- Star of the Coronation documentary, Anne greeted King with ‘Hello, Old Bean’
- She flies out for the first State Visit of 2024 later this week
- Don’t miss our brilliant new podcast, The Crown: Fact or Fiction with Robert Hardman and Natasha Livingstone. Listen now on Spotify , Apple or wherever you get your podcasts
She was the star of the King’s Boxing Day documentary with her candid commentary, shrewd insight and propensity to make her brother – and no doubt the viewers – laugh.
Who else would greet the newly crowned Charles with ‘Hello, Old Bean’?
It was Princess Anne who explained to BBC viewers just how hard it had been for her brother to prepare himself for the Coronation, despite a lifetime of waiting in the wings.
And it was Anne who summed up Charles’s feelings after the ceremony as like those of ‘an actor who comes off stage having done a performance that they really put a lot into. It’s that kind of relief’.
Increasingly described as the King’s ‘right-hand woman’, the Princess Royal is emerging as a figure of shared understanding and trust.
Next week she jets to Sri Lanka for the first Royal tour of 2024. The three-day trip, made at the request of the Foreign Office, marks 75 years of diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom.
Such close working has not always been so evident, however.
Through much of their adult lives, Charles, now 75, and little sister Anne, 73, led rather separate lives and there was a time when relations were thought to be decidedly cool.
Their respective country homes, Highgrove House and Gatcombe Park, might stand just six miles apart in the Cotswolds, but there was little evidence of family visits.
They have different interests and approaches, of course, as their very different houses might suggest.
Manicured Highgrove with its lovingly tended gardens is a living work of art.
Princess Anne’s Gatcombe is a rambling shrine to all things equine – part stables, part family compound, with children, grandchildren and even exes living on the grounds.
Born less than two years apart, Anne was more always extroverted than Charles.
Thought of as close to Prince Philip, and famous for her brusque, non-nonsense delivery, she was once described as being ‘very much her father’s daughter – in a way that Charles could never be his father’s son.’
They have some things in common, too, not least a sense of humour – Charles is surprisingly funny – and devotion to sheer hard work.
Analyses of last year’s royal engagements disagree as to which was the hardest-working HRH, but on this they concur: it was either the King or it was the Princess Royal.
Anne carried out 457 engagements while Charles did 425 according to The Daily Telegraph.
The Times says that Charles conducted 516 engagements at home and abroad with the Princess Royal completing 410.
There’s been little time for house calls.
For all their differences, Charles and Anne are yoked together by circumstance and duty – a bond which is now as clearly on view as it has ever been.
Of the late Queen’s four children, only two knew their mother before life was transformed by her accession to the throne.
Accident or otherwise, it was Charles and Anne who were by Elizabeth’s side in her final moments at Balmoral, not the younger ones.
A lifetime earlier when she was a blonde-haired two-year-old, Anne had been left back at the Palace when Charles, the future King, was taken to see the Coronation of their mother.
But she will know everything there is to know about what her big brother went through in that extraordinary 70-year wait to play his part – and what he now faces in the time remaining.
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
