A dive into royal work data for the first half of 2023

Trooping the Colour is the natural half-way point in the year for the House of Windsor and a good point to look back as well as forward

It’s June 20, and this issue is about:

• What’s new with the 263-year-old annual Trooping the Colour ceremony

• Trends I’m seeing in the data for the first half of the royal work year

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POMP, CIRCUMSTANCE, AND INVESTITURES

King Charles III salutes the troops of the Household Division at Buckingham Palace at the end of Trooping the Colour (Photo: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2023)

The grandest royal events of June are Trooping the Colour, which marks the monarch’s official birthday, and Garter Day, when members of the 675-year-old Order of the Garter gather at Windsor Castle for lunch and a service at St. George’s Chapel. This year’s Trooping the Colour was on Saturday, June 17, with Garter Day taking place two days later, on Monday, June 19.

I’ve always thought that those two events mark the natural end to the first half of the royal work year. Yes, yes, June 30 is technically the end of the first six months of the year, but my thinking is that royals take significant chunks of the summer for their vacations, which means the half-way mark in the royal year arrives earlier than the calendar would indicate.

So below is my analysis of the mountain of data regarding the work statistics of the House of Windsor that I’ve spent way too many hours inputting into a massive Excel spreadsheet and linked pivot tables. As well, I use that data to tease out trends hidden in the thousands of lines of statistics.

Note: most of the analysis is reserved for paid subscribers. So if you’ve enjoyed reading my newsletter, please consider becoming a member for as little as CAD$5 a month.

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NEW AND IMPROVED SINCE 1760

The senior members of the working royal family (and children) on the balcony of Buckingham Palace (Photo: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2023)

First: Trooping the Colour, which has been an annual event for a mere 263 years.

While somethings never change — the military precision is always spectacular, and five-year-old Prince Louis acted like any five-year-old at such a massive event, including being very, very excited at the flypast of so many Royal Air Force aircraft — it also marked many firsts:

• Obviously, it was the first Trooping with King Charles III in his role of sovereign;

• He rode a new horse, a mare named Noble given by the RCMP, while his previous mount, George, another RCMP horse nearing retirement, was ridden by Prince Edward;

• Prince Edward rode in his first Trooping as the colonel of 1st Battalion, London Guards, a British Army Reserve unit of the Guards Division. It was created in 2022;

• Like Edward, Queen Camilla and Kate, Princess of Wales, also participated in their first Trooping the Colour after years of observing everything from the windows of the offices at Horse Guards. Respectively, they are now colonels of the Grenadier Guards and Irish Guards; and

• Prince William attended as the new colonel of the Welsh Guards, having previously been colonel of the Irish Guards. As the Colour of the 1st Battalion, Welsh Guards was being paraded, he took the salute at the Colonel’s Review (the last full dress rehearsal on June 10).

Another recent change is that King Charles III continued is to have only working royals, and their young children, on the main balcony at Buckingham Palace. That’s not to say that he didn’t invite other members of his extended family to the event — children and grandchildren of the late Queen’s cousins could be seen on a balcony in the inner quadrangle — but rather that his balcony decision was intended to send a message: These are the members of the House of Windsor who publicly serve the people of Britain, the realms, the Commonwealth, and the Crown.

More images from Trooping the Colour, including Kate, Princess of Wales, sitting on the reviewing platform at Horse Guards (Photos: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2023)

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BY THE NUMBERS: THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR FOR THE FIRST HALF OF 2023

Royal work data (Source: Write Royalty Inc.)

As of this year’s Garter Day, the 11 working royals had completed nearly 1,200 engagements.

In 2022, Garter Day took place on June 13*. On that day, there were 12 working royals, who had undertaken 1,305 engagements, including the late Queen Elizabeth II. If one subtracts the 85 engagements that she had undertaken in the first half of 2022 to reveal how many engagements were done by the current 11 working royals, then that number is 1,220, which is very close to their 2023 workload by the same event in the royal calendar.

And that 1,200-odd engagements is also roughly where those 11 were at this point in the royal work calendar in 2018 and 2019, before the pandemic threw such data into disarray.

*Yes, I know that June 13 is not June 17 or June 19. My wording is quite deliberate — I’m looking at public engagements from the beginning of the year to Garter Day, regardless of when that specific Monday lands in the month of June.