How rich is King Charles? Coronation prompts scrutiny of royal wealth. (2024)

There will be a lot of bling.

Historically, all this projected the power of the British monarchy. The elaborate coronation rituals still help legitimize the royal transition — and sell the royal brand.

But the glitzy celebration, expected to cost British taxpayers tens of millions of pounds, may also highlight a liability for Charles. With a new king has come renewed scrutiny of the wealth of the royal family and heightened skepticism about how much the public should be subsidizing it.

The majority of Britons support the monarchy, and many have a favorable view of Charles, according to opinion polls — although he is not nearly as popular as his mother was. Many believe the royal family is a moneymaker for the country, because it helps attract so many tourists. Others take pride in the monarchy as a symbol of British heritage.

When you consider its benefits, it “really isn’t expensive,” said William Shawcross, the official biographer of Charles’s grandmother, the Queen Mother. Along with continuity and stability, the monarch “represents, if you like, the soul of the nation.”

A growing minority in Britain, though, view the royal family as an expensive relic.

People may find it amusing when they realize the king technically owns all the swans in England and Wales, and a surprising number of sea creatures, including the whales, dolphins and porpoises in the waters around the United Kingdom.

But critics, especially the young, seriously question why a democratic society pays to support a man with a symbolic job. They resent having to pay a 40 percent inheritance tax while King Charles paid zero on the estate thought to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars that he inherited from his mother last year.

The royal family owns or profits from more than 1 percent of the land in the United Kingdom. (By comparison, the top 10 landowners in the United States collectively hold 0.7 percent of the land.) That concentration of wealth is especially galling to some amid a cost-of-living crisis in Britain.

Palace officials did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but they have been keen to promote the coronation as a “sustainable” event, with fewer guests and a shorter parade route than Queen Elizabeth II’s.

Much has been made about the idea that Charles intends to modernize and “slim down” the monarchy. That sounds appealing to those who think the royals cost more than they are worth.

But don’t expect him to start giving all the royal residences to the public — although there may be more access. (Exit through the gift shop.)

People familiar with his past financial dealings and his vision anticipate that rather than decreasing spending, Charles may seek ways to bring in more money — with profits enriching public coffers and charities, but also the royal family and the crown.

“He will make sure he slims it down, but it won’t cost less money,” said Robert Jobson, author of “Our King.”

How rich is the king? There is no public number — a point of consternation in itself. The Sunday Times Rich List this month estimated Charles’s personal net worth to be 600 million pounds (about $750 million). The Guardian, which tasked a team of nine reporters with investigating, came up with an even higher figure for his fortune: 1.16 billion pounds ($1.44 billion).

And that’s just for what typically counts as his personal wealth: his private Balmoral Castle and Sandringham Estate, art, gems, cars, horses and decades of savings and financial investments.

Buckingham Palace officials called the Guardian’s calculations “a highly creative mix of speculation, assumption and inaccuracy.”

But people familiar with the royal family’s arrangements suggest the Windsors may not realize the value of what they have, or what’s actually theirs.

“I doubt that even the king knows all the priceless things stored away in various places,” one top British government official said, speaking by custom on the condition of anonymity. There is no record of some of the things handed down through generations, the official said. “And even today we do not know: Is it the family’s? Or is it the nation’s?”

A recent policy states that gifts received in an “official capacity” are “not the private property” of the royal family. Still, the ambiguity of “official” allowed Elizabeth to claim horses from world leaders as personal gifts that didn’t need to be declared.

The most contentious debate over what rightly belongs to the royals centers on the huge landed estates claimed by medieval kings and passed down to their heirs.

As the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, Charles received an annual windfall from the Duchy of Cornwall, established by King Edward III in 1337 to support his son. The estate has grown to more than 130,000 acres in 20 counties in southern England and Wales, and Charles helped build it into a sophisticated real estate portfolio worth more than 1 billion pounds ($1.2 billion). Assets include farmland and woodlands, as well as the Oval cricket ground in London, offices, vacation rentals and residential developments.

People who have worked with Charles describe him as a hands-on landlord.

He hired smart business executives and would call them at all hours, according to a former duchy representative who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. “Sometimes it was about trivial things, sometimes it was important. And, sometimes because he just wanted views and opinions. He is a bit of a worrier.”

The heir can’t sell core duchy properties. But he is entitled to the profits from leasing rights and investments, which for Charles in recent years amounted to an annual payment of more than 20 million pounds ($25 million). He voluntarily paid income tax, but the royal duchies, unlike other businesses and landed estates in Britain, are exempt from corporate and capital gains taxes.

When Elizabeth died, the Duchy of Cornwall passed to the new heir, Prince William, and Charles, as monarch, began receiving profits from the Duchy of Lancaster.

This second estate, an extension of land seized by King Henry III in 1265, encompasses 45,000 acres in England and Wales. It includes farms, castles, quarries, mines, offices, hotels, golf courses and prime London real estate. At the time of the queen’s death, she was receiving more than 20 million pounds in annual income from it.

The family also benefits from the Crown Estate — yet another collection of land holdings, this one originating from the Norman Conquest in the 11th century. Today, the 15.6 billion pound ($19.4 billion) portfolio includes marquee properties such as London’s Regent Street, the Windsor Estate, shopping malls, much of the coastline and even the seabed out to 12 nautical miles offshore. Wind farm leases on the seabed are contributing to soaring profits.

Different from the duchies, the Crown Estate is managed by the government and its profits go to the state treasury. A set percentage then goes to the royals in the form of the “Sovereign Grant,” earmarked for official travel and entertainment, property upkeep and staff salaries. A “golden ratchet” clause means the yearly grant can’t go down even if profits do.

