Princess Anne of the royal family has been married to her second husband, Timothy Laurence, for nearly three decades. Let's learn the truth about her marriage.
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00:00Royal watchers have long known Princess Anne to be a dutiful daughter. However,
00:05Anne's work ethic has often been overshadowed by her love life.
00:08Here are some details you may not know about Anne's second marriage.
00:12Princess Anne's second marriage started with a scandal. By 1989, the deterioration of her first
00:18marriage was an open secret. She and Mark Phillips tended to travel separately and,
00:22when they did travel together, stayed in separate rooms. Around that time,
00:26rumors began to swirl that she had become romantically attached to someone else — Timothy
00:30Lawrence, a naval officer serving the royal family as an equerry, another name for a military officer
00:35serving as a special assistant. When the British tabloid The Sun reported that year that the
00:40publication had received four handwritten letters addressed to Anne, royal watchers were intrigued.
00:45Was this the evidence they'd been waiting for? It was. Buckingham Palace itself revealed that
00:49Lawrence, in fact, had sent the letters to her. While the exact content of the letters
00:53has never been made public, an inside source told People magazine that, while the letters
00:57were openly romantic, they weren't erotic. They were more endearingly dorky.
01:02I know what you mean."
01:05The source told People,
01:06"...they are very boring and ramble on. They are the sort of letters 18- or 19-year-olds
01:10write to one another, thoughts about life and rather philosophical, discussing how beautiful
01:14a field is in the sunshine with a stream running through it."
01:18While brides typically go out of their way to choose a unique and memorable wedding dress,
01:22most lean toward fairly generic engagement rings. Unless a bride receives a family heirloom,
01:26she's likely to choose a simple diamond solitaire. But the engagement ring Princess Anne received
01:30from her second marriage, like her marriage itself, was unusual. According to Hello!,
01:35it wasn't a diamond, but rather, "...a dramatic oval sapphire cabochon,
01:38framed by three diamonds on either side."
01:40Anne's fondness for sapphires apparently goes back a long way. Her first engagement ring,
01:44likewise, featured a sapphire, but a traditional square-cut gem instead.
01:49Princess Anne's first wedding, to Mark Phillips, was a blowout by any standard.
01:52About 1,500 people attended the Westminster Abbey ceremony,
01:56while another 500 million watched on television. In contrast, her second wedding to Timothy Lawrence
02:01was an intimate and discreet celebration that featured 30 guests, mostly family members.
02:06While it's common for second weddings to be smaller and more relaxed than first weddings,
02:09public awareness of their scandalous romance, which was known to have started as an extramarital
02:13affair, may have prompted them to keep an intentionally low profile. Instead of Westminster
02:18Abbey, they held their ceremony in Scotland at the modest Crathie Kirk Church near Balmoral Estate,
02:22one of the royal homes. Modest as it was, it was still a royal wedding, which means it attracted
02:27a lot of curiosity, and there were plenty of onlookers and well-wishers waiting outside
02:31the church to catch a glimpse of the newlyweds. Princess Anne and Timothy Lawrence had a more
02:36pressing reason to marry in Scotland than just to get away from London-based paparazzi and
02:40pearl-clutchers. They weren't allowed to marry at any of the usual royal wedding spots, since,
02:44at the time, the Church of England banned divorced people with former spouses who were still living
02:49from remarrying. Thus, if they wanted to marry at all, they had to marry outside the Church of
02:53England, hence the destination wedding in Scotland. It is ironic that the Church of England posed this
02:58obstacle, given its origins. The Church of England was founded by Henry VIII to facilitate a split
03:02from his wife at the time, Catherine of Aragon, while royal divorces became more common over time
03:07and was the first child of a British monarch to remarry.
03:10Marrying into the royal family can be a fraught proposition. Along with its privileges comes
03:15great responsibility, not to mention relentless public scrutiny. Even worse, the pressure does
03:19not come from only the press and the public. Some of the most brutal pressure can come from one's
03:24royal in-laws and their handlers. Timothy Lawrence, fortunately, had a much smoother transition into
03:28royal family life. The fact that he had worked in the royal household for years, was trusted
03:32and well-liked by the royal family, and had plenty of professional experience navigating
03:36high-pressure social situations, no doubt helped him. Thus, he entered into his marriage with
03:41Princess Anne with realistic expectations, and was pleasantly surprised by what he discovered.
03:45He said in an ITV documentary,
03:47"...one of the great surprises for me, when I first went to Balmoral and to Sandringham and
03:51Windsor, was that these places are full of laughter."
03:54Royal watchers have long chatted about the close relationship between Princess Anne and her late
03:58father, Prince Philip, as well as the similarities between them. According to Hello!, she was
04:03allegedly his favorite child, and shared many of his personal traits, including a passion for
04:07sports and a strong sense of duty. As a family friend told the magazine,
04:11"...Prince Philip always had more fun with Anne. Charles is more like the queen,
04:14while Anne is very like Prince Philip."
04:16Timothy Lawrence, however, sees things a little differently. As equiried to the queen,
04:20he spent his working days in direct contact with the royal family, and likely got to observe their
04:24character quirks more closely than most people. And having worked with the queen in an official
04:28capacity, he sees some striking similarities between her and her daughter. As he told ITV,
04:33the similarities with her father are much talked about, but what is less spoken about
04:36is the similarities with her mother, the queen. The common theme is humor, fun,
04:40and Anne's wit is indeed well-known in royal circles. In a 1980 TV interview,
04:45she was even able to joke about an armed kidnapping attempt several years earlier.
