Royal Life
We explore how the Duchess of Edinburgh went from PR girl to the Royal Family’s ‘secret weapon’
When she married Prince Edward, the youngest child of the late Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, back in 1999, few knew who the then Sophie Rhys-Jones was – and even fewer could predict how integral she would become within the Royal Family. Sophie and Edward share a daughter, Lady Louise Windsor, 20, and son, James, Earl of Wessex, 15, and have become treasured members of The Firm in recent years. And with Sophie, who turns 59 next month, now being described by royal insiders as ‘one of the new stars of the show’, it’s clear to see why she has risen through the royal ranks.
Humble beginnings
When she started dating Prince Edward back in 1993, Sophie was working in PR after training to become a secretary at a college in Kent, where she grew up. She spent four years working at Capital Radio in the press and promotions department, as well as public relations companies The Quentin Bell Organisation and MacLaurin Communications & Media. In 1996, she set up her own PR agency, RJH Public Relations, which she ran with her business partner, Murray Harkin, for five years. After marrying Prince Edward in a relatively low-key ceremony at St George’s chapel in Windsor in 1999, Sophie continued working in PR for another two years until she quit in 2001 to focus on royal duties full-time. Speaking about her pivot from a career in PR to a full-time working royal, Sophie said, ‘Certainly it took me a while to find my feet. The frustration was I had to reduce my expectations of what I could actually do. I couldn’t turn up at a charity and go “Right, I think you should be doing this” because that’s what I was used to doing in my working life. I had to take a really big step back and go, “OK, they want you to be the icing on the cake, the person to come in to thank their volunteers and funders, not necessarily to tell them how to run their communications plan.”’
Firm favourite
Despite finding things tough at the beginning, Sophie has come into her own in recent years. In 2022, she placed fourth on the ‘hardest working royal’ list, attending an impressive 138 royal engagements throughout the year. And it was often reported that
