What exactly do the Royal family do?
It can seem like it’s all parties and fun, but being a member of the Royal family actually comes with plenty of official tasks.
An exclusive poll by Yahoo UK and YouGov has revealed that four in ten Brits would like to be part of the Royal family in some way.
But what exactly would that entail?
In the latest edition of Yahoo’s podcast Britain Is a Nation Of… , we discuss what jobs you might have to do if you were a Royal. Here are a few:
Carrying out engagements
From foreign visits to those on home soil, working members of the Royal family spend plenty of time travelling around carrying out engagements.
The Royal Family carries out 2,000 official engagements each year in the UK and overseas.
The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, has been described as the hardest working royal after carrying out 518 engagements in 2018, following closely by the Prince of Wales who undertook 507.
Princes William and Harry’s wives Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle were much further down the list – though both had fairly good excuses, the former having given birth and the latter only just joining the Royal family.
Reading and writing letters
The Royal family collectively received and answered 100,000 letters last year. That’s a lot of pen pals.
Listen to a discussion of these statistics on Yahoo and YouGov’s podcast, Britain is a Nation of…
Entertaining
The Royal family entertained a whopping 70,000 people last year at dinners, lunches, receptions and garden parties at the Royal residences.
Politics
As a Royal you’re not exactly exempt from politics – especially if you’re the Queen.
The monarch has to have a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister to keep up to speed with what’s going on in Westminster, as well as giving Royal Assent on all new laws.
Investitures
Each time someone is knighted or given and MBE, OBE or any other honour, a member of the Royal family is involved in handing it out. That adds up to a decent few hours of ceremonies and a lot of honours.
Charities
The Queen alone is apparently patron of at least 300 charities and around 3,000 organisations list a member of the Royal Family as patron or president.
Some members of the Royal Family have also established their own charities such as The Prince’s Trust, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme and The Princess Royal Trust for Carers.
This survey was made possible by YouGov’s panel of 6 million respondents. Join the trend and share your opinions with the world today.
