform, like the rest of the men. (No donning of uniforms for the Duke because er neither Harry nor Prince Andrew is allowed to wear theirs any more.)

All of which led me down the Princes Anne internet rabbit hole. While she hasn’t officially served, she’s an honourary colonel etc., and is qualified to operate tanks and knows how to fire various automatic weapons. As an equestrian she competed in the Montreal Olympics in ‘76 with the UK delegation, for which she qualified the regular way, and earned a gold and two silvers in European Championships. She’s been a member of the IOC for years and was instrumental in getting the 2012 Olympics to London. As a young horsewoman she’d often compete in eventing and there are some spectacular and dread-inducing videos and photos of her flying off her horse and in most cases getting up immediately (at least once she got knocked off and had to be brought to).

There’s just an extraordinary amount of physical courage to her. Also somewhere in the 1970s an armed man tried to kidnap her for a ransom and she just woudn’t have it. Several men around her got shot — it must have been much less funny than this retelling — but she wouldn’t budge out of the car and kept him busy long enough for re-enforcement to arrive.

To the British media she was interesting as a young attractive mini-skirt wearing thing, but not any more. She had many boyfriends (some documentary that I bookmarked but still haven’t watched lists at least 7 serious relationships), was first to marry a divorcee, was first to divorce and re-marry. The love letters from her lover, soon to be second husband, were stolen from the Buckingham Palace and leaked to the media. (Culprits were never found.)

She never went to university — only low and middle class people need education to earn a living, clearly — and was a full time working royal from the age of 19. She refused to give her two children any royal titles, figuring they’ll have more freedom and fewer mandatory duties. She lives in her manor-slash-working-farm the Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire and around the estate wears the whatever British equivalent of MEC is?

I can guess what those lives are approximately like thanks to the books by Clarissa Dickson Wright of the Two Fat Ladies fame - her memoirs Spilling the Beans (2007) and Rifling Through My Drawers: My Life in a Year (2009) describe her life and other similarly moneyed lives in rural settings, whether on moderately sized properties or on large estates, with fox hunting weekends, agricultural fairs, very anti-EU, very anti-PETA, occasionally anti-intellectual, often anti-urban. They’re great fun to read.

Too bad the royals don’t write books, because I’d definitely read Princess Anne’s memoir. Prince of Wales is I guess what passes for an intellectual in the royal family, and once the queen dies we’ll get him as the head of state. One of his cultural contributions so far is the belly-aching against modernist architecture. If Canada has to have the Windsors, can we have Anne instead?

Till next Monday -

LP

Two essential Royal reads:

A few months ago Helen Lewis did an intriguing article in the Atlantic about the fight of women from the British aristocratic families to reform the peerage inheritance rules. Aristocratic titles still go to sons — not a lot has changed since Virginia Woolf wrote Orlando around Vita Sackville-West’s Knole predicament. With inherited peerage come the inherited seats in the House of Lords, which is why it’s by its constitution bound to stay a heavily male house. More in When Discrimination Targets the Privileged.

Hilary Mantel’s legendary piece on the women of the royal family as the Firm’s birthing bodies. It upset a lot of people, especially those who read it as an attack on Kate Middleton.