Princess Royal Anne

British royalty; the daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. As a youngster, she was known as imperious, high-spirited and willful, also sweet, lazy, and a tomboy. She had her dad's temperament and was his obvious favorite. With confidence, she learned everything she tried, especially sports, with ease. Her passion is horseback riding and her skills were strong enough to get her named to Great Britain's 1976 Olympic equestrian team in Montreal. At 13, when she was sent to Benenden, a boarding school outside London, she took her pony, High Jenks, with her and boarded him nearby. She met Mark Phillips at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, an acceptable suitor. They married on 14 November 1973, and had two kids, Peter and Zara. Brought together by a mutual love of horses, they had developed different interests after a decade. After leavings the Guards, Mark ran a horse farm at Gatcombe while Anne attended to motherhood and her royal duties. It was not a happy union, a dismal truth that the two made little effort to hide. Anne and Mark saw each other infrequently, spending much of their time apart. Though rumors had flickered on occasion that Anne or Phillips had sought solace outside of their marriage, they never reached so far as producing evidence. However, in April 1989, it came to light that one of the Queen's equerries, Comdr. Timothy Laurence, had written four intimate letters to the Princess, a scandal that was released by the press. In April 1992, the palace announced that after two years separation she would divorce her husband of 18 years. She was the first child of a reigning British monarch to divorce and remarry since Henry VIII with her wedding to Tim Laurence, a 37-year-old bachelor on 12 December 1992, 3:00 PM, at Crathie Kirk near Balmoral Castle, Scotland. The Princess espouses a favorite charity, Save the Children, for which she makes tireless, sometimes dangerous, travels about 15,000 miles a year all over the world. The press sing her praises for handling her affairs in an honest, straightforward fashion. Since 1987 she has paid exemplary attention to her civic duties, attending as many as 500 charity engagements a year all over the world. Link to Wikipedia biography