The Princess Anne is known for her sporting prowess as an Olympic horsewoman and for being one of the hardest-working members of the British royal family. Andrew Parker Bowles for having been at one time the husband of the now Queen Camilla. Charles III’s sister divorced Captain Mark Phillips in 1992 and is currently married to Sir Timothy Lawrence, but before her first marriage, the eighteenth in line to the throne and the army officer maintained a romantic relationship.
The courtship between Princess Anne and Andrew Parker Bowles, who in youth earned the nickname “the best and most active lover in London”, even sparked marriage speculation at the time. A hypothetical ‘yes, I do’ that in reality had no chance of coming true. In the documentary The Real Princess Anne, the love life of the Queen Elizabeth II’s daughter was addressed in the early 1970s. At that time, potential suitors were cited as Olympic gold medalist Richard Meade, who shared with her a passion for horse riding, or a 26-year-old Andrew who had not yet married Camilla.
The two were often seen together in the British capital, but marriage was far from being an option for either. Why? He was Catholic, and for a member of the royal family that would completely rule out a wedding. Princess Anne, as the daughter of the head of the Church of England, would not have been able to marry Andrew for this reason. At that time, the royal family was governed by the Succession Act of 1701, which forbade royal members from marrying Catholics under penalty of being disqualified from inheriting the throne.
However, in 2015 a new Succession to the Crown Act came into force, which removed this provision. The law also removed the requirement to obtain the sovereign’s approval to marry beyond the six closest people in the line of succession. Now, at 86, Andrew Parker Bowles has taken on a new and more edifying role as the right-hand man of the royal family, even substituting Princess Anne at several official events.
Thus the Romance Between Anne and Andrew Unfolded
Crown fans may recall how, in the third season, Andrew Parker Bowles leaves Camilla to embark on an affair with Princess Anne when she was 19. In real life, they met in 1970 after a fortuitous encounter at Royal Lodge, the Queen Mother’s residence in Windsor, when he was an aide in the newly formed Blues and Royals regiment. Despite his reputation as an incorrigible seducer and the age difference between them, the attraction between the princess and the soldier was intense.
The couple had their first date during Royal Ascot at Windsor Castle, in June 1970, just before Anne turned 20 in August of that same year. Andrew came from a family fond of racing. His father, Derek, was a great horse enthusiast, just like much of the British royal family, and was also a good friend of the Queen Mother, so the families already knew each other before the romance began between the two young people.
Princess Anne and Andrew Parker Bowles at Royal Ascot 2022.
Meanwhile, Andrew Parker Bowles had met Camilla in the late 1960s and they had an intermittent relationship for several years before marrying in 1973. It appears the couple were pressured to take the step when their respective parents published engagement notices in The Times. In fact, it was the romance between Anne and Andrew, according to royal experts, that led Camilla to attempt to seduce Prince Charles. If Andrew was going to have the queen’s daughter as a lover, she would have the queen’s son.
The relationship between Princess Anne and Andrew Parker Bowles faded when he was stationed in Germany and he reunited with Camilla. In July 1973, they married at the Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks, in central London. Just a few months later, in November of that same year, the Queen’s daughter married Captain Mark Phillips at Westminster Abbey. Andrew has since maintained a close friendship with both the princess and his ex-wife. He was even invited to attend her coronation in May 2022.
The Enduring Bond Between Andrew and Camilla
Known as The Brigadier, a nod to his former career as an army officer, Andrew Parker Bowles has decades of movement within royal circles. The Marchioness of Lansdowne, one of Queen Camilla’s ladies-in-waiting, once said: “Everyone loves Andrew. He is a complete charm. He always calls Camilla to tell her when she is wrong about something and she calls him to tell him when he behaves badly.”
Andrew and Camilla divorced in 1995, stating in a press release that “throughout our marriage we have tended to follow fairly different interests, but in recent years we have led completely separate lives.” A year later, he married his lifelong lover, Rosemary Pitman. They remained together until she died in 2010 of cancer, at the age of 69. Andrew was invited to Charles and Camilla’s wedding in April 2005.
