Prince Andrew's Birthday Reply (2018)

The 2nd reply is also from the UK, for the letter I sent Prince Andrew for his birthday. The envelope is the typical we see from the working British Royals. (Prince Andrew's cypher is on the back.)

The letter is the usual from his office. It is interesting that it doesn't mention the main reason I wrote, which was Prince Andrew's birthday. 

The letter was written by Captain Benedict (Ben) Tracey, Prince Andrew's new Assistant Equerry. Captain Tracey started working for the Royals last year as Prince Philip's Assistant Equery. Captain Tracey was the one who sent my reply for Prince Philip's birthday last year. 

You might remember Captian Tracey from last year's Remembrance Sunday service, where he laid Prince Philip's wreath at the Cenotaph, while Prince Philip watched from the Balcony above with the Queen. 

It is a little sad to see Prince Philip handing down some of his staff, but now that Philip is retired I guess he no longer needed an Assistant Equerry. Captain Ben Tracey is a member of the Grenadier Guards, so it makes sense he would shift to working with Prince Andrew, as Philip passed down his position as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards to Prince Andrew in December. 

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Writing to the Royals 

Princess Madeleine & Chris O'Neill welcome a little girl today!

HRH Princess (Name to be Announced) was born Friday, February 9th at 12:41 AM at Danderyd Hospital. The Princess weighs 3465 gram (Approx. 7.6 pounds) and 50 cm long (Approx. 19.6 inches). The little Princess is 10th in line to the Swedish Throne. Both mother and baby are doing well. The little Princess is the 3rd child of Princess Madeleine & Chris O'Neill, and King Carl Gustaf & Queen Silvia's 7th grandchild.

Friday 9th

• Birth of little Princess at Danderyd hospital in Stockholm
• 12:41 AM (Stockholm)
• Cannon Fire to mark the Birth 
• Noon
• 21 gun salute from Skeppsholmen saluting station as well as from Boden, Härnösand, Karlskrona and Göteborg.

Monday 12th

•  King Carl Gustaf holds Cabinet meeting, with Crown Princess Victoria
• 11:15 AM
• Announce the name and baby's title
• HRH Princess Adrienne Josephine Alice, Duchess of Blekinge
• Te Deum Service at Royal Palace Chapel
• 12:15 PM
• Attended by Royal Family
• King, Queen, Victoria, Daniel, Carl Philip, Sofia, & Chris

• Congratulatory lists at the Royal Palace
• 1-4 PM
• Well-wisher can sign the list to send their congratulations to the couple
• Crown Princess Victoria's name day Celebrations
• 3 PM

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark - Birthday Reply (2018)

A reply arrived today from Denmark. I had written at the end of January to Crown Princess Mary for her 46th Birthday.

The reply is their typical card we've seen over the years, although with the updated look. The Crown Prince Couple changed their card at the end of last year. I went into all the differences between the old version and the new version in our post about their Christmas reply.

Although it's not as pretty in the photo, the card has a lovely textured edge.

The message on this card is the same as past replies for Crown Princess Mary's birthday, except now the card is from the Cheif of the Court, not a Lady in Waiting.

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Writing to the Royals

March Q&A (2018)

As always, post your Royal Questions & I will get to them as soon as possible.

Question 1: What do you think about Harry, Meghan and Cambridges latest appearance together?

Answer: I thought it was great. It was wonderful to see them all together and I really enjoyed learning more about the Royal Foundation and its future goals. I gained a deeper appreciation and understanding of their work.

Question 2: What name do you think Princess Madeleine will choose for her third child? 

Answer: I really have no idea. I'm always really bad at guessing baby names. I think it will be a good Swedish name that also works well in English.

Question 3: What are your favourite royal replies?

Answer: This is another hard question to answer as there have been so many really great replies over the years.

There are so many reasons why a reply may be one my favourites:

• Signed by the Royal (real, autopen or printed)
• Personal message 
• Handwritten message
• An extra special event: 
• Wedding,
• Birth,
• Jubliee, 
• Milestone Birthday, 
• etc. 
• First reply I received from them
• Unusual reply
• Contains a photo
• Particularly if it is large, or a previously unseen photo

To list just a few of the many:

• Queen Paola of Belgium's 80th Birthday
• Passing of Prince Richard von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (Princess Benedikte of Denmark's husband)
• Queen Sofia of Spain 79th Birthday
• Queen Elizabeth's 90th Birthday
• Princess Eugenie & Jack Brooksbank's Engagement

Question 4: Have you ever wrote to Prince Alexander of Serbia, Prince Leka of Albanians or King Constantine of Greece? Do you have any replies or know if they reply to the letters? 

Answer: Of those 3, I have only written to Prince Leka of Albania. I wrote for his wedding a few years ago. No reply and I don't think I've ever seen a reply from him. I have seen replies from the Serbian and Greek royals before, but haven't written to them.

Question 5: I just received a reply from Duchess Sarah, a photo glued on a piece of cardboard. I was wondering how do you store the ones you have received? It will not fit in my binder nor the plastic. 

Answer: They fit in my binder so I store them there. Sarah's envelopes from those photos glued to cardboard are the only thing that has ever been too big to fit in my binders, and since the envelope aren't really anything special I threw them away.

Since the cardboard isn't anything special you could try to carefully trim it down. You could also just get a box where you store oversized items.

Question 6: Would you mind sharing a photo of your binder or making a post about it? I want to store my letters somewhere but I don’t know how.

Answer: I've reorganized my replies a few times over the years.

I started out storing them in a decorative box, with all the different royal replies together in the order I had received them. I kept all the replies in their envelopes and it was a little hard to flip through and look at each one.  And I had some replies from Duchess Sarah that were too big to be kept in the box, so they were stored elsewhere.

After about a year, I moved my replies to 2 binders, British & Foreign Royals. The Foreign Royals were divided by country and the British Royals were divided by individual royal.

Late 2015

When my binders started getting too full I divided the British royals into 3 binders (William/Kate/Harry, Queen/Philip/Charles/Camilla, and other British Royals), and moved the foreign royals to a bigger binder. Over time, I switched from having a section for each individual British royal to grouping them by couple/family. This is much easier since for Christmas, anniversaries, births, etc. I often write to the couple, not one royal.

Mid 2017

In November, I reorganized my binders again. The 4 binders were getting a little full, and I wanted to give myself room to grow over the next few years. So, I expanded the binders from 4 to 7 and there is now plenty of room for future replies.




I typed up title pages for each section and labelled the binders better. At the bottom of the title pages, I have stickers to note which years, I have replies from. (For some where I have gaps in years, I have a sticker with an x through the year.)

Each reply gets its own page (or two pages if needed). The replies are ordered based on when I received the reply. And I keep all the envelopes, except a few of Duchess Sarah's that were too big to fit in the binder. Each page is numbered with a sticker, and the color denotes the year I got the reply. This makes it really easy to flip through and find a certain reply from a certain year. (This is especially helpful since some royals send out almost identical replies year after year.) 

9th & 10th Reply in the Queen & Prince Philip Binder

To make it easy to flip through the binders different sections, I put red tape on each of the title page.