Zara and Peter Phillips recall their mother’s no-nonsense approach to royal appearances
Princess Anne’s famously practical attitude to royal duty extended to her children, Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips, especially during their public appearances on the Buckingham Palace balcony.
The Princess Royal expected her children to uphold royal standards whenever they stepped out for national celebrations like Trooping the Colour, royal weddings, and other major occasions. According to Peter, his mother had two simple but firm rules: no nose-picking and no yawning.
“You’d get a clip round the ear and be told, ‘Right, behave yourself. We’re going out on the balcony. Don’t pick your nose, and don’t yawn,’” he recalled in an ITV documentary marking Anne’s 70th birthday.
Her no-nonsense approach wasn’t limited to her own children either. In 1987, she was spotted firmly but gently keeping a lively four-year-old Prince William in line during an RAF flypast, underscoring her role as a figure of authority even beyond her immediate family.
As she prepares to turn 75, Anne is still regarded as both the hardest-working member of the Royal Family and one of its most down-to-earth. Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2020, she described herself as “the boring old fuddy-duddy at the back saying, ‘Don’t forget the basics.’”
She admitted that younger royals may not always understand her perspective. “I don’t think this younger generation probably understands what I was doing in the past,” she said. “You don’t necessarily look at the previous generation and say, ‘Oh, you did that?’ or ‘You went there?’”
For Anne, the essence of royal duty remains unchanged: meeting the public with positivity, regardless of personal feelings. “You must be nice and bright and cheerful, even if you may not necessarily feel like it,” she said, adding that this doesn’t “come that easily.”
While acknowledging that the younger generation seeks new approaches, she cautioned against change for its own sake. “Nowadays, they’re much more looking for, ‘Oh, let’s do it a new way,’” she said. “And I’m already at the stage of, ‘Please do not reinvent that particular wheel. We’ve been there, done that. Some of these things don’t work. You may need to go back to basics.’”
