• Princess Anne turned 75 years old on August 15, and Buckingham Palace—rightfully so—celebrated its hardest working royal with ample fanfare.
  • One component? A list of 75 facts about the Princess Royal, with one erroneously giving Anne two stepchildren, Tom and Amy, that do not exist.
  • Anne has two children, Peter and Zara, from her first marriage; her second husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, has no children of his own.

In its 75th birthday tributes to Princess Anne, Buckingham Palace erroneously stated that the Princess Royal has two stepchildren, Tom and Amy—stepchildren that don’t exist.

Anne, who turned the milestone age on August 15, has two biological children, Peter and Zara, from her first marriage to Captain Mark Phillips; they married in 1973 and divorced in 1992. That same year, Anne married Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, but he has no children, and, therefore, Anne has no stepchildren.

Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, Princess Anne’s only children.

Getty

In the piece, titled “75 Facts About the Princess Royal,” No. 14 said, “Her Royal Highness also has two stepchildren from her second marriage to Sir Timothy Laurence, Tom and Amy Laurence.” 

While Queen Camilla has a son named Tom Parker Bowles, there aren’t thought to be any members of the royal family—immediate or extended—by the name of Amy. Per The Telegraph, one social media user wrote after reading the error, “That would be the best hidden royal secret ever.”

Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence and Princess Anne in her official 75th birthday portrait.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images for Buckingham Palace

About an hour after the piece was published, it was deleted and later updated and reposted. Per The Telegraph, a palace source said the inaccuracy was included erroneously after it was “inserted as a late addition and not put through the otherwise rigorous checking process,” the outlet reported, adding that the “fact” had been sourced from a “reputable publication online” and an article from said publication in 2023.

“The facts were checked, and that one was a late addition, sourced from a reputable publication online, which unfortunately wasn’t put back through the checking process,” a palace source told The Daily Mail, adding, “There was no AI sourcing on our part.”

Well, Anne might not be a stepmother, but she is the longtime hardest working member of the British royal family, supporting over 399 charities, organizations, and military regiments in the U.K. and beyond (per The Daily Mail); she was the first member of the British royal family to compete in an Olympic Games, when she was a member of the British Equestrian team at the 1976 Montreal Games (her daughter, Zara, would later follow in her Olympic footsteps); she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for her work as president of Save the Children; she was the first member of the royal family to appear as a contestant on a television quiz show (the BBC panel game, A Question of Sport); and she’s completed a total of 562 overseas visits, including visiting every continent.

This isn’t the first time the palace has made a goof (hey, they’re human too): When Princess Beatrice announced her second pregnancy last October, Beatrice was initially referred to as “Her Royal Highes,” an incorrect spelling of her Her Royal Highness (HRH) title, People reported. That error, too, was quickly fixed by the powers that be.

As for Princess Anne, she is likely (hopefully) laughing about this somewhere as she spends her birthday weekend sailing around the Western Isles of Scotland with her husband—or, even better, she has no idea Buckingham Palace suddenly gave her two nonexistent stepchildren for her big birthday.