Princess Anne Couldn’t Marry Andrew Parker Bowles For This Heartbreaking Reason

Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, is well known for her athletic prowess as an Olympic equestrian and for being one of the hardest working members of the royal family. She was married to Captain Mark Phillips until 1992 and is currently married to Sir Timothy Lawrence.

Prior to her marriage to Mark, the 14th in line to the throne was known to be in a relationship with Andrew Parker Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall Camilla’s ex-husband. The bachelorette sparked a lot of wedding speculations at that time, but unfortunately she wasn’t compatible with the British army officer for this heartbreaking reason.

The 2002 Channel 4 documentary “The Real Princess Anne” discussed this particular issue at length. “Most of the press pack were far more fascinated with the company she kept and whether they could marry her off,” said the narrator of the documentary.

“Would it be the Olympic gold medalist Richard Meade, who shared her passion for riding, or more intriguingly, the 26-year-old Andrew Parker-Bowles, not yet married to Camilla?” the narrator continued.

Princess Anne and Andrew were often seen together, but marriage was far from an option for the two. “He and Anne were often seen together, but he was a Roman Catholic, and for a royal that effectively put marriage out of the question,” the narrator said.

Anne, as a daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, the head of the Church of England, would not have been allowed to marry Andrew because he was a Catholic. At that time, the royal family followed the Act of Settlement 1701, which banned the royals from marrying Roman Catholics lest they be disqualified to inherit the throne.

In 2015, however, the Succession to the Crown Act of 2013 was enforced, which trashed this particular provision. The Act also removed the requirement to seek the Sovereign’s approval for marriage past the first six people in line to the throne. Because of this recent development, it’s speculated that Anne’s engagement to Andrew may not have been heavily pushed back.

Instead, Andrew married Camilla in 1973, and later that year, Anne married Mark. Anne and Mark bore two children, Zara and Peter, before divorcing almost 20 years later amid rumors of cheating.