The 'stepping up' narrative vs the statistics
Are Queen Camilla and the rest of the royals actually doing more in 2024?
This has been the strangest, weirdest, most unusual first quarter of a royal year in recent memory — and that’s saying something given that recent first quarters include 2020 (when the world shut down at the start of the pandemic), 2021 (when Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, gave a tell-all explosive interview to Oprah Winfrey), and 2023 (when Prince Harry promoted the release of his memoir, Spare, by uttering even more incendiary comments about his family).
The hospitalizations of both King Charles III and Kate, Princess of Wales, as well as their subsequent diagnoses and treatments for cancer has thrown the start of the 2024 royal year into organizational chaos. Engagements have been cancelled and foreign tours have been postponed, including the King and Queen’s trip to Canada, which would have been his first as monarch to a realm outside of the United Kingdom.
The Princess of Wales has done no official engagements at all this year, while King Charles has limited himself to those involving few people so as to lessen the risk of infection. Only on Easter Sunday did he undertake a walkabout when he shook hands with the public outside St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
Meanwhile, a narrative has developed in which the remaining working royals are “stepping up”:
Tatler: ‘Resilient’ Queen Camilla is ‘proud’ to shoulder royal duties in absence of King and Kate Middleton - while Princess Anne and Duchess of Edinburgh will also step up, sources claim
Mirror: Queen Camilla steps up royal duties and given new title while supporting King Charles
Yahoo: A Royal Insider Says Prince William Will "Step Up" Amid King Charles' Cancer Diagnosis
Telegraph: Why Prince Edward is ‘stepping up’ to keep the royal show on the road
Express: Duchess Sophie praised for 'amazing speech' as she steps up royal duties in King's absence
Now that the first quarter of 2024 has done, it’s time to answer the question: Is the hype of royals “stepping up” in 2024 born out by the statistics?
The answer isn’t simple. For one, it depends on how one defines “stepping up.”
Background
There are effectively 10 working royals currently on the roster, given that Princess Alexandra is largely retired after a life of duty. Of those, three out of the top four — King Charles, the Princess of Wales, and Prince William — are either working drastically reduced schedules (the men) or completely away from engagements (Kate). That leaves seven royals available for royal duties, ranging in age from the 59-year-old Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh to the 88-year-old Duke of Kent. For simplicity, I’ll call them the “remaining seven.”
‘On behalf of the King’
Certainly, royals are filling in for King Charles III at official engagements. As I wrote on March 23, Queen Camilla, 76, is representing her husband at more and more functions, including marking Commonwealth Day, to attending celebrations for Douglas on the Isle of Man obtaining city status. On March 19, after the King met separately with Korean War veterans at Buckingham Palace, it fell to Princess Anne and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, to represent him at a larger reception for the veterans at the palace. Next week, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh will attend a parade to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale between the United Kingdom and France, again “on behalf of the King.”
In total, there have been eight such times when Camilla, Anne, or Sophie have represented the King during the first quarter of 2024 (excluding investitures, which Anne and William have continued to perform). In contrast, there was only one such engagement in the first quarter of 2023.
Higher profiles
In addition, we’re seeing more of the “supporting cast” of royals undertake royal duties. Suddenly, the media is following Princess Anne through some of her packed days of engagements, or writing multiple photo-filled articles about Edward and Sophie. At the same time, royal social media channels, including Instagram, are posting noticeably larger share of the “remaining seven” images than for the same period last year. So they are “stepping up” in terms of having their profiles raised, if only to compensate for the absence of so many other senior royals.
Comparing 2024 to previous years
The “stepping up” narrative gets a bit more difficult to support when looking at the raw data.
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