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Prince Charles is believed to have been planning to reduce the number of working members of the Royal Family to optimise the amount of duties carried out and costs. The Prince of Wales however may be forced to shelve his project as the succession of departures from public royal life delivered a huge blow to his objective. Speaking to Express.co.uk in June, royal author Phil Dampier said: “Prince Charles has said that he wants a slimmed down monarhcy but I don’t think he had in mind it would slim down quite as quickly and quite as much as it has.

“We’ve got Prince Philip who’s retired, we’ve got the Queen who is 94, Princess Anne is 70 this year. Prince Charles and Camilla are in their 70s.

“Harry and Meghan have left, and Andrew is out in the cold. It is slimmed down a lot already and I’m not sure, if it slims down much more, they’re going to struggle to fit all the jobs.

“There is scope for people like Sophie to step up and do more because she’s young, in her mid-50s.”

The Duke of Edinburgh officially retired after nearly 70 years spent representing the Queen both in the UK and abroad and the Queen began to offload a number of her duties to younger members of the family as she entered her 90s.

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Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, was forced to step down from his duties after his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview in November.

Despite Buckingham Palace claiming at the time the retirement from official life would be temporary, many experts have since suggeststed it is unlikely Andrew will resume his role as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal continues to unfold.

And in January, Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle announced they would take a step back from royal life to reduce the amount of pressure they faced because of public scrutiny.

The Prince of Wales and Prince Wiliam are believed to have attempted to strike a concilatory deal with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to allow them to continue representing the family but met with the opposition of the Palace.

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Harry and Meghan later agreed to a one-year trial period to test the waters outside of royal life and they have now set up their new headquarters in Los Angeles.

During the pandemic, Prince Charles led the Royal Family’s efforts to keep up the national morale despite being himself recovering from the coronavirus.

The Prince of Wales was seen to be counting on the help of Prince William and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge who also moved most of their operations online throughout the lockdown.

Sophie, the Countess of Wessex and Prince Edward also helped fill in the void of public engagegements with personalised messages to their supported charities and online meetings.

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Princess Anne, considered to be one of the hardest-working royals, also provided her eldest brother with her help and became an unlikely IT support technician to her mother the Queen when she took on her first online event. 

The Prince of Wales and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall were among the first royals to resume public duties after they stopped shielding at Birkhall, Scotland to relocate to their Gloucestershire home, Highgrove House.

The pair used their first engagement away from the Internet to pay tribute to NHS staff at the Royal Gloucestershire Hospital last month.

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