The year in royal work: Prince Edward
The King's younger brother is the focus of Day 6 of my year-end work analysis
HRH PRINCE EDWARD
Having turned 60 in March, the Duke of Edinburgh is only five years until the normal retirement age, yet is the fourth youngest working royal of the House of Windsor. Luckily for his big brother, King Charles III, both Edward and his wife, Sophie, show few signs of slowing their pace.
Like his wife, he became a full-time working royal in 2002. He’d tried and failed to carve out a career in TV production with his own company, Ardent Productions. Still, his interest in promoting and developing the arts sector remains, as can be seen in his many cultural interests, ranging from the City of Birmingham Symphony to the National Youth Theatre. Other areas he focuses on are fitness, community service, and sports — he is patron of the British Paralympic Association and the Sports and Recreation Alliance. (He and Sophie met at a real tennis charity event in 1993.)
His engagements aren’t the sort to make front page news — after all, he’s a balding, middle aged male royal who is 14th in line to the throne — yet he’s carved out an interesting niche: adding a bit of panache to the boring process of plaque unveiling.
His most famous association is with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE), the youth personal achievement program that his father created in 1956, which is now an international effort. He got his own gold medal in 1986 and, as a trustee, served for years as an ambassador for the DofE. In 2023, he took over his late father’s role as patron.
He regularly travels abroad to support local DofE efforts, both seeing local programs and meeting award winners, but also fundraising. This year, he did such engagements in South Africa, St. Helena in the South Atlantic, Uganda, Monaco, and Malta. As can be see in the above chart of engagements focused on the award around the world, the annual numbers of DofE events can vary dramatically, and those swings affect his overall total number of engagements in any given year.
In addition to the award, he’s chairman of the board of trustees in the Prince Philip Trust Fund for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, which was established in 1977 and focuses on providing leisure and recreation facilities in the area as well as promoting youth education and athletics for residents in the area around Windsor Castle — in short, things that both father and son have promoted for decades.
This year, his overall workload is down a bit when compared to the average of the previous two years (he’ll finish at around 265-270 compared to an average of 290 for 2022-23). While he’s firmly in third place behind Princess Anne and King Charles III when it comes to the amount of engagements in 2024, his tally is lower than theirs.
In more “normal” years, his third place tally would be at least 200 engagements below that of the second place holder. Even in 2018, his busiest year in recent times, he did 50 fewer engagements than his big brother and at least 20 fewer than his sister.
Sure, he has some of the trademark Windsor tone deafness, as seen during a royal tour in the Caribbean which occurred in 2022, amid calls for an apology and reparations for Britain’s colonial past and role in the slave trade, but he’s also a solid, dependable working royal.
In March, his wife paid tribute to her husband ahead of his 60th birthday. Notably, she talked about how hard he works for his charitable organizations.
Like an iceberg, what is seen above the water or in public is only a small proportion of what goes on behind the scenes. What is never seen or can ever be quantified is the effort spent on ensuring good governance for his patronages, encouraging people to support worthwhile causes, chairing committees, meeting chief executives and think tanks, writing papers, speeches, forewords, introductions, the list goes on.
But whatever he is doing he gives 150% of himself, and if all else fails he gives any energy he has left out to our exhausted dogs or laying waste to the garden.
Like my father-in-law, my husband never seeks compliments for himself. So when acknowledgment has come his way it has always been a total surprise to him, which is why I am grateful for this chance to, for once, be able to publicly celebrate and compliment him.
Given that all three first marriages of his siblings ended in divorce, the fact that he and Sophie have been married for 25 years and are clearly happy in each others’ company is significant.
As Sophie said, “He is the best of fathers, the most loving of husbands and still is my best friend.”
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
My latest appearance on Global TV’s The Morning Show on December 2:
My latest article for Zoomer: ‘Cooking & the Crown’: Inside Tom Parker Bowles’ New Cookbook, Plus 4 Royal Recipes
“You may be surprised by the simplicity of many of the recipes,” explains Parker Bowles in his book. Indeed, his first breakfast option is the porridge that his mother, Queen Camilla, eats every day in winter along with a teaspoon of honey from royal beehives. “Food is the great leveler. I want to strip away the pomp and circumstance and get right to the meat of the matter – a collection of wonderful recipes that you really want to cook from over two centuries of regal eating.”