Royals

Princess Anne Just Beat The Queen To This Title For A Second Year Running

She beat Prince Charles, too.

Princess Anne Britain's Hardest Working Royal
LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

Whether she’s merrily cruising along on the tube during London Fashion Week or thwarting a kidnap by simply refusing to get out of her car (“Not bloody likely!” she famously replied), Anne has to be one of the more underrated members of the Royal Family. While the spotlight often stays on the Queen, Prince Charles, and the best-known younger royals – Will, Kate, Harry, and Meghan – people often forget all about Anne and her infamous wraparound sports sunnies.

It’s a crying shame because it turns out that Princess Anne is the hardest working of all the royals, for another year running. As revealed in new research by Savoy Stewart, the Queen’s daughter headed out on 179 official engagements in 2021 – ranging from school openings and charity visits, to hosting honours award ceremonies at Windsor Castle.

While the Princess Royal topped the charts for having the most in her diary, her brother Prince Charles isn’t far behind, with 160 different engagements from last year. In third place, the Queen – now 95 years old – shows no sign of showing down, and put in 151 different work appearances last year.

Our favourite Princess Anne appearance to date, meanwhile, has to be the moment that she appeared to comedy-shrug at the former US President Donald Trump as he turned up at Buckingham Palace back in 2019. The clip of the royal appearing to snub Trump took Twitter by storm, and some speculated that she was refusing to shake hands with him altogether.

Though Anne stans were quick to commend her bold put-down, it turns out there probably wasn’t any real royal serve going on. As The Times journalist Valentine Low later explained in a Twitter thread titled Princess Anne: the truth, the Queen had been greeting leaders for some time. According to Laura Elston, an impartial witness from the Press Association, she asked Princess Anne if there was anybody else left to arrive after Trump and his wife Melania. In the clip, she laughs, and replies: 'It's just me… and this lot’. Still, great meme-ories.