From Princess Diana and Barry Mannakee to Princess Anne and Peter Cross, these controversial relationships blurred the line between duty and desire
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Royal bodyguards are expected to protect members of the royal family from danger, but the nature of the job means they can also become unusually close to those they guard.
After spending many hours travelling together, accompanying royals to official engagements and providing reassurance behind the scenes, bodyguards and their royal family member can become extremely close, making it easy for boundaries to be blurred and attraction to set in.
“You find you live their life one step ahead of them,” retired royal bodyguard Colin Tebbutt noted, per The Diana Chronicles. “You often spot things that could wreck their lives if they take a particular direction. But you should never cross the line.”
When royal protection became something more
Throughout history, royal women and their bodyguards have crossed the line from a working relationship to something much more intimate.
In the 18th century, Russia’s Catherine the Great was infamous for choosing lovers from her personal guard, transforming muscular soldiers into wildly wealthy studs.
“For a woman in a golden cage, bodyguards are an obvious candidate for romantic fixation,” Tina Brown writes in The Diana Chronicles. “A bodyguard may be the only real man a princess meets. His strong shoulders clear the path ahead in the crowd… In the dark on the way home, he is the recipient of her triumphs and disappointments. As the relationship deepens over time, he’s privy to her loneliness too… It’s inevitable that such unspoken need will sometimes lead to an erotic charge.”
These relationships have often made headlines. Here are some of the most talked-about royal bodyguard romances.
Princess Anne and Peter Cross
In 1979, Sergeant Peter Cross was assigned to protect Princess Anne, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
Although both Cross and Anne were married, Cross later claimed they quickly developed an easy rapport.
“It was very affectionate,” Cross recalled, per the Daily Mail. “We got on fantastically, basically because we’re both straight-talking people who like to be down to earth.”
According to Cross, everything changed one evening at Anne’s country estate of Gatcombe Park.
“My right hand was kind of dangling over the arm of the chair,” Cross said. “Suddenly, she turned and looked at me. At the same time, our hands brushed, then clasped together. For a few seconds we remained like that—like two statues, looking directly into each other’s eyes, our hands locked together. Then, suddenly, we kissed.”
Cross claimed the pair subsequently met whenever they could, including at an empty cottage on the Gatcombe estate and Anne’s apartment in Buckingham Palace.
Their relationship soon attracted attention among members of the royal household
“Several people at Gatcombe were very jealous of my relationship with the princess,” Cross said. “Others were just puzzled that a princess and a policeman could have so much in common.”
In September 1980, Cross claims he was told to resign.
According to the Daily Mail: “By the time Anne found out, Cross had already packed his bags and left his quarters. She is said to have gone to her room and wept.”
Cross later claimed that Anne continued to contact him, sometimes identifying herself as “Mrs. Wallis” before inviting him to “a day in the country”.
According to him, the relationship ended in 1983 when he told her he was committed to his partner.
In 1985, Cross sold the story to the News of the World, claiming he did it to “get even with those who ganged up so unfairly after our friendship was betrayed.”
Princess Anne has never commented on Cross’s claims.
Princess Diana and Barry Mannakee
In 1985, police officer Barry Mannakee was assigned to protect Princess Diana, who was experiencing a difficult period in her marriage to Prince Charles.
Mannakee was a married, handsome “cocky East Ender with kind eyes,” according to Brown, and seemed to represent everything Charles was not—funny, handy and brave.
Diana reportedly became increasingly attached to him.
“Diana loved to tease Mannakee when she was glammed up for a premiere or a public appearance,” Tina Brown writes. “‘Barry, how do I look?’ she would ask him coquettishly. ‘Sensational, as you know you do. I could quite fancy you myself.’ ‘But you do already, don’t you? Escort me to my car if you please.’”
According to several sources, the pair began an intimate relationship.
“I was always wandering around trying to see him,” Diana recalled in a recorded video. “I was only happy when he was around…. I was like a little girl in front of him the whole time, desperate for praise, desperate.”
