The second child and only daughter of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Princess Anne is no stranger to living life in the public eye, and all the difficulties and constraints that come with being a member of the Royal Family.
Despite all the challenges she has faced herself, she has made an honest admission about why life as a royal has been much harder for Kate – the Princess of Wales – than it ever has been for her.
The 73-year-old Princess Anne puts this difference down to a couple of things, one being age and the other big factor being the advent of social media, which she thinks has made things much more “difficult” for younger royals like Kate and her husband Prince William.
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For a documentary released to mark Anne’s 70th birthday back in 2020 – called ‘Anne: The Princess Royal at 70’ – she made these comments about how life as a royal has changed for the younger generation.
She said: “The pressure that is applied to the younger members of the family, it’s always worse. That’s what the media is interested in. That’s hard sometimes to deal with. But there was no social media in my day, and it’s probably made it more difficult.”
Since her relationship with William was made public when she was a young woman, Kate has been subject to an intense amount of media scrutiny, with unflattering portrayals of her middle-class background and the nickname of ‘Waity Katie’ often appearing in coverage about her before her marriage.
The Princess Royal’s comments that social media can intensify the scrutiny that the royals live under, so things may be more difficult for Kate than they were for her are also arguably compounded by the fact that those marrying into the Royal Family also can face more media scrutiny than those who are born in – something that Meghan and Harry claimed was the case in their six-part Netflix documentary, which was released last year.
In the documentary series, Harry discussed ” the pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution” and that media criticism and scrutiny were seen as “almost like a rite of passage” by the other members of the Royal Family.
Anne also expressed that she would avoid going on Twitter – now known as X – at all costs, when talking in her documentary about how much harder it is for young royals these days compared to her own youth. “With online technology… being in touch is one thing but it’s not quite the same. The ability to meet people, that’s what makes the difference,” she explained. “I know what Twitter is, but I wouldn’t go anywhere near it if you paid me frankly. But that’s a slightly different issue.”
