This royal family member had a ‘forbidden romance’ with Camilla's ex-husband

Royal experts delved into the press interest around the young princess’s love life.

Queen Elizabeth’s only daughter Princess Anne is said to have a very close relationship with her sister-in-law, King Charles' wife Camilla. But it was earlier reported that in the early 1970s, Princess Anne was being courted by the man who would end up later become Camilla's first husband. In the Channel 4 documentary ‘The Real Princess Anne’, royal experts delved into the press interest around the young princess’s love life.

Britain's Princess Anne talks to guests during a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace in London. (AFP)

Among Princess Anne's early courtiers, there was a “love quadrangle” between her, Andrew, Camilla and then-Prince Charles, the documentary revealed. Royal experts believe that Anne and Andrew dated for “some time”, but the Act of Settlement 1701 prevented the relationship from going further. It is a now a defunct royal rule but the act ruled out any Catholics or their spouses becoming monarch which ruled Andrew out entirely.

“Most of the press pack were far more interested in the company she kept and whether they could marry her off. Would it be the Olympic gold medalist Richard Meade, who shared her passion for riding, or more intriguing, the 26-year-old Andrew Parker Bowles, not yet married to Camilla? He and Anne were often seen together, but he was a Roman Catholic and for a royal that effectively put marriage out of the question," the narrator said.

The Act of Settlement was done away with in 2013 with the introduction of the Succession to the Crown Act- removing disqualification of a person who married a Catholic from the line of succession and the requirement of those outside the first six people in line to the throne to seek the monarch's approval to marry.