Mannakee reportedly became an important source of emotional support for Diana, particularly before public appearances.
“She kept on saying she couldn’t go ahead with it, and just collapsed in my arms,” Mannakee told one coworker. “I hugged her and stopped her crying. What else would you have done?”
The relationship allegedly became increasingly obvious to those around them.
Diana reportedly requested to travel overnight on the royal train when Mannakee was on duty, while he would sleep outside her door. He also gave her stuffed animals, and the pair took tea in her private apartments, according to Diana’s subsequent bodyguard, Ken Wharfe.
Diana later admitted that she had dreamed of “giving all this up just to go off ”
Mannakee’s colleagues also noticed a change in him.
“He really had the hots for her,” a former Highgrove staffer told Brown. “He acquired all these cashmere sweaters. It went to his head.”
Wharfe agreed. “He broke the golden rule and stepped over the divide between the grey carpet to the red,” he noted. “He was a typical victim of red-carpet fever.”
Diana knew the relationship was dangerous. “I should never have played with fire, and I did,” she said.
According to Brown, the relationship came to a head around the time of the wedding of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew. The pair were reportedly caught in a “compromising position”.
Mannakee was subsequently reassigned to the Diplomatic Protection Squad.
The story later turned tragic. In May 1987, Mannakee was killed in a motorcycle accident.
Diana said Prince Charles told her of his death shortly before they were due to appear at the Cannes Film Festival.
“That was the biggest blow of my life,” she said. “Charles thought he knew, but he never had any proof. And he just jumped on me like that.”
Diana was still expected to appear publicly.
“I wasn’t able to do anything,” she recalled. “Had to smile for everyone. I wasn’t supposed to mind as much as I did, if you know what I mean.”
Princess Stéphanie of Monaco and Daniel Ducruet
Princess Stéphanie of Monaco was known as the rebel of her family, with her mother, Princess Grace, reportedly calling her an “enfant terrible”.
Stéphanie began a relationship with bodyguard Daniel Ducruet after he was assigned to protect her during a tour promoting her 1991 album, Stéphanie.
The two quickly became involved, despite Ducruet already expecting a child with another woman. Stéphanie later became pregnant too, giving birth to Louis in 1992 and Pauline in 1994.
In 1995, her father, Prince Rainier, agreed to the couple marrying. They wed in Monaco in a simple civil ceremony on July 1.
But the marriage lasted little more than a year.
In August 1996, photographs emerged of Ducruet with Muriel “Fili” Mol-Houteman. Ducruet later claimed he had been drugged and set up.
“When I got back, I told Stéphanie everything that very evening,” he told Vanity Fair France. “She started to cry. We didn’t talk about separating—not then. Then I received an anonymous call: ‘Did you have fun? Now you’re dead.”
The couple divorced in October 1996.
In 2000, Ducruet was partially vindicated when a French court found Mol-Houteman, a photographer and an assistant guilty of breaching French privacy laws.
“Perhaps Stéphanie and I would have divorced anyway; you never know in life,” Ducruet said. “But at the time, we were in love, and the story wasn’t supposed to end like that.”
Stéphanie and bodyguard No. 2
The end of Stéphanie’s marriage did not mark the end of her relationships with bodyguards.
She later became involved with Jean-Raymond Gottlieb, another member of her security team.
In July 1998, Stéphanie gave birth to her daughter Camille, who was widely assumed to be Gottlieb’s child. In 2017, Camille apparently confirmed Gottlieb’s paternity in a social media post, and she now uses his last name.
Stéphanie continued to attract attention for her unconventional relationships, including romances with an elephant trainer and an acrobat.
The stories of royal women and their bodyguards continue to fascinate because the relationships blur the boundaries between professional duty, friendship and intimacy.
Bodyguards can become trusted confidants who are present during some of the most private moments of a royal’s life. But that closeness can also create a complicated dynamic — one that, as history shows, can have very public consequences for all involved.
