{"id":350831,"date":"2026-01-04T00:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/350831\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T00:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:38:09","slug":"duke-of-gloucester-81-quietly-outperforms-prince-william-in-number-of-royal-family-duties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/350831\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke of Gloucester, 81, quietly outperforms Prince William in number of Royal Family duties"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Duke of Gloucester, 81, quietly outperformed the heir to the throne in royal duties last year.<\/p>\n

Prince Richard, the second-oldest working member of the Royal Family, carried out 212 official engagements throughout 2025, surpassing Prince William’s tally of 202.<\/p>\n

The Prince of Wales did substantially increase his workload from 139 engagements in 2024, yet still fell short of his octogenarian cousin’s total.<\/p>\n

The duke conducted his duties without much public attention, steadily working through his schedule while the younger generation of royals attracted the spotlight.<\/p>\n

\"Duke<\/p>\n

Duke of Gloucester, 81, quietly outperforms Prince William in number of Royal Family duties<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

The comparison between the two figures offers a striking illustration of the varied approaches to royal service across different generations of the House of Windsor.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Princess Kate returned to public duties with 68 engagements following her announcement early in the year that she was in remission from cancer.<\/p>\n

During a visit to Colchester Hospital in Essex in July, she spoke candidly about her recovery: “You put on a sort of brave face, stoicism through treatment. Treatment’s done, then it’s like, ‘I can crack on, get back to normal,’ but actually, the phase afterwards is really, really difficult.”<\/p>\n

She added: “You’re not necessarily under the clinical team any longer, but you’re not able to function normally at home as you perhaps once used to.”<\/p>\n

\"DukeThe Duke and Duchess of Gloucester pictured arriving at the Guildhall | REUTERS<\/p>\n

The Prince and Princess of Wales have maintained that they prefer to focus on meaningful impact rather than simply accumulating appearances.<\/p>\n

They have also committed to protecting family time while their three children remain young, reserving school holidays and maintaining the daily school run.<\/p>\n

The King emerged as the most industrious member of the Royal Family in 2025, completing 533 engagements despite receiving weekly cancer treatment throughout the year.<\/p>\n

His total exceeded that of Princess Anne<\/a>, who recorded 478 engagements, though she worked across more individual days at 186.<\/p>\n

\"Kate<\/p>\n

Prince William and Kate have maintained that they prefer to focus on meaningful impact<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

The monarch’s schedule included travelling extensively across Britain, welcoming three state visits, and undertaking overseas trips to Italy, Canada and Poland.<\/p>\n

His 2025 figures marked a significant recovery from 2024, when his cancer diagnosis forced him to temporarily withdraw from public-facing duties, limiting him to 353 engagements.<\/p>\n

Buckingham Palace recently confirmed that his treatment had progressed so successfully that he would be “significantly” reducing his weekly sessions as they entered a “precautionary phase” from January.<\/p>\n

The 10 working royals collectively undertook 2,459 engagements in 2025, representing a 23 per cent rise from the 2,001 recorded the previous year when both the King and Princess of Wales received cancer diagnoses.<\/p>\n

\"King<\/p>\n

King Charles has beaten Princess Anne as 2025’s hardest-working royal<\/p>\n

| PA<\/p>\n

Analyst Patricia Treble described the monarch as “indefatigable” to the Telegraph and observed that as 2025 progressed, “it felt like the House of Windsor was making up for lost time”.<\/p>\n

Nearly all working royals expanded their schedules significantly, with increases ranging from Princess Anne’s 10.39 per cent to the Princess of Wales’s 423 per cent, the latter reflecting her near-complete withdrawal during chemotherapy in 2024.<\/p>\n

Ms Treble told the publication: “If there is one take-away from the data this year, it’s that the working royals are doing OK, for now.<\/p>\n

“But their numbers are shrinking – now 10, compared to 16 in 2018 – and there is no avoiding the effect that getting older is having on how much work they can do, and where they can do it.<\/p>\n

“Yet, the King is indefatigable. The 533 engagements he did in 2025 were the most he\u2019d done since 2019, when he did 541.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Duke of Gloucester, 81, quietly outperformed the heir to the throne in royal duties last year. Prince…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,120,1852,2331,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-350831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-prince-william","11":"tag-royal","12":"tag-sgg","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}