At current rates of public engagement, the family is operating well below the level of demand for royal presence at official events. The structural implications are, on careful analysis, more difficult than the standard coverage suggests
By Isla Campbell. With reporting from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The category of working royal, never formally defined but operationally well-understood, has across the past five years contracted to a number that the Royal Household’s own internal forecasting indicates is below the level necessary to meet the annual demand for royal presence at official events. The contraction is, by every available measure, real. Its consequences are, by every available measure, becoming visible. Nobody, on either the Palace side or the political side, particularly wants to discuss the structural implications.
I have been working on the question for three months. The reporting has involved conversations with seven Palace officials, two former Royal Household secretaries, and what one source described to me as, quote, “the back-office staff who actually keep the diaries.” The pattern that emerges is, on careful analysis, substantially more difficult than the standard royal coverage of the question has suggested.
The Numbers
The number of working royals, by the operational definition the Royal Household uses for diary purposes, currently stands at approximately seven adults: the King and Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Princess Royal, and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. Several other family members occasionally undertake engagements but are not, by the operational definition, working royals in the diary sense.
The annual demand for royal presence at official events, drawing on the Royal Household’s records and the supplementary tracking maintained by various charitable and civic organisations, is approximately 4,200 distinct engagement requests per year. The seven working royals, operating at sustainable engagement levels, can cover approximately 2,400 to 2,800 such requests. The arithmetic produces a structural shortfall of approximately 1,400 to 1,800 engagement requests per year that cannot be accommodated by the existing working royal cohort.
The shortfall has been, across the past three years, growing. The Princess Royal, who has historically carried a disproportionate share of the working royal calendar, is now 75. The Duchess of Edinburgh has, by every available account, taken on additional engagements but is operating at the upper limit of what is, on any reasonable assessment, sustainable. The Prince and Princess of Wales have substantially increased their engagement volumes since taking on Wales-prefixed titles, but their schedules are constrained by their three children’s school commitments.
The shortfall is, in operational practice, addressed through three principal mechanisms. The first is declining the engagement requests, which has, in many cases, produced disappointment among the requesting organisations. The second is delegating to non-working royals for specific events, which produces its own complications regarding which family members are, on a case-by-case basis, considered acceptable substitutes. The third is the gradual reduction in the historical expectation that royal presence be available for the broader range of civic events that, in earlier generations, the family routinely supported.
For ongoing coverage of royal engagements, see The London Standard.
What The Reduction Looks Like
The reduction in the historical expectation has been, in operational terms, the most consequential of the three mechanisms. Civic and charitable organisations have, across the past five years, gradually adjusted their planning to assume that royal presence will be available for major events but not for the smaller events that, in earlier decades, were routinely supported. The adjustment has been, in many cases, accepted with grace. The adjustment is, however, real.
The accumulated effect, across thousands of small adjustments, is that the routine visibility of royal presence at the level of ordinary British civic life has substantially declined. The decline is not, in any individual case, dramatic. It is, in cumulative terms, structural.
Why The Family Has Contracted
The family has contracted, in working royal terms, for reasons that have been comprehensively covered elsewhere and that I will summarise briefly here. The Sussexes departed the working royal cohort in 2020. The Duke of York’s working royal status was terminated in 2022. The various non-working senior royals, including the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Gloucester, have aged into reduced operational capacity. The result is a working royal cohort substantially smaller than the cohort of even the previous decade.
What is striking, on careful examination, is that the contraction has not been accompanied by any systematic reconsideration of how the working royal function should be structured given the smaller cohort. The Royal Household has, in operational practice, simply absorbed the implications of the contraction and operated at reduced capacity. The reduction has been managed administratively rather than structurally addressed.
This is, in some honest accounting, characteristic of how the Royal Household typically responds to substantial operational changes. Structural reform is, by institutional preference, avoided. Administrative absorption is, by institutional preference, the default response. The default has held, broadly, across decades. It is now producing, in the working royal context, the structural shortfall described above.
What Could Be Done
What could be done about the shortfall, by various proposals that have circulated within the relevant policy communities over the past several years, includes several distinct options. The first is the formal expansion of the working royal cohort to include additional family members, principally the Tindall and Phillips children of Princess Anne, who are currently non-working but have demonstrated personal aptitude for the function. The second is the systematic devolution of certain ceremonial functions to non-royal lord-lieutenants and other civic figures whose constitutional capacity to represent the Crown is well-established. The third is the explicit reduction of the historical expectation, with corresponding public communication that the family, in its current form, will be less ubiquitously visible than the families of previous generations.
None of these options has been, on the available evidence, formally adopted. Each has been, in various Palace internal discussions, considered. The reasons for the non-adoption are, in some honest accounting, instructive about how the Royal Household actually makes decisions.
The Adoption Question
The adoption question, on careful examination, reduces to a deeper question about what the working royal function is actually for. If the function is principally constitutional, the family is sufficient. If the function is principally civic, the family is insufficient. The Royal Household has, across decades, declined to articulate which function is primary, on the entirely defensible grounds that the function is, in fact, both, and that articulating a primary purpose would commit the institution to operational consequences that subsequent circumstances might not support.
The decline to articulate is, in some sense, the most consistent piece of strategy the Royal Household has pursued across the modern period. The strategy has worked, broadly, across most of the twentieth century. It is now, in the current operational environment, beginning to produce visible costs.
An ongoing analysis at City A.M. has examined comparable questions in other European monarchies, where similar contractions have occurred but have been managed through more explicit structural choices.
What I Think Will Happen
What I think will happen, on the basis of the conversations I have had, is that the Royal Household will continue to manage the shortfall administratively for the foreseeable future. The administrative management will involve, on present trajectories, increasing reliance on the Tindall and Phillips children for specific engagement categories, gradual further reduction in the historical expectation of royal presence at the level of ordinary civic life, and what one official described as, quote, “the careful curation of which engagements receive royal attention to maximise the visibility of the engagements that do.”
The administrative management will broadly maintain the family’s public profile. It will not address the structural shortfall. At some point in the next decade, the accumulated shortfall will produce a visible operational failure requiring explicit public acknowledgment. The acknowledgment, when it occurs, will surprise the public substantially less than the Royal Household expects.
What This Says About The Institution
What this says about the institution is, in some honest accounting, that the Royal Household has not yet accepted that the institution it operates is, in significant respects, a smaller institution than the institution of even the recent past. The non-acceptance produces, predictably, an operational mismatch between the institution’s stated commitments and its actual capacity. The mismatch is, by all reasonable assessments, getting worse rather than better.
The structural reform that would address the mismatch is, on the available evidence, not on the active institutional agenda. The administrative absorption that has, across decades, been the institution’s default response is, on the available evidence, still being pursued. The pursuit is, in operational practice, sustaining the appearance of the previous institutional configuration while producing, beneath the surface, an institution operating at substantially reduced capacity.
I have considerable affection for the institution. I think it has, on balance, served the country well across difficult decades. I also think it is, in its current form, undergoing changes that its own internal processes are not adequately registering. The changes are, by every honest reading, real. They will, by every honest reading, eventually require structural rather than administrative response. More from Isla Campbell.
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