Princess Kate’s number of royal engagements has gone up in 2023, putting paid to Omid Scobie’s claims in his book Endgame that she was known for avoiding royal duties.
According to data provided by digital PR agency Reboot, Kate’s engagements went up by two percent this year from 90 in 2022 to 92 in 2023.
This puts Kate in third place on the list of those whose engagements increased the most, with the Duke of Gloucester at the top of the list and King Charles in second.
The Duke’s engagements went up from 100 in 2022 to 113 in 2023, marking a rise of 12 percent, while the King’s number went up by eight percent from 181 in 2022 to 197 in 2023.
While Princess Anne was once again named the hardest-working royal, with the most official engagements at 212, her number has in fact dropped by one percent from 214 in 2022.
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Kate has previously been criticised for not taking on as many royal duties as expected, as she juggles her work with being a mother to Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
She has stepped up in 2023 far more than her husband Prince William, who had 16 fewer engagements this year than in 2022, going down from 126 to 110.
In Endgame Omid Scobie claimed that Kate was left feeling “well out of her comfort zone” by her royal duties, especially at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2019.
Mr Scobie wrote in the book that after Kate first joined the Firm palace aides “never pushed her too hard” because her main royal duty was to produce “heirs and spares”.
He claimed: “Not long after their marriage, some critics deemed her ‘lazy’ because she avoided regular royal duties. Over the years, several factors made it easier to circumvent too many public-facing events, including William’s fierce protectiveness and her vital role of producing an heir (and spares) first and foremost.
“The Palace gatekeepers have always been more vigilant when it comes to Kate, never pushing her too hard, as the road to Queendom is a marathon, not a sprint.
“‘I think for a long time people were afraid to make her do something that would make her uncomfortable,’ a senior aide told me.”
The royal author also gave the Princess a rather cruel nickname as he dubbed her ‘Katie Keen’ in the book and dismissed her as “technically a part-time working royal” due to her smaller workload.
He wrote: “Where other senior royals are out and about several times a week, meeting people across the length and breadth of the country, Kate has long maintained a smaller work schedule that helped her check off the required royal boxes while saving time for her roles as a mother and a wife.”
