«If someone doesn’t kick and eat hay, a Anna not interestedOnce declared the prince Filippo talking about the only daughter of the queen Elizabeth II. A way to tell, with its proverbial irony, that the princess only loves horses. Certainly his first marriage was horse-themed. With the captain of the Queen’s Dragon Regiment Mark Phillips, not an aristocrat but, precisely, a knight. The two met at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where he riding a steed won a gold medal in the team competition.
The common passion for horses he joined them instantly. Even to ask her in marriage, in April 1973, Mark chose an equestrian event, the Badminton Horse Trials. The two wasted no time: iNovember 14, 1973 they were on the altar of Westminster Abbey to exchange wedding vows in front of two thousand guests and over 500 million viewers, glued to the TV for the first royal wedding of one of the Queen’s children. As well as the first royal wedding illuminated by television lights.
Theirs is a story that starts in symbiosis: always together, even in the tragicomic attempted kidnapping of 1974, When an improvised brigandMr. Ian Ball blocked the Rolls Royce that was taking the couple to Buckingham Palace, he waved a gun and ordered the princess to follow him. The unfortunate one found the victim’s icy gaze planted in the eye: «It’s damn unlikely. And now go away. » Result: Ball was arrested.
Anna and Mark’s marriage was soon cheered by the birth of two children: Peter (in 1977) e Zara (In 1981). Which by choice of parents do not have noble titles. Mom and Dad wanted a life that was as free and “normal” as possible for them. Despite the arrival of two heirs, the conjugal serenity, according to the gossip of the time, did not last long. It was said that Mark continually betrayed the august consort. It was said that Anna had an affair with his security officer, Peter Cross. But only because Phillips, who had invented a business of jumping and obstacles for horse riding, had started to turn the stables around the world to sell their aristocratic wares and he deigned to appear alongside his wife only on official occasions most important. It was also said that the spouses, when traveling together on behalf of the queen, they slept in rooms or even in separate hotels.
So far the people’s voices. Prelude to one scandal brace which made Buckingham Palace tremble. In 1989 some members of the palace staff stole a lot passionate love letters that the squire of Queen Timothy Laurence, current discreet husband number two of Anna, she had written to the princess. And he fed them to the press. The news of the “forbidden letters” went around the world. But the worst was yet to come. In April 1991 the Daily Express revealed that New Zealander Heather Tonkin, art teacher and expert horsewoman at the age of thirty-seven, he had sued Captain Phillips in front of the Auckland court. «To make sure that Mark publicly acknowledges that he has a daughter, our daughter, Felicity. I want the surname of the man who generated it to be on his birth certificate, “said the woman with whom Mark had granted a getaway in 1985.
The first meeting between the two had taken place in an Auckland stables. Then a single night of madness that had turned into sweet expectation. Heather, certain of her father’s identity, had also telephoned Gatcombe Park, the residence that the queen had given to Anna and Mark: she warned her lover, he was freezing. “Agrees that you end the pregnancy“, He told her. She got excited: “I’ll do it all by myself.” Thus was born the third daughter of Mark, whom the captain (nailed by the DNA test) later recognized but never wanted to meet.
The official divorce between the princess and Phillips, which had announced the separation already in 1989, took place in 1992. Before the most famous (and mediatic) separation between Carlo e Diana. Anna became like this the first of the Windsor brothers to give scandal by breaking their marriage. A hard blow for mother Elizabeth II, who again saw the family business slammed into the front pages of tabloids around the world. «The formal divorce will not change the agreements made by the two ex-spouses in various fields, such as the financial one (including the sharing of the 1524 wedding gifts) and the custody of the children, Peter aged 14 and Zara aged 10, who will continue to live with their mother in the Gatcombe residence, a few kilometers from the farm purchased three years ago by Mark “, he wrote for example the Republic in April 1992. “In six weeks, when the court will issue the final decree, Anna will return unmarried in all respects and may therefore contract a new marriage. And according to the well-informed it is precisely for this reason – because he wants to remarry – that the princess has insisted so much on having a divorce: soon she could get married with the man to whom she has been linked for three years, her ex-squire Timothy Laurence».
The princess’ second wedding actually took place very early in December 1992. But the bond with Mark never ended. Because of the two children but also the passion for horses that made them fall in love. The only thing they had in common, according to the evil ones, when they were husband and wife. Certainly one thing in common that has gone through unscathed the times of scandals and betrayals. Several times Anna and Mark, over the years, they were photographed together with numerous horse events. And the pictures (see gallery up) tell, between chatter and smiles, the story of a tumultuous love that has been able to turn into friendship.
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