Lady Louise's royal future
Will Prince Edward and Sophie's daughter become a full-time working royal?
Hello Royal Clubbers,
It's Ainhoa here with my weekly newsletter.
Before I begin, I just wanted to flag that from October, this weekly newsletter will be published on a Sunday, comprising our best royal photos of the week (previously the royal round-up), plus our royal diary, giving you a heads up of the events to come. So you can look forward to that new format at the end of this week – we hope you enjoy it and would love to hear your feedback!
Back to my newsletter though… today I wanted to explore one of the lesser-known members of the royal family: Lady Louise Windsor. Aged 20, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh's daughter headed back to lecture halls and student accommodation earlier this month for her third year studying English at the University of St Andrews, the iconic Scottish institution where Prince William and Princess Catherine famously met and fell in love.
Born eighth in line to the British throne, Louise is now 16th. Not much is known about Edward and Sophie's firstborn. She's pretty much lived her life out of the public eye, apart from attending big family occasions like Trooping the Colour and Christmas at Sandringham. We occasionally hear anecdotes about how she's loved taking part in amateur dramatics at university (following in her father's acting footsteps!), how she's "fallen in love" with Army Cadets and is interested in pursuing a career in the military, and how she's been a great source of support for nine-year-old Princess Charlotte; they enjoyed shopping trips together while Princess Catherine was undergoing chemotherapy.
But as Joe Little, royal expert and managing editor of Majesty magazine for 25 years, pointed out, we don't know masses about Lady Louise, and the general public, who aren't as royally obsessed as us, probably wouldn't be able to pick her out from a crowd.