Queen ‘delighted’ granddaughter Zara to have second child
THE Queen has welcomed news that she is to become a great-grandmother for the seventh time, as Zara and Mike Tindall confirmed they are expecting a baby.
Mr and Mrs Tindall, who are already parents to three-year-old Mia, have announced they are expecting another child a year after enduring a miscarriage.
A spokesman said the Queen was “very pleased” to hear the news of what will be her seventh great-grandchild.
She already has one great-grandson, Prince George, and four great-granddaughters: Princess Charlotte, Savannah and Isla Phillips and Mia Tindall.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their third child in April, with the Tindalls’ baby believed to be due in the summer.
Confirmation of Mrs Tindall’s pregnancy was celebrated yesterday, just over a year after a spokesman announced the miscarriage of a child due in 2017.
On Christmas Eve 2016, a spokesman said the couple had “very sadly” lost their baby.
Mr and Mrs Tindall spent this Christmas on a working holiday in Australia rather than at Sandringham with senior members of the Royal family. They were photographed playing with Mia and looking relaxed while having lunch at Bondi Beach.
A spokesman for the couple said yesterday: “I can confirm Zara is pregnant with her second child.”
Mrs Tindall, an Olympic medal winner and former world eventing champion, will step back from her riding career until the baby has arrived.
She will continue to carry out other work, including her commitments as patron of Magic Millions Racing Women – an initiative promoting racehorse ownership among women – on Australia’s Gold Coast this weekend.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “The Queen and members of the Royal family were very pleased to hear this news.”
Zara Phillips, daughter of the Princess Royal, married Mike Tindall, a former English rugby captain who played outside centre for Bath and Gloucester, in 2011.
Their first daughter, Mia Grace, will turn four later this month, and has become a firm favourite among royalwatchers for her entertaining and boisterous outings with her family at her mother’s riding events.
Her new baby brother or sister will be 19th in line to the throne, and is likely to follow in the footsteps of Mia and Zara herself in having no royal title in keeping with the wishes of the Princess Royal, who eschewed HRH status for her children when they were born.
Unusually for members of the Royal family, Mia was born in an NHS hospital, at Gloucestershire Royal, in 2014, weighing 7lb 12oz. Last year, Mr Tindall spoke of how losing their baby in 2016 had affected the couple, disclosing they had attended a scan to find out the gender before “the whole world [was] turned upside down”.
“Obviously, you’re gutted, you never want to go through it, you never want your wife to go through it,” he said.
“I think, if I was honest, we were very lucky that we already had Mia, so you immediately go home from the hospital and there’s a three-year-old causing carnage and it immediately takes your mind off it. But it was an eye-opener.”
The news comes in a remarkably busy year for the Royal family, with two babies due, the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Prince of Wales’s 70th birthday, and the Queen’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London.
The new baby will be 19th in line to the throne and is likely to have no royal title