04:49What did he say?
04:50Um, well, he said I had to go with him. Um, I don't remember why.
04:55Princess Anne and her first husband, Mark Phillips, were brought together by their
04:58common love of horses. They met at a party for horse lovers, and both were Olympic equestrians.
05:03Their shared passion, however, was not enough to keep their marriage from deteriorating.
05:07In contrast, Anne's second husband, Timothy Lawrence, admits to knowing nothing about horses.
05:12He told Tatler,
05:13It's not something I share with her. Sadly, I've never been bitten by the horse bug."
05:16What they do have in common, Lawrence told the publication,
05:19is a shared fondness for the Scottish rugby team. He explained,
05:22We both follow, with great enthusiasm, the Scottish rugby team.
05:25As you may have noticed, they don't always win.
05:28When picturing a royal residence, most people conjure up images of marble floors,
05:32crystal chandeliers, and gold-plated everything. But a rare peek into the
05:36home of Princess Anne and Timothy Lawrence reveals a much less glamorous,
05:39and probably much more comfortable, reality. An Instagram post shared by the royal family
05:43shows the pair comfortably relaxing on an overstuffed couch in their living room,
05:46while watching a rugby match. Their attire is distinctively unroyal.
05:50He's wearing a plaid flannel shirt and dad jeans, while she's wearing a red-knitted pullover top
05:54with a thermal vest. And they both look delighted. It's the kind of place where you
05:58can easily picture your aunt and uncle hosting Thanksgiving. It's unclear which of their
06:02residences this is, but Country Living hypothesizes it's their estate in Gloucestershire,
06:06since Anne is known to spend much of her time there.
06:09Princess Anne's passion for horses is well-known, as is Timothy Lawrence's interest in historic
06:13preservation and English history. So it's not surprising their primary home, Gatcombe Park,
06:18is a historic country home and working farm in Gloucestershire. Built in 1771,
06:22the home maintains most of its original character. According to Historic England,
06:26no significant alterations have been made to the structure since the 1820s.
06:30The royal family's presence in Gatcombe Park, however, is fairly recent. As Country Living
06:34reports, the queen bought the property in 1976 for Anne and her first husband as a wedding present.
06:39Anne's first marriage may not have lasted, but her dedication to her home and to Country Living
06:43persists. Gatcombe Park's 730 acres allow her plenty of room to breed horses, raise cattle,
06:48and host riding and equestrian events, such as the annual Festival of British Eventing,
06:52from the comfort of home. But Gatcombe Park is not just a rural hideaway. The hard work
06:57of farming and hosting events also enables the sprawling estate to be self-sustaining.
07:01She told the BBC,
07:02"[Being able to take on a place like this, for me, I've got to make it work.
07:05This is not something that comes free. This has got to pay its way. Otherwise, I can't stay here."
07:11As an equerry to the royal family, Timothy Lawrence no doubt saw snippets of Princess
07:15Anne's first marriage firsthand, which must be a bit awkward. To his credit,
07:19he's secure enough about himself to be able to joke about it. In a 2020 ITV documentary
07:23celebrating Anne's 70th birthday, he observed,
07:26"[It's quite amusing that she married first an army officer and then a naval officer,
07:30so there must be something about the military that attracts her."
07:33Express also reported another notable similarity between the two men. In contrast to the strong
07:37willed, outspoken Anne, both her husband and her ex-husband are known to be soft-spoken and quiet.
07:42All marriages have occasional stormy moments, but if you're part of a royal couple,
07:46the slightest hint of marital strife will be enough to get tongues wagging and tabloids speculating
07:51whether or not there's anything of substance to speculate about. In 2014, Princess Anne and
07:55Timothy Lawrence had their turn under the media microscope as rumors swirled that their marriage
07:59was on the rocks. An unsigned article in the Daily Mail hinted that the couple had been living
08:03separate lives and that Lawrence had to be ordered by the royal family to attend his
08:07wife's investiture as Lady of the Most Noble Order of the Thistle, an honor accorded to
08:11her for her charity work. The Daily Mail also claimed, without offering any supporting evidence,
08:16that the couple was only staying together to protect the reputation of the royal family.
08:20An independent article from this same time period also acknowledged these rumors,
08:23suggesting any awkwardness in their marriage may have stemmed from Lawrence's inability
08:27to shed his old role as a royal retainer. Royal watcher and author Theo Aronson told the outlet,
08:32"...once you've been an equerry, it's difficult to get out of the mold.
08:35I suspect he was an equerry in public, at home, and in the bedroom."
08:38Still, the publication ultimately asserted that rumors that Anne's second divorce was
08:42on the horizon were ill-informed. Princess Anne has always seemingly been more focused
08:46on getting things done than worrying about what anyone thinks of her. Still, she must be pleased
08:50that those who are gossiping about her failing marriage and waiting for the other shoe to drop
08:54are still waiting. In 2017, she and Timothy Lawrence celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.
09:00So, despite their relationship's scandal-ridden beginnings, the couple seems to be going strong.
09:04Rumors of the demise of their marriage could have stemmed from the fact that Lawrence
09:08continued to have his own career and philanthropic interests after marriage,
09:11and that he may not have shown up at royal events with his wife as much as some spectators would
09:15have liked. No one can really know what's going on inside someone else's marriage,
09:19but in this case, it seems that one way to keep a marriage going
09:22is to ensure that each party has room to live life on their terms.