The British royals maintain they are good value for the money. Their latest annual report noted that the Sovereign Grant amounted to 86.3 million pounds — or 1.29 pounds per person in Britain (roughly $1.60).

But there is a lot left out of that calculation. It doesn’t count all the highly lucrative tax exemptions. Nor does it figure that the royals pay little, if anything, to live in some of the finest palaces in the world, while having access to a trove of national treasures, such as the Crown Jewels and 600 artworks by Leonardo da Vinci. And, most of all, it doesn’t consider that many people believe the monarchy has no right to profit from vast tracts of land and the seabed just because of ancient custom.

Elizabeth was generally granted a high degree of deference on her finances. She also had a reputation for thrift that served her well — even as she presided over an increase in spending, indulged a penchant for thoroughbreds and employed a large staff.

The tabloids and public relished anecdotes about her preference for breakfast cereal stored in Tupperware, and about how she liked to reuse wrapping paper. A chef revealed she once sent a lemon back to the kitchen for repurposing.

“The queen was personally frugal, right down to the Tupperware,” royal biographer Robert Lacey told The Washington Post. “But institutionally, she was quite extravagant. And there was never much pressure on her to slim down the institution.”

She did have to give some things up. The government told her there would be no repairs or replacement of the royal yacht. And amid debate about who would pay to rebuild Windsor Castle after a 1992 fire, she volunteered to start paying income tax and opened Buckingham Palace to paying visitors for the first time. Those proved popular moves in a year when royal family scandals and separations had soured public opinion.

As with the queen, palace aides over the years have shared stories about Charles’s frugality, in his case grounded in ardent environmentalism. “When you are having tea with him, he gets any leftovers wrapped up and brought back for his next meal, and the next one,” his former private secretary, Clive Alderton, once recounted.

In a Vogue magazine interview about “sustainable fashion,” Charles said: “I’m one of those people who hate throwing anything away. Hence, I’d rather have them maintained, even patched if necessary, than to abandon them.”

But he has had a tougher time than his mother did in making the frugal reputation stick.

He has been called a “clotheshorse.” He is known to love luxury cars. When visiting friends, Tina Brown reported in her book “The Palace Papers,” the highly particular Charles liked to bring his own bed, a toilet seat and Scottish landscape paintings.

“He likes flowers and a harpist” when hosting dinner parties, royal biographer Robert Hardman told The Post.

Charles’s staff touted in 2010 that he halved his taxpayer-funded entertainment expenses by shifting from dinner parties to drink receptions and cut travel costs by accepting a freebie from Canada. Private secretary Michael Peat told reporters at the time, “We are always keeping an eye on the economic climate. We do live in the real world — for the most part anyhow.”

But the next year, Charles’s spending on travel and entertainment was up again. And he wouldn’t reveal the cost of William and Catherine’s lavish wedding. “What really counted was the happiness of the occasion,” Peat said then. “Obviously, the Prince of Wales spent the majority of the costs, but I don’t think generally people say how much weddings cost, do they?”

The public bill for wedding security, it later turned out, topped 6 million pounds (about $10 million at the time).

For years it was reported as an article of faith: Once he became king, Charles would reduce the number of royal family members who benefit from government largesse. “I think what Charles has already indicated is that the monarchy is going to be smaller,” former prime minister Gordon Brown told the BBC in September, suggesting the new king would move to make it “more like a Scandinavian monarchy.”

There’s no sign yet, though, that the family that rides in Rolls-Royces, Aston Martins and helicopters intends to become like the relatively modest “bicycling monarchies” of Scandinavia.

Two government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not official spokesmen for the king, said he is working to decrease reliance on the taxpayers and find new ways to fund his official expenses. They said he plans to expand the window for admission-paying tourists at Buckingham Palace and broaden access to other royal landmarks, including Balmoral.

More royal merchandise is going on sale, too, including a new $47 gin that’s infused with raspberries grown at Windsor. Charles has a history of creating new brands. His Duchy Organic food, sold by the upscale Waitrose supermarket chain, has raised millions for charity.

Norman Baker, a former Home Office minister who writes about royal use of public money, said that if Charles is to make any meaningful economic reductions, he needs to cut back on income he receives from royal estates and the government. “Stuff like having fewer people on the balcony — it’s all around the edges. The Sovereign Grant and the duchies are the meat of the issue.”

To that end, when the Crown Estate announced in January that new wind farm deals were expected to bring in an additional 1 billion pounds ($1.2 billion) annually, Charles said the windfall should be redirected “for the wider public good.” He asked the government for an “appropriate reduction” in the money he receives through the Sovereign Grant. But this was widely seen as a preemptive, publicity-oriented move. The percentage was already set to go down in four years, after completion of work at Buckingham Palace. And because of exploding profits, the cash amount he receives won’t necessarily drop.

“Whatever his motivations were, it was the right thing to do,” said Sally Bedell Smith, who has written four books on the royal family. “Now, I don’t know if this is a slippery slope and people are going to say, ‘Well, you get another windfall from this or that — maybe you should give us a portion of that.’”

Molly Scott Cato, a Green Party politician and an economics professor, said the notion that the monarch has ownership rights to the seabed is “just completely absurd and out of date. And, to be fair to Charles, I think he kind of agrees with that.”

In the end, public concern is about fairness and equality, said Liz Saville Roberts, a member of Parliament from the Welsh nationalist party. People are struggling financially. And then they “hear about these extraordinary sums — millions in profits to the monarchy.”

About this story

Reporting by Karla Adam in London and Mary Jordan in London and Washington. Story editing by Marisa Bellack. Graphics by Júlia Ledur. Video by Andy Trace and Joseph Snell. Project coordination by Reem Akkad. Photo editing by Sandra Stevenson. Illustration by María Alconada Brooks. Copy editing by Frances Moody and Martha Murdock.