British Royal Family Engagements 2017


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Iluvbertie

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To start the New Year I have done a search for upcoming events for the family for January.

To End January – on 1st January

Edward – 1
Sophie – 1
Anne – 33
Richard – 1
Alexandra – 3

It doesn't seem that the Prince of Wales website has a searchable diary anymore as going into News and Diary only brings up information about completed events with no place to search for upcoming events. I had a link on my previous computer but it doesn't work for the new one.

The Duke of York's webpage now also has no information about anything he may be doing in the future - just some news from October and a New Year's tweet.

That means that the only source of information about upcoming events is the main website and it says as above that there will be 39 public official engagements for the rest of January. This doesn't include those engagements that take place behind closed doors such as Investitures.

There really should be one central place for this diary rather than having to go searching but we all, by now understand, that the BRF doesn't understand this side of the PR and doesn't care about it either.
 
To start the New Year I have done a search for upcoming events for the family for January.

To End January – on 1st January

Edward – 1
Sophie – 1
Anne – 33
Richard – 1
Alexandra – 3

It doesn't seem that the Prince of Wales website has a searchable diary anymore as going into News and Diary only brings up information about completed events with no place to search for upcoming events. I had a link on my previous computer but it doesn't work for the new one.

The Duke of York's webpage now also has no information about anything he may be doing in the future - just some news from October and a New Year's tweet.

That means that the only source of information about upcoming events is the main website and it says as above that there will be 39 public official engagements for the rest of January. This doesn't include those engagements that take place behind closed doors such as Investitures.

There really should be one central place for this diary rather than having to go searching but we all, by now understand, that the BRF doesn't understand this side of the PR and doesn't care about it either.

I've always said that the Palace press office needs a shake up. I think there are some people getting paid, but are asleep on the job.
 
I have this amazing image of TRF members planning a flash mob to show up and shake up the press office. Drums and flash bangs. LOL. Happy New Year. Plus ca change! ;)
 
To start the New Year I have done a search for upcoming events for the family for January.

To End January – on 1st January

Edward – 1
Sophie – 1
Anne – 33
Richard – 1
Alexandra – 3

It doesn't seem that the Prince of Wales website has a searchable diary anymore as going into News and Diary only brings up information about completed events with no place to search for upcoming events. I had a link on my previous computer but it doesn't work for the new one.

The Duke of York's webpage now also has no information about anything he may be doing in the future - just some news from October and a New Year's tweet.

That means that the only source of information about upcoming events is the main website and it says as above that there will be 39 public official engagements for the rest of January. This doesn't include those engagements that take place behind closed doors such as Investitures.

There really should be one central place for this diary rather than having to go searching but we all, by now understand, that the BRF doesn't understand this side of the PR and doesn't care about it either.

You know, I've always felt like Anne did much more than everyone else, but she doesn't get recognized for it as much. I hope that number was what I was perceiving it to be but does anyone else have thoughts?


Sent from my iPod touch using The Royals Community
 
Anne and Charles do the most work each year. I am unable now to find what Charles is planning anywhere.

These are only the public engagements and there are often inside engagements which aren't put up as upcoming engagements.

This means that there could be somewhat more than the 39 engagements listed here. For example last year I had 148 engagements in January but 68 of them were done by Anne and Tim on their South Atlantic tour leaving only 80 for the family, including Anne in the UK.

How many will be done this year we will have to wait and see.
 
Anne has said that she takes on a number of responsibilities that she feels comfortable with. She works hard, but Anne speeds through a lot of her engagements, so she gets through a lot more in a day than the younger royals.

William, Catherine and Harry is trying to redefine official duties. They are more focused on a select set of issues, rather than carrying out official engagements where they're opening random centres and cutting ribbons for any old thing.

I think the media and fellow royal watchers haven't caught on to the younger royals new style of doing things. They respect tradition, but want their roles to mean something, make a difference and help people.
 
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That might be so Dman, and I'm sure you're correct. It would just be nice if William, Harry or Kate, or combination of, had something planned with their charities for January. I just don't like the thought of people who are much, much older doing the vast majority of engagements, that's all. I hope for 230 plus from each of the trio in the coming twelve months, though I know a different way of tackling these engagements is coming n the future.
 
Just because they haven't announced any on the British Monarchy website doesn't mean they have got any. The Wales branch of the family rarely use that site to announce anything - nor does Andrew.

It is used by HM, the DoE and everyone from the Wessexes down but not the Wales or Yorks.

