Prince William and Kate, The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are seen after watching the Royal Variety Performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London on November 18. Photo / AP
Prince William and Kate, The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are seen after watching the Royal Variety Performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London on November 18. Photo / AP
OPINION:
What can $2.53 get you? Turns out, a Twix multipack, one and a half packets of Tesco Liquorice Allsorts or a working monarchy.
In the scheme of things, $2.53 is, literally, loose change but that figure also happens to represent how much the royal family "costs' each Briton, every year.
And while we have pondered a number of vexing questions about the royal family this year – are they racist? Cruel? Will the whole ermine-trimmed dog-and-pony show survive the passing of the Queen or come toppling down in a Real Housewives-esque blaze of ignominy and tawdriness? – one which has been largely overlooked is, are they good value?
Today we have an answer, sort of, to that – one that is excellent news if you are a Princess Anne-phile and pretty dismal if you happen to be firmly in the pro-Kate, Duchess of Cambridge camp.
See, the official work statistics for the year have started to come out, that is, how many official engagements each of the remaining working members of the royal house have undertaken in 2021.
(Obviously the final figures won't come out until later in the month when we are all thoroughly sick of turkey leftovers and the tinsel has started to sag but nor are they likely to change much.)
Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, arrive for the Together At Christmas community carol service at Westminster Abbey in London on December 8. Photo / AP
And those numbers? Those cold-hard numbers that irrefutably reflect how hard, or not, an HRH has put their shoulder to the palace wheel? Well, there is one particular Duchess who comes off looking less-than-golden.
Here's how things stand. Anne, a woman whose signature quiff is a masterstroke of backcombing, bobby pins and rectitude, notched up 368 engagements, including 13 investitures, which is more of the sword-required ceremonies than Prince Charles and Prince William managed to undertake combined (six and three respectively).
Still, her older brother did take out the second spot, with Charles just squeaking into second place with 360 engagements.
So what of William and his wife Kate, the great shining hopes of monarchists and commemorative china collectors? He hit 232 while she languished far behind on … 115.
Sure, she has three young children at home but she also has a household staff including a full-time nanny and devoted parents who can be called on for babysitting duty. (In 2019, a dog walker bumped into Carole Middleton out with grandson and future throne-sitter Prince George in rural Berkshire who reported that the little boy insisted, "I'm called Archie".)
Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge views articles on display at the Faberge in London: Romance to Revolution exhibition during a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on December 2. Photo / AP
Last year, Kate hit a similar figure just into the three digits, in 2019 managed just over 80 engagements and in 2018 was a nudge closer to 100, but keep in mind, those were in years which either included lockdowns, or she was pregnant or on maternity leave.
While I don't think there is a skerrick of doubt that she and William (but especially her) "won" the pandemic, doing a bang-up job Zooming with enough Blitz-era pep to power Brixton, today's numbers cast something of a pall over the question of her work ethic.
In contrast to her aunt-in-law, and owner of the UK's largest collection of mustard serge suits, Anne, it is impossible not to conclude that Kate comes out of this looking a tad … work shy.
And this brings us back to the value question.
That $2.53 figure represents how much the Sovereign Grant costs per person. (The Grant is the 25 per cent of Crown Estate profits the royal family keeps to pay for the upkeep of property owned by the Crown, e.g. Windsor Castle, and to pay for official travel and office-related expenses, e.g. staff, of the working members of the royal family.)
But that dosh doesn't actually keep the Windsors' in Gordon's Gin or Jack Russell dog food, rather that money comes from the coffers of the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall.
Assuming that Anne gets the same amount of money from her mother, via the Duchy of Lancaster, as her brother Prince Andrew, then that means she pockets $487,000 each year, which in turn means then her "rate" works out at $1,321 per official engagement.
Princess Anne during the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London, on November 14. Photo / AP
William and Kate are the annual beneficiaries of the largesse of the Duchy of Cornwall to the tune of an estimated $4.39 million annually. Combined, the Cambridges hit 347 engagements, meaning their "rate" was $12,651 per outing.
And that is a huge problem if you happen to either be the Duke or Duchess or anyone interested in the house of Windsor enduring to limp its way into the 22nd century.
The key criticism, lobbed with frequent and combative delight, by Fleet St in the early days of the couple's marriage was that they were essentially lazy.
"Meddling Wills is throne idle," The Sun declared in 2016 while famously, pre-marriage, in 2008, the Daily Mail reported that the Queen was becoming "increasingly concerned" with Kate because she did not have a job. (And nor did she get one – Kate never had a full-time gig prior to her marriage to William.)
It was only in 2017 that the Cambridges became full-time working members of the royal family, having previously managed to convince the Queen, up until then, to let them only clock on occasionally so that they could enjoy a normal family life in Norfolk.
However, since then, and having moved to London, William and Kate have established themselves as the shining, great hopes of the royal family, the duo whose public appeal is fundamental to The Firm surviving the seismic tumult just in the offing. (A funeral, a coronation, a new King and maybe even a new Queen.)
Absolutely integral to this "William and Kate save the Crown" plan is for the unspoken bargain between the monarchy and the public to endure, and will only happen if the rabble accepts the royal family is not only relevant but useful to contemporary society.
Buckingham Palace desperately needs the Cambridges to be held with some degree of respect by the masses and for the couple's vision of the royal family – as an engaged and tentatively activist force – to win widespread approval.
Which is why, anything that introduces even the vaguest suggestion that they might be overpaid part-timers is inherently dangerous. Anything that dings or tarnishes the Cambridges' reputation is, in effect, dinging the chances of the monarchy lasting.
There's no rest for the wicked but it seems like there is plenty for some members of the Queen's family.
