After a frightening injury on Sunday night at her home, Gatcombe Park, Princess Anne was hospitalized, and in the aftermath of the accident, the Princess Royal couldn’t remember what happened. The sister of King Charles—and only daughter of the late Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip—suffered from a concussion and subsequent memory loss in the aftermath of the incident, but royal author Katie Nicholl told Entertainment Tonight that said memory loss, thankfully, doesn’t seem to be long-term.
“All we understand is that she cannot remember the incident,” Nicholl said. “Obviously, she has been asked about what happened, and she simply can’t remember, which suggests that she probably blacked out at the time of the event.” Nicholl added that “there is no suggestion that this memory loss is anything more than immediately around what happened.”
According to Anne’s medical team, she sustained a head injury that was consistent with impact from a horse’s leg or hoof. “She was either headbutted, it seems, or kicked by a horse,” Nicholl said. “She was walking within the protective perimeter of her park, and something obviously happened.”
While Nicholl noted that “any concussion can be very serious,” Anne’s husband, Sir Timothy Laurence, told a well-wisher that his wife “is recovering well, thank you,” he said. “We are both profoundly grateful to the medical team and hospital support staff for their expert care—and to the emergency services who were all so wonderful at the scene. We are both deeply touched by all the kind messages we have received from so many people near and far. It means a great deal.”
Anne has been hospitalized since Sunday night, and “she is still under surveillance, and I think that suggests that they’re not going to take any chances,” Nicholl said. “They want to make sure that she is absolutely stable and well enough to go home, and they did give guidance—the Palace gave us guidance that she would be likely to spend most of this week in hospital, so I think the hope is that she will be discharged before the weekend.”
The Princess Royal is a longtime equestrian—an Olympian, even—and this isn’t her first horse-related injury, as she suffered a fall while competing in the 1976 Olympics. “It’s worth pointing out that she’s had some pretty hairy experiences,” Nicholl said. “She’s been thrown from her horse. She’s taken a few knocks. She’s been knocked unconscious off her horse before.”
Now, at 73, “I think we have to hope that this is nothing too serious for Princess Anne,” Nicholl said. “We understand that she will be discharged later on this week and hopefully will be back on a horse again in the not too distant future, but this has felt like a very difficult time for the royal family and I think, in all of this, it highlights that, yes, they are the royal family—the King, the Queen, the head of state—but, also, they are just normal people. The cancer [of King Charles, the Princess of Wales, and Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York] has been a great leveler. And, as every family knows, there will be accidents. It does just feel that a lot has come, all in one go.”
As a result of the accident, Anne was unable to attend the Japanese state banquet last night, and also was forced to cancel a planned tour of Canada.