I too would like to see more from the younger royals. They do about an hour at an engagement when they do one - same length as Anne and think that is enough.
 
Anne has said that she takes on a number of responsibilities that she feels comfortable with. She works hard, but Anne speeds through a lot of her engagements, so she gets through a lot more in a day than the younger royals.

William, Catherine and Harry is trying to redefine official duties. They are more focused on a select set of issues, rather than carrying out official engagements where they're opening random centres and cutting ribbons for any old thing.

I think the media and fellow royal watchers haven't caught on to the younger royals new style of doing things. They respect tradition, but want their roles to mean something, make a difference and help people.
I believe that this will be the model that will be followed when Charles' reign begins. Rather than having them continue with the one practiced by the Queen, DoE and the rest and then alter it in the future, they started as they mean to go on.
 
In that sense it would be interesting to see how many days are given to engagements by the RF members, rather than engagements themselves. Suspect Anne would still come out on top.
 
I believe that this will be the model that will be followed when Charles' reign begins. Rather than having them continue with the one practiced by the Queen, DoE and the rest and then alter it in the future, they started as they mean to go on.

I think it's one of the reasons why we're focused on the wrong things. The focus has been on numbers for so long. The younger royals numbers are up and will increase, but I don't think they want their commitments to duties to be confined to a set of numbers. They want the focus to be put on the issues they are working for.

Right now, people are too interested in the large numbers of engagements carried out to prove who works the hardest. We should be more interested in the work at hand and the issues. There's no competition within the family, but that's what the press reduce the royals roles to...numbers. Who's doing more than who?!
 
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I don't think for one minute that Anne or Charles set out to do the highest number of engagements. I think for Charles it is quite natural as heir that he does a lot and I think for Anne its just because of her personality and her circumstances... remember her children are the oldest out of the Queen's grandchildren and so for the longest time now she has had less pull to stay at home. Ed&Sophie have two young children and Andrew's girls have not that long (relatively) gone through uni (also Andrew seems to do a lot of his own business stuff). I really don't think Anne thinks how she can get the highest numbers engagement wise, I think she just likes to keep herself busy and do the most she can, also bear in mind pre 2000/02 the Wessex and Andrew had other jobs - production company/PR firm/the Navy.

I think people are right that in the future we may see a change in the ways royals support charities - already we see that many members of the RF now hold forums for their charities and patronages to meet, recognising they can provide support beyond just appearing in public for them.

However, I also think this means the RF may have to review the way they report this support / work, for example we see Queen Maxima supporting microfinance through the UN, she has a lot of meetings etc for this, not all are reported but many are and probably more than the BRF would report on now.

We've often heard that William and especially Kate are doing work that we do not see, and of course we can't know everything, but if they want to avoid some of the criticism regarding number of engagements maybe their staff need to start putting more of these meetings in the Court Circular.
 
I think it's one of the reasons why we're focused on the wrong things. The focus has been on numbers for so long. The younger royals numbers are up and will increase, but I don't think they want their commitments to duties to be confined to a set of numbers. They want the focus to be put on the issues they are working for.

Right now, people are too interested in the large numbers of engagements carried out to prove who works the hardest. We should be more interested in the work at hand and the issues. There's no competition within the family, but that's what the press reduce the royals roles to...numbers. Who's doing more than who?!

you aren't considering the the people that they meet in this engagements if 10 of them made an impact on 100 people in every engagement they do and they do 2 or 3 engagement every day for 200-250 days every year that would spread and widen the support for the monarchy and like Queen elizabeth said before

i have to be seen to be believed .

so yes the numbers of engagement is important .
 
Exactly, the Countess of Wessex already does this with the DofE Awards and some of her other patronages.
 
It's not the numbers, the numbers are meaningless. It's the 'value' royal watchers and tabloids attach to the numbers.

They've come to represent 'work' as if it's a mathematical formulae for productivity.

Princess Anne did five engagements today. Charles did 4. Therefore Anne worked harder than Charles.

That's where we are at. The funny thing is, the royal family doesn't count the engagements. Just publishes a diary.
 
you aren't considering the the people that they meet in this engagements if 10 of them made an impact on 100 people in every engagement they do and they do 2 or 3 engagement every day for 200-250 days every year that would spread and widen the support for the monarchy and like Queen elizabeth said before



so yes the numbers of engagement is important .

The numbers are impressive, but the work the royals do are more important. It's become easy to reduce the royals hard work to set of numbers, rather than focus on the quality of their work. While the younger royals are more focused on the real issues they want to help with, folks are busy throwing the hard work away if their engagement numbers aren't nearing the 200's.

