‘Tis the season for end-of-year event numbers for the royal family. Most of the time, royal event numbers are calculated using the official event calendar, the Court Circular, which can be (and often is) fudged after the fact. The royals will “add” events to the Court Circular after they’ve happened, and in the case of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, their event-numbers are fluffed up by “private meetings” and double-counting. Still, the numbers show that Prince William actually is doing more “work,” even if it doesn’t feel that way most of the time. William had 227 events this year, while Kate only had 115 (which is what happens when someone “takes off” for more than two months for the summer, plus other month-long holidays). Some analysis of the numbers:
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have steadied the ship in a rocky year for a monarchy running out of working royals, a study shows. A combination of Covid, an increasingly elderly generation of royals and the loss of senior members of the Firm has meant the Windsors have undertaken less than 60% of the engagements they were honouring two years ago. In total, the Royal Family fulfilled 2,065 duties in 2021, a 35% rise on 2020 but just 59.5% of the 2019 tally.
Prince William is the only royal to have completed more duties (227) this year than in 2019, analysis by Canadian researcher Patricia Treble shows. And while the Duchess of Cambridge might have attended one fewer event than last year (115), hers was the smallest duty drop from 2019. She has been widely praised for stepping up to the plate with some high-profile projects and campaigns that required detailed planning over the past 12 months.
Ms Treble said of William and Kate: “Sure, their overall level of engagements hasn’t changed that much but that’s actually news, as the other senior royals have experienced large drops in their tallies during the pandemic.”
The Queen, who lost her husband Prince Philip and has been plagued by ill health and worries over Covid, undertook 182 engagements in 2021. This was compared to 127 in 2020 and 291 the year before.
In the past few years, Prince Charles has tended to do the largest number of engagements but Princess Anne has worked the most number of days. This year Anne took the top spot for both, doing 10 more engagements at 381 But even she was down 22% on her pre-pandemic total of 486, with Charles’ tally of duties falling by nearly a third to 371.
[From The Daily Mirror]
I mean… it’s sad that even with A) the pandemic and B) losing her husband of 73 years, the Queen still outworked Kate significantly. William has actually done more of the “boring” bread-and-butter royal events, making appearances here and there around the UK, beefing up his numbers by making trips to football clubs and “doing events” like “watching the Euro final.” Kate continues to just be the laziest f–king person. As for Anne and Charles… their numbers were actually affected by the pandemic and the slowing down of the calendar in general. They’re trying to make it sound like Charles and Anne are slowing down, but really, their travel was restricted for much of the year, and even then, Anne more than tripled Kate’s event numbers.
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