2018 Recap: The Danish Royal Family’s work in review

One of the most important posts of the 2018 Recap is here! After starting counting the numbers of days worked by the Danish royal family in 2017, I did it again this year.

A few disclaimers before studying the data:

It is important to note that every member of the royal family works more than these numbers because there are countless hours of meetings and preparation behind each of these events and they are not on the calendar. Furthermore, both Prince Joachim and Princess Marie have day jobs. Prince Joachim works in the Armed Forces while Princess Marie is a special project assistant for the Danish Emergency Management Agency. Another important point is that the royal family did not work from February 13th to March 13th (with the exception of a few events for the Queen and a military dinner for the Queen and the Crown Prince couple on March 11th) because the Court was in a period of mourning after the death of Prince Henrik.

I included unannounced events in this tally as well as official family events such as Queen Margrethe’s birthday and the events surrounding Crown Prince Frederik’s birthday. The events surrounding Prince Henrik’s death and his funeral were not included.

Onto the data now!

As a whole, the family worked fewer days than in 2017 but it is understandable with the fact that Prince Henrik died.  For the year of 2018, someone in the family had a publicly announced event a total of 220 days of the year- 60% of the days in 2018. It was 260 days in 2017. Unlike last year, Queen Margrethe is not the member of the family who worked the most days. But with 93 days worked and considering the difficult year she had with the loss of her husband and her cousin Princess Elisabeth, it is still quite remarkable.

Princess Benedikte moved back to Denmark permanently last year after the death of her husband Prince Richard and it shows in her number! She worked 65 days in 2018, 9 more days than in 2017. I wonder what 2019 will hold for her! On another note, Queen Anne-Marie of Greece attended two official events with her sisters Queen Margrethe and Princess Benedikte this year and it was really great to see her so I hope we’ll see more of the three sisters together next year!

 

In my post last year, I wrote that I was surprised that Crown Princess Mary had worked more days than Crown Prince Frederik and that she was the member of the royal family that had worked the most days after the Queen. Well, this year, the balance is restored. While Crown Princess Mary maintains the same level of work with 95 days worked, Crown Prince Frederik improved his numbers this year working 100 days in 2018 despite having a short sick leave because of surgery. It is important to note that he attended the full week of Invictus Games in October and he was the only royal to do so. He is the member of the royal family who worked the most days. Out of the 365 days of the year, he was regent for 47 days which is 6 days more than in 2017 which means that Queen Margrethe has been abroad (mostly privately) slightly more than in 2017.

Prince Joachim and Princess Marie are the members of the Danish royal family that have the less worked days but they also are the two members with a day job. Princess Marie worked 52 days in 2018. That is the exact same number of days as in 2017 which makes her the most consistent member with Crown Princess Mary. We have seen more engagements abroad though so I hope this is a trend that will continue. On the other hand, Prince Joachim worked 57 days during 2018 which is 18 less days than in 2017. This can be explained by two things in addition to the period of mourning: while we usually get some glimpse into Princess Marie’s work with DEMA, we don’t usually know things about Prince Joachim’s private work with the military for obvious security reasons. We also learned through the Danish court that Prince Joachim had been traveling through Denmark to film a series of documentaries about what it means to be Danish. These documentaries will air at the end of 2019 and the shooting will continue until the summer of 2019 which might have an impact on Prince Joachim’s days worked number in 2019.

Here is a recap of the data, what do you think about these numbers? What are you expecting for 2019?

 

If you would like to use these numbers for your own article- please make sure to credit me and link back to my original post. If you have any questions or want more information about the data posted here, send me an email.