Again, the younger royals are changing the way official royal duties are being defined. Issue based and not number based. Everybody's number would be very high if one is accepting every invitation to open or visit random places. The face of royal duties are changing, some aren't accepting or acknowledging the change.
 
IMO you need a bit of both, simply working for charities behind palace doors, visiting the same few charities or meetings/awards/dinners for the same few charities means the royals are only going to meet a certain number of people and probably mainly in London.

Remember the Queen and Philip use to (and Charles and Camilla in Wales still) visit a region/town/city - they didn't visit to see a certain charity which they were associated with but just to visit that part of the country - because its important to meet and be seen by a wide range of people around the whole of the UK.

I think people and the media would cry foul in the end if the royals did few engagements as it means fewer chances for people to see the RF which would over time lead to a decrease in support of the RF. That being said - everything the RF does need not be a visit to somewhere or another - its getting the balance right.
 
The number of engagements are nice, but the quality of the work the young royals do are very easily dismissed, because people think their numbers aren't matching the older royals. So people automatically think the younger royals aren't dedicated to their official duties.

The younger royals want everyone to pay attention to the issues they're highlighting, not reducing their year long hard work to just a overall number.

Also, people do seem to ignore that the older royals gained lots of responsibility over the many years. They took on a great deal from late royals. And they don't have small kids at home to look after. The Cambridge's have increased their numbers but they do have other responsibilities too. Their numbers can't be as high as Charles, Anne or Prince Philip.

Instead of going crazy over Catherine's wardrobe, people should be going crazy over the issues she, William and Harry are working on. That's more impressive than a number.
 
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older royals having a lot of engagements doesn't mean that they don't care about the quality of their work every one of them do their part of engagements plus there is causes that they are passionate about like diana and the hiv and homeless , anne and sports , charles and the environment and andrew and business and economy .
 
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For people out to find fault it doesn't really matter how many engagements someone does.

Plus this is a completely manufactured 'problem'. I'm willing to wager the person on the street doesn't know who does the most engagements. As for 'hardest working' royal, they'd probably default and say the Queen no matter how many engagements she does.

As royal watchers we follow the day-to-day minutiae of royal life but for the average person, Its Trooping the Colour and the Queen's Christmas message.

People sitting at home are worried about a lot of things going on in the world but the number of engagements the royals do probably isn't one of them.
 
:previous:Good point Rudolph and I agree that the average person only pays attention to royal events at national events. I believe this is true for any nation with a monarch as HoS.

Some of the European courts ie Spain have reports and photos that accompany their meetings with their foundations and with members of the government. I've found that the Court Circular doesn't always relay information about these types of meetings, though I have seen a few mentioned now and then.
 
My entire family are royalists. Pictures of the Queen on the walls. The whole shebang. But if I asked my sister did Harry do 200 engagements last year or 500, she wouldn't have a clue.

She sees him on social media often enough that she's satisfied. I could tell my mother Kate did 1000 engagements and she'd believe me. Because she sees her on the tv and Twitter so often it feels like a 1000 engagements.
 
you aren't considering the the people that they meet in this engagements if 10 of them made an impact on 100 people in every engagement they do and they do 2 or 3 engagement every day for 200-250 days every year that would spread and widen the support for the monarchy and like Queen elizabeth said before

so yes the numbers of engagement is important .

I'm inclined to agree about the impact upon the people personally attending these events.
Even "opening random centres and cutting ribbons for any old thing" are hugely important to those directly involved, and much more so than to the many more who merely read about them.
 
I'm inclined to agree about the impact upon the people personally attending these events.
Even "opening random centres and cutting ribbons for any old thing" are hugely important to those directly involved, and much more so than to the many more who merely read about them.

Yes, officials do appreciate members of the royal family accepting invitations to open random places. It's just that the younger royals want to do engagements that they find meaningful and they feel they can be more hands on with.

Even with touring cities in the U.K. and Commonwealth; they plan their diaries to include engagements that's centered around the topics they're more interested in. I like their style of doing things now.

With Catherine; I feel a lot of what she do are sometime ignored, because the media mainly focus on her wardrobe and the cost. No fault of her own though. I think it causes people to dismiss her work and think she's not doing much. The Palace PR team could straighten up and fly right on this issue.
 
There are and will be always royal engagements that the BRF carry out. One big difference that is beginning to rear its head and most likely continue onwards into the future is that alongside royal duties and engagements, there are going to be royal campaigns.

