King Charles outdoes Princess Anne to be crowned the hardest working member of royals
King Charles has overtaken Princess Anne as the hardest-working member of the royal family in 2025, despite facing weeks of cancer treatment.
The King has finally broken his younger sister’s record after being named the hardest-working royal in the royal family for the past five consecutive years.
The King held 533 meetings last year; this was his highest tally since his 541 in 2019. This included travel around the world, with three high-profile state visits to Italy, Canada and Poland.
The Princess Royal was just behind her sister with 478, but had more working days with 186 in total.
Analyst Patricia Treble described the King as “indefatigable” and shared that “it feels like the House of Windsor is making up for lost time.” Telegram.
Productivity was particularly high for the royal family last year, with a total of 2,459 appearances, according to an analysis documented in the Court Circular. Ten working royals completed 23 per cent more work in 2025 than in 2024, when the King and Princess of Wales were diagnosed with cancer.
This was followed by Prince Edward, who made 313 royal engagements, and the Duchess of Edinburgh, who made 235.
Queen Camilla soon fell behind this figure, with 228 decorations; this was just above the Duke of Gloucester, who had 212 decorations.
At 81, Duke Prince Richard is the second-oldest person to work for the Crown, surpassing even Prince William of Wales, who received 202 decorations in 2025; This figure was 139 more than the previous year.
The Duchess of Gloucester completed 113 and the 90-year-old Duke of Kent officiated 77 engagements in the year his wife, the Duchess of Kent, passed away in September, aged 92.
The Princess of Wales, a cancer survivor, has had 68 interviews in 2025 after revealing her recovery was much harder than expected. On a trip to Colchester hospital in Essex, he shared: “You put on a kind of brave face, stoicism, through treatment.
“The treatment is over, then it’s like, ‘I can go on, I can get back to normal,’ but actually the next stage is really hard.
“You no longer have to be under the clinical team, but you can’t function as normally at home as you perhaps once were used to.”
The entire royal family has increased their workload this year; Princess Anne has an increase of 10.39 per cent and the Princess of Wales has an increase of 423 per cent, reflecting how she is forced to step back from royal duties due to chemotherapy in 2024.
