The flexibility requirement may well be the biggest barrier to part time royals. It all depends how flexible they’re required to be. The Royals having more distant relatives on essentially a zero hours contract and expected to be available for duties whenever asked isn’t going to work, since they can’t expect the employer of a part time royal to let them drop everything for an engagement at a moment’s notice (or to expect an employer to want to employ Charlotte or Louis’s future children on that basis.) It’s not good for their business and it won’t be good for workplace relations either. “HRH Prince(ss) X / Lord Y / Lady Z gets to come and go as they please.”
If it’s a case of the family member concerned having their diary set out for them far enough in advance to book annual leave if an engagement falls within their working hours, there’d be no problem (assuming of course that the family member does not get their leave allocated for them, as that could end up with others having to accommodate the part time royal.) If it’s as simple as part time royals being expected to step in at short notice at a time that it is known that they are not working from time to time, then that seems reasonable.
Slimming things down might be achieved via the spouses to some degree, following the example of Anne. Only the spouse of the heir might be a working royal. Everyone has different favourites within the family and that would allow us to see more of them at a lower cost while those born royal wouldn’t be shuffled down the order by the spouses of relatives closer to the throne than them.
I second that.
It would be hard to find this so called "perfect job" (high-paying without potential royal-trading accusation, flexible schedule) if a long-term part-time royals had been put on the table. This part-time royal should be ready to receive double scrutiny, and so did his/her employer.
Harry is no longer working royal, but his associations still being picked apart by the British press.
William was a part-time royal with a paying job for few years and he was criticised for being lazy in both his royal duty
and ambulance pilot job. And he gave all his salary to charity back then. I bet there would be more criticism if he took the money for himself.
Or maybe pull a "Waity-Kaity" style post Jigsaw: join the family business, maybe by working at on of Duchy of Cornwall farm?
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The time needed to do royal work has also been being reduced due to the "the empire" shrinking, along with modern technology enabling things particularly the advances in transportation, and more recently the acceptance of doing work remotely.
Charles supposedly was given a lot of say in The Way Ahead group, which was formed in the early-mid 1990s because the decisions made would affect his reign, even though presumably, it was not felt that his ascension was imminent. This same sentiment has been expressed about subsequent self-examination and reform efforts by the BRF. Given this I believe that William will also be given considerable say in any self-examination and reform efforts because it will affect his reign.
I suspect that research and analysis has been taking place over the years and that will be a key driver in decisions made. What I assume is being examined is does having the Duke of Gloucester visit a pensioner group in New Castle increase or sustain the British Royal Family's relevance and affection? What about his work with his patronages? Now ask the same question for more visible non-heir royals like Princess Anne or Prince Edward.
If it turns out that bread and butter visits and support of patronages add materially to the BRF's relevance and affection, and the work is beyond the capacity of the monarch and the heir, then yes, other royals will be conscripted to help out as older royals pass away, reduce their activities or retire. If needed, I can see Princess Beatrice being asked to take on royal duties, as opposed to Prince Harry being asked to return to royal duties. Even though it is expected for Charles to be the next monarch, serious consideration has to be given to laying the groundwork for William's reign, ergo, it does not matter if Charles has issues with Andrew and thinks his daughter is a twit, what William feels he needs during his reign is paramount.
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This Covid situation proved that it's possible to do 6-9 engagement in a day when doing it remotely. And gone was the day when the royal tour went on for weeks or months. Reduction in traveling time can mean opportunity to do more engagements.
Below is the 2017 engagement based on Iluvbertie's count on the engagement thread (ranked by days working, excluding the cousins, but their total - of the 4 - is 549 engagement in 224 days):
- Anne 521 engagements in 179 days
- Charles 534 in 174 days
- Andrew 325 in 140 days
- Edward 285 in 124 days
- The Queen 273 in 114 days
- William 187 in 106 days
- Harry 176 in 98 days
- Sophie 203 in 95 days
- Camilla 216 in 87 days
- Catherine 99 in 59 days
I don't know how it is for British government officials (I consider working royal role similar as government official), but working in private sector in average I works at least 200 days in a years. And I also understand that a lot of works happens behind the scene unrecorded, but it seems the Wessexes and the Cambridges still can add at least 60 (if not more) days each to do some engagements.
If every working royal works 200 days each, 6-8 working royals will be enough to get similar total engagements as those above. In this case, what Somebody wrote on post #1247 can work. When Charles becomes king, William and Catherine can cover the numbers that used to be Charles' and Anne's, while the Wessexes and Anne do the rest, and later when the Cambridge kids are in their mid 20s they gradually take over the Wessexes and Anne where the latter three will become sort of the current Kents and Gloucesters (and by that time, the type of engagement could be very different than now so maybe even Charlotte and Louis wouldn't need to be working royals). 3 sets royal rotation: in the same time 1 set in London hold the fort, 1 sets go abroad on tour, 1 set go to countryside (it's not that foreign tour/trip abroad is done every day anyway).
As for patronages, Philip had retired for 3 years yet he's still patron of hundreds organisations. What I want to say is, in the future what's the meaning of this patronages for BRF? Just attaching their name and promoting them with a visit once in every 3-4 days, sending cards or letters of support one a year? Or a more hand-on patron which will correlate to their ability to the numbers of patronages they could handle? However, there's social media that can be utilised to highlight the said charities/patronages as alternative if visit is not feasible.