Many, many moons ago, kings and lords led campaigns under a king's banner such as the Crusades. In the 21st century, a royal's campaign is more to do with issues. We have just today seen a result of a campaign done through W&K&H's foundation. China is coming on board to eradicate their ivory trade by the end of 2017. That was and is an ongoing campaign by United for Wildlife. William and Kate's participation in the Chinese state dinner was all part and parcel of this campaign along with it being a royal engagement in the CC.

Mental Health has various events and organizations backing a royal campaign. HIV and AIDs is also addressed in various ways and means and is a campaign that is mostly geared to Harry right now it seems. The same could be said of Anne's involvement in the IOC and Save the Children. Sometimes there is a bigger picture behind the one picture at an engagement.

They all do engagements that are counted. Some engagements are related to campaigns.
 
There are and will be always royal engagements that the BRF carry out. One big difference that is beginning to rear its head and most likely continue onwards into the future is that alongside royal duties and engagements, there are going to be royal campaigns.

I'm not sure modern Royal campaigns are something new. You mention Anne's involvement with Save the Children. The same could be said of Diana's involvement with landmines and HIV or Charles' campaigns relating to the environment, architecture, town planning etc, Camilla's involvement with osteoporosis, literacy and domestic violence or Prince Phillip with the Duke of Edinburgh's award.

Contrary to media assumptions, this focus on specific issues long preceded William, Kate and Harry.
 
Military charities go back to WWI
 
I think the point I was trying to make and failed miserably at is that perhaps in the future, it will be the royal campaigns that will be more prominent for the working royals than for the many single "one off" appearances to cut ribbons or unveil plaques and open hospital wings kind of engagements.

Many different organizations joining together to promote and bring attention to an issue. Off the wall, an example could be United for Wildlife joining with environmental organizations and Save the Children for one huge charity athletic challenge somewhere with Harry pulling in his competitors from Walking with the Wounded and the Invictus games. (I'm drawing on some blips that have fleetingly run through my coffee deprived brain right now). Something like this promoted on a global level rather than on a local level.

With our world becoming more and more of a global society and instant communication around the globe, I think the work of philanthropists, royals and celebrities alike will start looking more to the global stage and take advantage of it.
 
Weekly Update to 5th January, 2016

A new year is up and running with both HM the Queen and Princess Anne undertaking official engagements this past week. Beatrice was also at a function that I have included as an ‘unofficial’ engagement for her. Royals and other information will only be added when they undertake an official, or in the case of the York girls, an unofficial engagement as I did last year with types of engagements. I am also adding ‘places where engagements took place itemizing the palaces while ‘other’ will be those done outside or inside places which aren’t one of the official or private residences of the royals.

HM The Queen – 1 (50%)
HRH Princess Beatrice – 0 (Unofficial – 1)
HRH The Princess Royal – 1 (50%)

FAILURE of British Monarchy Website to UPDATE CC

The weekly failure of the British Monarchy website: 2nd, 4th January, 2017 (as most of the family are still on holidays this is to be expected.

The League Table

HM The Queen – 1
HRH The Princess Royal – 1

Year to Date Total – 2

Percentage of Engagements

90s (Elizabeth, Philip) – 50%
60s (Charles, Camilla, Anne, Tim) – 50%
Over Retirement Age (65) (All the 60s upwards) – 100%

Number of Days on which a royal undertook Official Engagements to 5th January, 2017

HM The Queen – 1
HRH The Princess Royal – 1

Types of Engagements to 5th January, 2017

NOTE: If you add up the totals from this section they will invariably be more than the weekly and yearly totals because of the way engagements are described e.g. HM ‘received and invested an individual’ on the 3rd January which is why she has ONE engagement but there are two items listed here. I do NOT count ‘where received by the Lord Lt or someone else when there is more to the engagement unless it is at the start of an official visit overseas e.g. Anne was ‘received by the Deputy Lt of Oxfordshire for her engagement but that was simply a handshake before entering the conference type thing as opposed to a formal start to a tour such as we saw last year when Charles and Camilla visited the Middle East.

Conference – 1
Invested Individual – 1
Received – 1

Specific Charities or Organisations Supported via an Official Engagement to 5th January, 2017

Oxford Farming – Anne – 1

Overseas Engagements to 5th January, 2017

NIL to date
 
:previous:

Are you now including engagements undertaken that are not in the CC?

Princess Beatrice has not been mentioned.
 
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