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The existence of the British monarchy is at stake because many of its members suffer from cancer. Photo/Reuters
LONDON – A decade ago, the royal family logged more than 4,000 meetings a year, traveling across Britain and around the world.
The then-Prince of Wales traveled to Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Colombia; Prince Harry went to Brazil and Chile and the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh had more than 660 engagements between them, including trips to France and Italy.
This year the royal family – commonly referred to as “the company” – operates on a much smaller scale. It is likely they will carry out only half the engagements they did in 2014, with the King and Princess of Wales diagnosed with cancer.
Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine, said: “It is an extraordinary situation and a significant moment for the monarchy and the institution at the start of the king's reign that two senior figures have been absent.” The pressure is now on “much smaller teams”. Little added that the period of “pomp and pageantry” in early summer was approaching with “all sorts of events.” These include the monarch's birthday parade, also known as Trooping the Colour, and Royal Ascot.
O'Donovan's team provides a tally of royal family meetings in a letter to the Times each year and found that in 2023 there were 2,270 meetings. This figure is reported to be the lowest figure since 1983, excluding the years affected by the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
Before ascending the throne, the king had been briefed that his vision was a leaner monarchy to ensure value for the public's money. However, this is a strategy that has its own risks.
“In one version, there are fewer people living off the public purse,” a friend of the king told the Financial Times in 2022. “It would be less about the royal family and more about the direct successors, not about history. heritage and luxury, focusing more on the role of head of state.” The deaths of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, the sexual abuse scandal involving financier Jeffrey Epstein involving Prince Andrew and the family split with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex means the focus is on a much smaller circle of senior royals.
This means that when things go wrong, there are fewer royals to call on – or what Prince Harry calls “spare parts”.
According to The Guardian, Ed Owens, a royal historian and commentator, and author of After Elizabeth: Can the Monarchy Save Itself?, said: “They don't have a high ranking yet. The replacements they have are old people, or not very famous.”