Katherine, Duchess of Kent (wife of the Queen's first cousin, Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent), disappeared from public life in 2002, when she was aged 69 (she's now 89).
There were all sorts of rumours about why she'd stepped back - claims that she was agoraphobic, that she was depressed, that she'd turned into a recluse.
Turns out she just felt she'd done her bit and it was time to step down. In the early years of the Queen's reign, all her cousins and their wives helped out with public duties. But by 2002, the Queen's children were middle-aged and her grandchildren adults. No need for Queen's elderly cousins to do public duties any more.
So what has Katherine been doing since 2002? Happily teaching music in a state primary school in Hull, where they simply knew her as "Mrs Kent".
Music and teaching were her true vocation, and she finally got to do it, in complete privacy.
In an interview, she said:
Only the head knew who I was. The parents didn’t know and the pupils didn’t know. No one ever noticed. There was nothing that I felt I wanted to hide away from. It was just something that happened in my life. I was always—I wouldn’t say proud of it, but I was glad I did it. I was supported through it as well. The Queen said: 'Yes, go and do it,' so I did.
So it's perfectly possible to be royal and live completely privately, without the circus surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.