The year in royal work: King Charles III
The King is the focus of Day 10 of my year-end work analysis
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The year in royal work
Day 1: Princess Alexandra and the Duke of Kent
Day 2: The Duchess of Gloucester
Day 3: The Duke of Gloucester
Day 4: Princess Anne
Day 5: Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh
Day 6: Prince Edward
Day 7: Kate, Princess of Wales
Day 8: Prince William
Day 9: Queen Camilla
HM THE KING
The royal year went sideways on January 17 when Kensington Palace revealed that Kate, Princess of Wales, was in hospital recovering from major abdominal surgery. Seventy-five minutes later, Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles III was going into hospital:
In common with thousands of men each year, The King has sought treatment for an enlarged prostate. His Majesty's condition is benign and he will attend hospital next week for a corrective procedure. The King’s public engagements will be postponed for a short period of recuperation.
Of course, we now know that during that surgery, doctors would discover that he had cancer; though the specific type has never been revealed, we do know that it’s not prostate cancer. He’s undergone cancer treatment for much of the year, returning to public-facing duties at the end of April.
That medical treatment has forced the workaholic sovereign to moderate his pace, reduce the number of engagements he does each day, and even start eating a lunch (reportedly, half an avocado).
It’s no surprise that King Charles will finish the year doing the lowest number of engagements since the first year of the pandemic in 2020. If you take those pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 out of the mix, then Charles averaged more than 520 engagements a year. In 2024, he’ll do around 320, or 200 fewer engagements than that average.
As such, he’ll finish the year in second place among working Windsors, well behind his sister, Princess Anne. Normally, they’re within 30 engagements of each other at the top of the royal work leaderboard. This year, his illness meant she built up an early lead and never looked back. The 76-year-old monarch narrowed the gap near the end of the year thanks to an increasingly busy schedule, including a tour of Australia and Samoa, but never got close to threatening her No. 1 position.
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