SHOCKING : How Princess Anne Rescue King Charles III- from untimely Death …She is A Saviour …She is a Hero Indeed…Find More

It was an announcement that shocked the nation, but within hours of news of the King’s cancer being made public, it was business as usual for the monarch’s only sister.

At 11am on Tuesday morning, the 73-year-old Princess Royal held a two-hour-long investiture at Windsor Castle.

Then she spent the afternoon in Nottinghamshire, visiting a health care centre, before returning to London for a prize-giving ceremony in the evening.

It wasn’t the first time the Princess had held an investiture, nor was it a last-minute change to her diary: she had already agreed to take on the ceremony as a result of the King’s hospital treatment for an enlarged prostate.

But what was entirely characteristic was her willingness to step into the breach in support of a much-loved brother, just as she previously supported her mother, Elizabeth II. For many years, the royal brother and sister have been Britain’s hardest-working royals by a country mile.

Both are workaholics who have inherited in full measure their parents’ famed dedication to duty.

Last year, the Princess pipped His Majesty to the top spot, notching up 457 engagements against the King’s 425. This year, for reasons no one would have wished, she will probably do so again.

At a time with a slimmed-down monarchy, where several senior royals undertake fewer engagements than the jam-packed diaries that were standard 20 years ago, Princess Anne is every bit as busy as her parents once were.

Multiple engagements in a single day, sometimes necessitating helicopter flights between fixtures and more than one change of clothes, are not unusual.

Like the King, she will skip meals to fit as much as possible into overcrowded days.

Yet, as we have seen this week, the Princess Royal can always find the time to come to the King’s aid, his rock.

As she strides imperturbably through her eighth decade, neither she nor her office is making concessions to her age.

The pace of her working life hasn’t noticeably altered – as unchanging as her instantly recognisable hair-do and the slender figure that allows her to recycle clothes bought years ago.

In today’s smaller monarchy, the hard-working Princess Royal occupies a unique position.

After the Queen, she is the highest-ranking royal woman of her generation.