Meghan Markle ‘worked the least number of days in Royal Family’ last year

Meghan Markle worked the fewest days of anyone in the Royal Family last year, according to a round-up of every engagement in 2019.

Royal Writes, an independent royal-watching website, released its annual 'By The Numbers Royal Work Round-up' for 2019, which analyses how many official engagements each royal completed the previous year.

As usual, Prince Charles did the most work in the family, with the future King attending almost 550 engagements as tracked by the official Court Circular. He's the only Windsor who completed more than 500 engagements in 2019.

His sister Princess Anne completed fewer engagements but actually worked more days than Charles – 189 to his 160. The Prince of Wales often knocks off a number of engagements in a single day while on tour, as do many other royals.

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In contrast, Meghan had the lowest number of working days out of anyone in the Royal Family, with a total of just over 40.

Even 83-year-old Princess Alexandra worked more days, although Meghan attended more engagements.

But the Duchess of Sussex has a good excuse for doing less royal work than her peers, as she was busy with the different but no less challenging work of becoming a new mum.

She and Prince Harry took parental leave after their first child Archie Mountbatten-Windsor was born in May, and also took the last six weeks of 2019 off before dropping their bombshell announcement that they would be stepping down as senior royals.

Last year saw an 11% drop in royal engagements from 2018, although the total number was still above 3400.

That's partially due to Prince Andrew stepping away from his duties in November following the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and his disastrous Newsnight interview.

Engagements for royals can range from multi-day visits to hospitals to multi-hour banquets with heads of state to brief meetings with dignitaries. It's difficult to gauge how many hours someone has worked as the engagements are not precisely timed.

Most of the Queen's engagements consist of audiences rather than visits requiring her to leave the palace, which has increasingly become the case due to her advancing age.

Royal Writes is run by Canadian Patricia Treble, a devoted royal watcher for more than 15 years.

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