The Princess Royal: an unexpected star of The Crown Series Three

Princess Anne, November cover 1973, in celebration of her engagement to Captain Mark Phillips

© Norman Parkinson

Rebecca Lyons explores the depiction of Princess Anne within the latest series of The Crown.

I can say with confidence, that after a committed three-day binge-watch (involving a feigned illness, two cancelled social plans and minimal daylight exposure), the third series of The Crown does not disappoint. Series three introduces us to a feisty new star of the series: the no-nonsense, teenage Princess Anne, played by Call the Midwife’s Erin Doherty. 

Doherty’s Anne is comically blunt; she poutily stomps around Buckingham Palace in knee-high leather riding boots and doesn’t hold back in expressing her disdain for Prince Phillip’s (Tobias Menzies) “reptilian” counsellors. In one scene, we see Anne speeding past the Admiralty Arch towards the palace, blaring out David Bowie’s ‘Starman’, which she continuously hums all the way up to bed. What Anne does is interject Bowie into a sea of Beethoven, and the blend is electric. 

Jane Petrie, the series’ costume designer, expresses The Swinging Sixties’ mood of hedonistic optimism through the means of Anne’s vibrant wardrobe. She shuns the Queen’s safe pastel preference, instead opting for gloriously shortened hemlines, stiff A-line dresses and hair; sprayed solid, back-combed, and piled high. Her modernity brings with it a refreshing sense of ordinary, in a world that’s anything but.  

Later on, the series depicts the rather sticky love-triangle, or perhaps more accurately, love-rectangle, between Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor), Camilla Shand (Emerald Fennell), Andrew Parker Bowles (Andrew Buchan) and Anne. Questioned by the Queen (Olivia Colman) and Queen Mother (Marion Bailey), on her involvement in the entangled romance, Anne casually explains she had been “briefly caught up in it”, and paying no regard to raised eyebrows, she continues on to reassure that “I got what I wanted, which was a bit of fun.” Atmospherically, the scene is a creative masterpiece. There is an admirable hilarity to Anne’s brilliant nonchalance in doing what most of us would consider the stuff of nightmares, namely, discussing past romps with our nan. Doherty reminds us that it was Anne, with her connection to an era of sexual liberation, who lays the foundations of change in the most famous household in Britain.

Although patchy at times in its historical accuracy, one thing that the crown captures perfectly is Anne’s real-life grittiness. In Episode Eight, a half-dressed Anne shrugs off Andrew Parker Bowles’ patronisation, leaving him questioning her confidence; she replies shortly to his wonder, saying ‘It’s not confidence, dear. I’m just tough’. Such toughness is evident in Anne’s infuriated response to a failed attempt at her kidnapping by lone gunman, Ian Ball, in March of 1974. Seven men endeavoured to stop an armed Ball from reaching the Princess, who shot and wounded three members of the royal entourage. As he struggled to pull her from the car, Princess Anne’s dress ripped down the side. In disregard of the chaos and bloodshed around her, Anne refused Ball’s repeated orders to get out of the vehicle with an irritated, “Not bloody likely.”

Anne would later describe the interaction that followed as “a very irritating conversation” with her would-be kidnapper. She explains that even though “My first reaction was anger”, she only lost patience when Ball “ripped my dress, which was a blue one I had made specially to wear on honeymoon.” In an interview with Harper’s Bazar, Doherty remarked that the event informed her performance of the Princess: “If you’re  grounded and stable and confident enough to tell someone no when they have a gun in your face, I feel like you’ve got things sorted, pretty much.”

The Crown’s Anne earns herself the title of ‘feminist icon’ with her stinging wit and appearance in the very first, and only, sex scene of the show. Her opinion of conceited elitist men, and thoughts on courtship are spectacularly frank: “I hate it when men apologise. It isn’t honourable or chivalrous, it’s wet.” 

Admittedly, I’ve never given Anne much thought within the royal family, but my preconceptions of Anne have been proven wrong. Anne is the unsung heroine of the family; 30% hair spray, 20% Princess and 50% Rockstar.