Reading: True/False - 2022 tavaszi

With her flaming red curls, Megan Clawson looks like a fairy-tale princess. So when she walks around the 950-year-old Tower of London, it's no wonder she draws attention from visitors. But she isn't a formal part of the attraction, or a royal ghost walking the walls, as some tourists think. She really does live in the Tower, with the Beefeaters – who have been guarding the Tower since Tudor times. "Obviously, I always wanted to be a princess myself," she said, admitting her ginger hair occasionally made her a target when she was younger. "In history, a lot of the big figures were redheads," she said. "If I was Tudor, I definitely wouldn't have people picking on me." The famously redheaded Queen Elizabeth I was imprisoned at the Tower as a princess, and Megan has had friends suggest she could dress up as the Virgin Queen and "scare tourists". Megan, an aspiring actor, is frequently compared to fictional princesses like Merida from Brave or Sansa from Game of Thrones. Megan moved into a family apartment in the eastern wall of the Tower last summer with her father, who is one of 32 Beefeaters living within the ancient walls. When the Tower was closed to the public due to the pandemic, she was in her "own little world", walking her dog Ethel, hanging the laundry up in the castle grounds and sitting on her balcony with views over the grounds to Tower Bridge. "It really did feel like living in a palace." Now that the doors have reopened to the public, tourists are back. Walking along the walls, they can see Megan on the balcony and don't realise she can hear them talking about her. "People think I'm somebody royal and they don't realise I can hear every word they say because of the acoustics of the walls," she said. Megan regularly updates her TikTok and Instagram followers on life in the Tower of London. "All the people who have touched these walls and these gates, all the things the Tower has seen – and now it's just me on my bed, in my pyjamas, watching Netflix. Thrilling!"