The Queen's daughter Princess Anne has marked her upcoming 70th birthday with a rare cover interview with Vanity Fair.
Although it has been done sparingly in the past, it's still seen as unusual for royals to interact with the press in this way. Think back to the controversy surrounding Meghan Markle's Vogue issue last year — and she wasn't even on the cover.
But the Princess Royal didn't seem to mind breaking tradition, allowing royal correspondent Katie Nicholl to shadow her busy schedule for a day before settling down for an interview at St James's Palace.
The princess, who turns 70 on August 15, shared her opinion on royal titles, Queen Elizabeth, and the younger generation of royals.
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Anne tells the younger royals: 'You need to go back to basics'
"I don't think this younger generation probably understands what I was doing in the past and it's often true, isn't it? You don't necessarily look at the previous generation and say, 'Oh, you did that?' Or, 'You went there?' Nowadays, they're much more looking for, 'Oh let's do it a new way,'" Anne told Nicholl.
"And I'm already at the stage, '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,'" she added.
It wasn't clear which royals Anne was referring to. However, you only have to look at the Duke and duch*ess of Cambridge's Instagram account to see how the ways in which they communicate with the public has differed from Anne's generation.
A post shared by Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) on Feb 18, 2020 at 1:20am PST
The princess isn't retiring any time soon — but she admits being surprised that it took so long for the Queen to slow down
Anne, who carried out 500 engagements last year, likes to keep herself busy and often carries out four or five engagements per day.
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"When I meet her at three o'clock the following afternoon at St James's Palace, she has already opened a housing shelter and visited a rocking horse manufacturer in Kent before returning to Buckingham Palace via helicopter," Nicholl wrote.
"She hasn't paused for so much as a cup of tea — an aide says she never stops for refreshments until her schedule is over," she added.
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"If I'm going to be in London, I don't want to be hanging about," Anne told Nicholl of her schedule.
"I'm fortunate that the program that I make up is a direct result of being asked to do these things. It would be a pity if you didn't try and do them," she said.
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Despite this, Anne said she was surprised that Queen Elizabeth and her retired 98-year-old father Prince Philip took so long to slow down with their royal duties.
While Her Majesty still works full-time, she no longer carries out engagements that require international travel.
"But I think both my father and my mother have, quite rightly, made decisions about, you know, 'I can't spend enough time doing this and we need to find somebody else to do it' because it makes sense," she said.
"I have to admit they continued being there for a lot longer than I had in mind, but we'll see."
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The princess also opened up about deciding not to grant her children, Peter Phillips and Zara Phillips, royal titles when they were born.
It's a decision that was most recently made by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry upon the birth of their son, Archie Harrison, before dropping their own HRH titles.
"I think it was probably easier for them [Zara and Peter], and I think most people would argue that there are downsides to having titles," she said. "So I think that was probably the right thing to do."
Read the full feature in the May issue of Vanity Fair available via digital download and on newsstands Friday, April 17.
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