The little baby with a few wisps of ginger hair turns 25 today. Princess Beatrice has come a long way since then - she's come a long way since the infamous pretzel on her head moment of the Royal Wedding in 2011. As the queen's second graddaughter reaches a milestone birthday she also finds herself treading a path that could lead in many different directions. She's a girl with a royal title and a royal granny to boot but with no real royal future. What does happen to a princess who will only move further away from the crown as she gets older?
Princess Beatrice of York turns 25 on August 8th 2013
(photo Willy Weazley)
There will be no gun salutes, official photos or firework displays for this princess. Instead her mum and sister have organized a big party which is said to have a sports theme and will feature a big dinner and quite possibly an appearance by cousin Harry with girlfriend, Cressida, alongside him. The main focus on Beatrice's big birthday will probably be next week when the photos hit the magazines.
The party girls - Sarah, Duchess of York and her younger daughter, Eugenie, are organizing Beatrice's birthday party to mark her twenty fifth
(photo Norbert Aepli)
Beatrice's last big birthday bash, in 2006 for her 18th, caused a stir - it's reported to have cost £400,000 and resulted in photos of the Yorks dressed in historical fancy dress that got a less than kind reception from some.
Beatrice turns eighteen in regal style but the bouncy castle might have been tricky in that bustle
It was a suitably regal coming of age for a little girl born HRH Princess Beatrice Elizabeth Mary of York at 8.18pm on August 8th 1988 in the Portland Hospital in London. There was a lot of chatter about her time and date of birth as all those eights together were seen as a very lucky sign in Chinese traditions. The eldest child of Andrew and Sarah, Duke and Duchess of York was joined in the royal nursery by Eugenie in 1990 but the two girls got attention of the wrong sort soon afterwards as their parents' marriage broke down very publicly, ending in divorce in 1996.
Beatrice's mother, Sarah, Duchess of York. This photograph is from 1991, the year before she separated from the Duke of York after photographs of her with another man were published in British papers
(photo Klem)
The Duke and his former wife then carved a new role for themselves as the happiest divorced couple in Europe while their girls got on with going to school. The controversy surrounding her mother's relationships and the fact that Sarah, Duchess of York took on some pretty commercial outgoings to make the money she needed to pay off widely reported debts meant that the York family, although fragmented, was never far from the headlines in the late 1990s.
The Duke of York with princesses Beatrice and Eugenie in August 2000 on the balcony of Buckingham Palace where the royal family was greeting crowds of wellwishers gathering to mark the Queen Mother's 100th birthday
But it was another challenge that led to Beatrice changing the traditional educational route of British teenagers. The princess has never made any secret of the fact she has dyslexia and has spoken out on the topic several times to encourage others to seek the assistance and support they need to manage the issues it brings with it. Beatrice put back her GCSEs by a year because of the influence dyslexia had on her studies but went on to university and graduated from Goldsmiths in London in 2011. In recent months she's also taken on the patronage of a charity, the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Centre, to further highlight the issue.
Princess Beatrice of York earlier in 2013
(photo TheMatthewSlack)
She's the only member of the royal family to take part in a big budget movie, appearing in the 2009 film The Young Victoria which was partly produced by her mother, Sarah. Her cameo role got the film lots of attention although some historians weren't too happy with the way the early part of the longest reign in British royal history was brought to life on the screen.
Beatrice makes a cameo appearance in The Young Victoria, based on the life of her great, great, great, great grandmother
But she's still perhaps best known for that hat. In April 2011, she chose a beige Philip Treacy number for the wedding of her cousin, Prince William, and ended up being accused of wearing a pastel pretzel on her head for the society event of the year.
On her way to the wedding at Westminster, Beatrice is blissfully unaware of the row that hat was already causing
And that sums up Beatrice's dilemma. She'll never be short of cash or somewhere to live but she is a bit short of a dedicated career path. She's not royal enough to look forward to a lifetime of official duties but she's still a woman with a big title on her little shoulders. She has helped the Queen at the Maundy Money service when it was held in York in 2012 and she's stated publicly that she would like to help as many people as she can through charity work. How that all comes together is a trick that she will have to pull off first - little sister, Eugenie, will be watching and learning on the sidelines.
A mini royal family moving further away from the throne - birthday girl, Beatrice, with sister, Eugenie, and dad, Andrew, at granny's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012
(photo Carfax2)
Meanwhile, royal wedding watchers will be keeping a very close eye on Beatrice's long term relationship with businessman, Dave Clark. When, and if, Beatrice does marry, it might answer the question of how royal her future will be. For the type of royal wedding this royal gets will be a big indication of how her role in the firm will play out in the future.
Princess Beatrice of York with her boyfriend, Dave Clark, at the wedding of Lady Melissa Percy in the summer of 2013
(photo TheMatthewSlack)
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