David Dimbleby, the historian and broadcaster, made a documentary called What’s the Monarchy For? The Windsors are absolutely furious about it, but they can’t attack Dimbleby directly, nor can they dispute much of the documentary on the record, because it might lend credence to it (plus, I think Dimbleby’s program is largely truthful). So what’s happening is so funny and predictable – royal sources and courtiers are huffing and puffing behind the scenes, which spurs on the royal reporters to fall all over themselves defending the Windsors. But they’re also doing that thing particular to British reporting – acting huffy about one thing, then slyly quoting the Windsors’ biggest critics. Here’s part of the Telegraph’s piece about whether Dimbleby was accurate when he said that King Charles is the first British billionaire king.

“How is the Royal family making more money than ever?” asks David Dimbleby, in his new BBC documentary on the monarchy. “And are they worth it?” The programme claims that for the first time, the British monarch has private wealth exceeding £1bn, citing estimates by the Guardian that King Charles’s personal assets are worth around £1.8bn.

Such claims surfacing in a Left-wing newspaper, as they did two years ago, is one thing. That they have now been given prominence and apparent credence by Britain’s public service broadcaster, conveyed to the nation by one of the corporation’s most respected presenters, is quite another. It’s telling, at a time of declining support for the monarchy, that republicans immediately seized on Dimbleby’s remarks, conscious that wealth is increasingly becoming a dirty concept among the young in particular.

On Wednesday, Narinder Kaur, the television presenter, delighted in objecting to a picture showing the sinful double whammy of the King knighting Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative former health secretary. “Rewarded for making Britain poorer by a king who is now a billionaire,” she said. “Proper kick in the teeth for the working class of Britain.”

“I think the current £1.8bn for Charles’s wealth is an underestimate,” says Norman Baker, the anti-monarchy former Lib Dem minister and author of Royal Mint, National Debt: The Shocking Truth About the Royals’ Finances. “I’d put it somewhere closer to £2.5bn because we don’t know the extent of his investment income. There’s no question Charles is a billionaire.”

Republicans have identified Charles’s wealth as a promising target for attacks, with the Royal family recently wounded by scandals surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Duke of York, and public support for the monarchy having dropped from 75 per cent in 2012 to 62 per cent now. Now, they’ve been given a helping hand from a surprising corner.

The King, said Dimbleby, “inherited more wealth than any monarch for generations”. It is true that over the course of his mother’s life, the Windsor monarchy was able to accumulate wealth through property, private collections, investments and the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which control vast amounts of land and property. Coupled with these assets and revenues, the monarchy’s exemption from inheritance tax and other tax arrangements meant that when Charles took his place on the throne, he became Britain’s first private billionaire monarch, according to the Guardian data cited by Dimbleby.

“The King’s personal wealth is accumulating with businesses run for private gain,” says Ed Owens, a historian of the modern monarchy. “He and his family collect priceless gifts, racehorses and art and the question is always, does this belong to an individual or the nation? We are living in an increasingly divided country. Among the younger generation who view extremes of wealth negatively, being a billionaire is a problem for the King.”

[From The Telegraph]

I’m sure there are a number of people who simply hate billionaires, but I think Charles’s billionaire status is much more complicated than that. It’s the fact that A) he inherited all of it tax-free, B) there is still so much mystery about royal finances overall, and C) what little people do know of royal wealth, it looks like it comes from screwing over taxpayers, slumlording and making vital services “pay” various duchies. But yes, overall… Charles is a billionaire. QEII was as well. The Scooter King will inherit it all, and I hope that’s the end of the line for all of this.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.