Princess Anne overtakes William and Kate with a 67 percent favourability rating: Britain's most popular royal is 19th in line to the throne

Nineteen members of the British royal family, one poll and a result no palace would put in its press releases. According to YouGov's survey for the third quarter of 2026, Britons have the most favourable opinion of Princess Anne - 67 percent. Kate and William, the faces on every front page, are behind her.

Kate Middleton is second with 64 percent, Prince William third with 62. King Charles III is only fifth, at 53 percent. After him come Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh; Queen Camilla is eighth, and Prince Harry tenth. Anne, meanwhile, is rising: in the first quarter of this year she was at 62 percent, and now she has five percentage points more.

What's the secret? Nothing that would sell as a fairy tale. For decades Anne has been considered one of the hardest-working members of the family - a packed schedule of official engagements and a long list of charities she backs. She is 19th in line to the throne, which means the crown is practically out of her reach. Maybe that's exactly why nobody judges her by how it would look on her.

Her biography isn't polished for the tabloids. She rode horses at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. In 2002 she was convicted after her dog bit two children. A princess with an Olympic saddle and a court conviction - and still the favourite.

Joe Little, editor of Majesty magazine, says the king regards her as "someone of absolute trust". In a family where her brother Andrew has been removed from public life and her nephew Harry lives in California and writes memoirs, that's no small thing.

The poll says something royal PR teams find hard to admit: the public rewards reliability, not glamour. The Balkans know well how quickly the credit of a pretty picture runs out when there's no work behind it. Will William and Kate read this table as a warning - or keep relying on the photographs?