Quick Question: Why Isn't Zara Tindall a Princess But Beatrice and Eugenie Are?
If you're one of those Americans who's obsessed with the royal family, you might have asked yourself why some of the Queen's grandchildren get to have fancy-shmancy titles like "prince" and "princess" while others do not. Like, how pissed would you be if you were born into that family and didn't get to reap allllll the benefits?
Consider Zara Tindall, one of the Queen's granddaughters who does *not* have a royal title. Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice, Zara's cousins, do have royal titles. Here's why that is.
First things first, a quick family tree refresher.
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip have four children: Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward.
Charles, as you know, is William and Harry's dad. Because Charles is the firstborn, he's the heir to throne, and therefore William is the heir after him.
Princess Anne married a commoner, Mark Phillips, and they had two children, Peter and Zara.
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie are the offspring of Prince Andrew, who used to be married to Sarah Ferguson, a commoner.
Prince Andrew's daughters have Princess/HRH titles, but Princess Anne's kids do not.
An old-school rule meant that Zara and Peter weren't "entitled" to titles.
Basically, because Zara and Peter's royal parent is their mother rather than their father, they aren't guaranteed a royal title. Only the grandchildren of the monarch's *male* offspring definitely get a title. Which, yes, is pretty old-school and sexist.
Whether you think that tradition is cool or not (#feminism), Queen Elizabeth did eventually realize it wasn't entirely fair, so she offered courtesy titles to Anne's children anyways.
But-plot twist-Princess Anne and Mark refused.
When Mark Phillips and Princess Anne got married, the Queen offered him a royal title and he turned it down. Later, when Mark and Anne had children (Zara and Peter), Queen Elizabeth again offered royal titles to the new generation, but Anne and Mark turned those down, too! They wanted their kids to have as normal lives as possible.
Zara has said she actually likes living without a title.
Living without a title has allowed Zara and her brother Peter to live relatively normal lives. Peter is a businessman who's worked for different banks in the U.K., as well as for the luxury car company Jaguar. Zara is an accomplished equestrian who competed in the 2012 London Olympics. She won a silver medal.
“I’m very lucky that both my parents decided to not use the title and we grew up and did all the things that gave us the opportunity to do,” she told the Times UK in 2015.
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