Charles is crowned the busiest
PRINCE Charles pipped his sister Princess Anne to the crown of busiest royal of 2017.
But she spent more days on public duty than any other royal.
Anne also completed more engagements in the UK than anyone else in the House of Windsor, but Charles did slightly more in total thanks to his duties overseas, according to analysis of the Court Circular, the official record of royal duties.
Charles, 69, clocked up 374 UK engagements and 172 abroad, making a grand total of 546.
By comparison, Anne, 67, attended 455 engagements in the UK and 85 overseas, making a total of 540.
The Prince of Wales did the most travelling but the Duke of York, dubbed Air Miles Andy, increased his overseas travels, racking up 106 events abroad making him the second most travelled royal in 2017.
Andrew’s mileage boost comes despite having his wings clipped after losing his job as a UK trade envoy in 2011. The job loss came amid a scandal over his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and criticism of his work by British diplomats.
Workload
It was a year that saw the Duke of Edinburgh retire in August from an official programme of royal duties at the age of 96 after first clocking up 131 engagements in 2017.
The Queen, now 91, who has been slowly scaling back her workload over the past couple of decades, reduced the official events she attended by 11 per cent compared with last year, down from 332 to 296.
Palace officials had billed 2017 as the year in which the younger royals, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, would step up to the plate to help take over the Queen and Philip’s workload.
But although Harry saw a 37 per cent rise in his duties from 152 to 209, William and Kate reduced theirs.
Kate, who spent the first half of the year prioritising her children, was for the second consecutive year the royal who completed the fewest number of engagements in the UK, with 63.
There were 42 abroad, making a total of 105, down from 140 last year.
She had been expected to increase her workload from September but she fell pregnant in the summer with her third child and missed engagements while suffering from severe morning sickness.
William too did fewer engagements, down from 188 in 2016 to 171 in 2017, despite giving up his part-time job as an air ambulance pilot in East Anglia in the summer to become a full-time working royal.
In part, that may have been because he and Kate postponed a planned November tour of Sweden and Norway until next month.
Yet there was no sign of any increase in his responsibilities in the UK, where he performed exactly the same number of engagements as the previous year, 117.
Although Edward’s workload dropped by almost 19 per cent, his wife Sophie, the Countess of Wessex, increased her duties by 22 per cent, mainly due to more overseas tours.
The figures, compiled by Tim O’Donovan, 85, a retired insurance broker from Berkshire who has been calculating the list of engagements for the past 37 years, show that the number of official royal duties undertaken by the 15 working members of the family fell from 3,725 in 2016 to 3,507 in 2017.
Almost two-thirds of those were carried out by royals well past the official age of retirement.
The Queen’s ageing cousins, the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra and the Duchess of Gloucester, who are all in their 70s and 80s, were at 570 events – more than the 485 completed by William, Kate and Harry, who marries US-born actress Meghan Markle in May.
The younger royals have shown little interest in the volume of engagements undertaken by their predecessors. Instead, they have focused their energy on sustained campaigns.
Experienced royal watcher Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, said: “It may be that we will get a truer picture of William’s commitment next year.
“It may also be that Meghan will be focusing on having a family for the next few years and we may have to wait maybe five years before she is doing a full programme of royal engagements.”