Royal Fans Are Devastated By Princess Anne's Behavior At The Queen's Funeral

The heartbreaking death of Queen Elizabeth II has devastated people all over the world, but royal fans were able to get some closure by watching her funeral. In the midst of the sadness of the day, many have paid particular attention to Elizabeth's only daughter, Princess Anne. 

Royal expert Tina Brown told The Washington Post that the queen represented "duty, service ... absolute sort of commitment to the British ideal of keep calm and carry on." Like her mother, Anne, Princess Royal, spends her time in the background quietly working. Yahoo News UK royal editor Omid Scobie said Anne's approach to royalty has been "to keep her head down and get on with her responsibilities — even when few are watching." A royal family friend told Scobie, "She needs no praise nor attention. The work itself is where she gets her satisfaction."

Body language expert Judi James said that Anne is the child most like her mother, telling Express, "she is stoic, hard-working, practical, outspoken and challenging."

So what has fans so upset? 

Anne, Princess Royal, has always been aware of her duty as a member of the royal family. She once told the BBC that she doesn't get it when people ask her if she sees Elizabeth as her mother or her queen. "She's my mother and the Queen," she explained (via 9Honey). 

At Queen Elizabeth's funeral, royal fans watched Princess Anne pay tribute to her mother and her monarch, leaving them devastated. The quiet dignity of the queen's only daughter generated a new level of respect for the royal in the days following Elizabeth's death. Anne traveled from Balmoral, where the queen died, to London, the place of her funeral, with her mother's coffin (via Sky News).

According to Express, many on social media felt immense sympathy for Anne as she stared at her mother's coffin during the funeral. One royal watcher tweeted, "Just watched a few minutes of the funeral. Princess Anne didn't sing she was just staring at her mother's coffin. I remember that feeling at my Mum's funeral, I couldn't take my eyes off her coffin." Another tweeted, "I feel for Princess Anne. She accompanied her mother from Balmoral to Edinburgh to London & now to Windsor. She's the only child of her mother's to do so."

Still another funeral viewer wrote, "I was fine until Princess Anne stepped out to escort her Mum's coffin to Windsor. ... The bond between mother and daughter is so special, I really feel for her."

Most headlines about the royal family focus on Princess Anne's older brother, King Charles III, and his family. But Anne, Princess Royal, is a boss, just like Queen Elizabeth herself. A 2020 documentary, "Anne, The Princess Royal at 70," put the low-key princess in the headlines. The documentary's press release stated that Anne was "the first daughter of a monarch to go to school, the first royal Olympian and the first child of a monarch to insist her children were called 'Mr' and 'Miss.'" 

Most people don't know about another of Anne's accomplishments: helping to stop her own kidnapping attempt in 1974. People reported that Anne's car was stopped by a man who shot her bodyguard and driver. When the would-be kidnapper told the 23-year-old to get out of the car, the princess said, "Not bloody likely." What? A passerby punched the would-be kidnapper and disarmed him. 

Anne, Princess Royal, broke tradition by not giving her children Peter Phillips and Zara Tindal royal titles, and explained the decision in a 2020 interview with Vanity Fair. "I think it was probably easier for them, and I think most people would argue that there are downsides to having titles," Anne explained. "So I think that was probably the right thing to do." Princess Anne has barely left her mother's side since she died, and we can't help but see so much of the queen in her daughter.