Circa 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were pushed out of the UK and told that they were unnecessary and unneeded for the future of the monarchy. The Sussexes offered several options, including various half-in solutions which would have them retaining various charitable and military patronages in the UK and basically working for the Firm for free. Those half-in options were rejected. As we now know, the Windsors’ plan was to destroy the Sussexes to the point where they divorced and Harry would come crawling back to take his “place” as the family’s scapegoat and workhorse. That obviously did not work out for the Windsors. The Sussexes’ absence also revealed just how thoroughly charisma-free and lazy that rest of Windsors are. Once QEII passed away, the whole institution has basically collapsed in less than two years. All this time, there’s been a list of a thousand charities, foundations and NGOs waiting to see if they’re going to get a new royal patron. It’s taken this long for those charities to be given an answer. And the answer is, in most cases, “lol no.” That’s not true – King Charles, a 75-year-old man with cancer, has now taken on 300 more charity patronages.
The King has taken on around 300 new charity affiliations following a major review of royal patronages. However, he was unable to prevent around 200 organisations losing their royal association amid a shortage of working royals.
A review of more than 1,000 patronages and presidencies held by the King and the Queen and those previously held by Queen Elizabeth II will result in one in five organisations receiving a letter in the coming days informing them that they have lost their royal links. Buckingham Palace sources insisted that they had retained as many affiliations as possible. The King, despite his age and ill health, has absorbed the vast majority of outstanding patronages, taking his total number to 669.
Of the 441 he held as the Prince of Wales, 367 have been retained either by him or another member of the Royal family, with 74 organisations losing out. The Queen, 76, has retained 91 of her 100 former associations and taken on 14 new ones.
Elizabeth II was patron of 492 organisations when she died in September 2022. Of those, the vast majority, 376, have been redistributed.
It is not yet known how many patronages the Prince and Princess of Wales have taken on to ease the burden. However, they have previously made clear that they would take a different approach to their roles, preferring to focus on a smaller number of key organisations and themes in order to create change. A royal aide was previously quoted as saying that the Princess, who like the King is currently undergoing treatment for cancer, might take on “one or two” new charities. Before the review, the Prince of Wales had 22 and his wife had 21. The couple also share the patronage of NHS Together and The Royal Foundation.
A royal source insisted that the process of “pruning” had been “very careful and very controlled” to ensure that no more patronages were lost than was absolutely necessary. The source added: “There had been a lot of speculation that with a smaller number of working members of the Royal family there would be a more wholesale relocation of patronages but rather than minimisation this is maximisation. We are retaining far more than had been expected.”
Palace aides are understood to have been surprised by the number of organisations that expressed an interest in maintaining a royal link, which influenced the decision-making process.
I’m sure many will respond with “FAFO, this is why they should have done everything they could to keep the Sussexes inside the tent.” But really think about it – even in some magical scenario where the Sussexes were working royals or part-time royals, the institution would still make a point of “snubbing” them and refusing to give them anything resembling a quality patronage. Charles would have assigned Harry the Exploding Diarrhea Trust and that would be it. Obviously, the most hilarious part of all of this is that the heir and his wife are still nowhere to be found. Even before Kate’s health issues, she was never taking on more patronages and more work. Please, of course not. Not when there are fake surveys and keen Early Years busy work to do. William is the biggest loser as well – the bulk of these patronages should be his, he should have AT LEAST 100 patronages as Prince of Wales, given that his father had more than three times as many as PoW. Oh well – the British taxpayer keeps spending more and more money on these clowns and they get less and less in return.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.