A few days ago, the “rent” paid by the Prince and Princess of Wales was revealed. This is the rent for Forest Lodge, their millionth forever home and the Windsor property which they swear will be their home whenever they’re king and queen-consort. Prince William and Kate wanted a gold star for paying £307,500 annually for Forest Lodge, but they don’t want to admit that the lease was determined before their royal protection “decided” that William and Kate also needed to grab 150 acres of public park land for their “estate.” Anyway, the latest addition to this story is that their lease agreement has a weeding clause. William and Kate must maintain their garden and “keep it in good condition, clean and tidy and free from weeds [and] must preserve all the trees, bushes, shrubs and plants in your garden.” Again, does that go for the whole 150 acres? And why would the Crown Estates need to specify that? Is it because of that Middleton-adjacent pot farm??
Meanwhile, we’ve known for years that William and Kate don’t like “live-in help.” Even their nanny Maria does not live within their forever home(s). They have plenty of maids and cooks and such, but none of them live on site either. Well, Robert Hardman has more – apparently, there’s no “butler.”
The Prince and Princess of Wales moved into their new home, Forest Lodge, in November last year, and there is one member of staff the royal couple reportedly won’t have. According to royal biographer Robert Hardman, William and Kate have ruled out employing a royal butler. The author made this revelation in his book, New King, New Court.
Robert wrote: “The couple did not seek to boost the staff numbers at Adelaide Cottage, not least because there would be little room to do so. Reports that the Prince was hiring a valet were knocked back. The Kensington Palace team does include a ‘yeoman’, a multi-tasking attendant who looks after everything from luggage to uniforms, but there is no ‘gentleman’s gentleman’ on the staff. ‘And certainly no butler,’ adds one source. ‘It’s very much them at home with the kids.’”
Hardman has it wrong – William does employ a valet, those claims were not “knocked back.” Now, whether William’s valet knows what he’s doing is another story altogether. Since William got a valet, he’s wandered around in wrinkled robes and too-tight trousers and he keeps trying to make French-made cardigans happen. As for Hardman’s other claim… I actually believe that they don’t have a butler. It’s more like… Carole Middleton comes over and organizes everything. I also think it speaks to how Kate doesn’t really know how to run/organize a house in the same way that someone like Rose Hanbury knows how to run a house. It shows a difference in class for these people.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Kensington Palace.
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- The Princess of Wales during a visit to the RHS’s Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital in Essex. The visit coincides with the donation of 50 Catherine’s Rose plants, named after the princess by the RHS with funds from sales going to the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. Picture date: Wednesday July 2, 2025.,Image: 1017655843, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Stefan Rousseau/Avalon
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- The Princess of Wales planting a rose during a visit to the RHS’s Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital in Essex. The visit coincides with the donation of 50 Catherine’s Rose plants, named after the princess by the RHS with funds from sales going to the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. Picture date: Wednesday July 2, 2025. PA Photo.,Image: 1017656800, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Stefan Rousseau/Avalon
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- The Princess of Wales during a visit to the RHS’s Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital in Essex. The visit coincides with the donation of 50 Catherine’s Rose plants, named after the princess by the RHS with funds from sales going to the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. Picture date: Wednesday July 2, 2025. PA Photo.,Image: 1017656825, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Stefan Rousseau/Avalon
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- The Princess of Wales planting a rose during a visit to the RHS’s Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital in Essex. The visit coincides with the donation of 50 Catherine’s Rose plants, named after the princess by the RHS with funds from sales going to the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. Picture date: Wednesday July 2, 2025. PA Photo.,Image: 1017656994, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Stefan Rousseau/Avalon
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- The Princess of Wales planting a rose during a visit to the RHS’s Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital in Essex. The visit coincides with the donation of 50 Catherine’s Rose plants, named after the princess by the RHS with funds from sales going to the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. Picture date: Wednesday July 2, 2025. PA Photo.,Image: 1017657021, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Stefan Rousseau/Avalon
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- Miami, FL – Ivanka Trump meets with students at the SLAM Academy before holding a campaign event for her father in Miami. Pictured: Ivanka Trump BACKGRID USA 28 OCTOBER 2020 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 20: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Captain General Royal Marines, visits 42 Commando Royal Marines at their base in Bickleigh to carry out a Green Beret presentation at Dartmoor National Park on February 20, 2019 in Plymouth, England.,Image: 535413200, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: NO UK USE FOR SEVEN DAYS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: – / Avalon (in process) / Avalon
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- The Prince and Princess of Wales, followed by the Princess Royal and the Duke of Edinburgh arriving for the State Banquet for President of France Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron, at Windsor Castle, Berkshire, on day one of the French President’s state visit to the UK Featuring: William, Prince of Wales, Catherine, Princess of Wales Where: Windsor, United Kingdom When: 08 Jul 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
These writers want people to think the keens do it all and don’t need help. Like keen scrubbing floors and scooter doing handy man chores and cooking for the kids before the school runs. They have lots of help and I doubt they spend time under the same roof
Lazy kate and lazy william cant even show up for work, i doubt very much that they would keep up with the weeds cooking gardening cleaning up after the cushions and the lamps and the plates that are on the floor after their fights and yelling matches behind closed doors. Those lazies have nothing wholesome or homesteady about them. He doesnt do school runs much. They 100% have a butler that’s not called a “butler”. The “butler” hides under another name like house manager or personal atttendant or the “CEO” he was looking for 2 years ago. They would never allow for anybody to live with them, there is too much skeletons and roses bushes to hide in their palaces
No live ins because they (in my opinion) don’t live together and when they are together and the incandescent one rages more than pillows (in my opinion) are thrown. We can’t have the help see that no matter if there are nda’s!! At some point people will talk!
Exactly what I was coming here to write.. I think we all suspect exactly what Willy is and they don’t like witnesses, it interferes with the gaslighting.
There is no “live in” staff because they live in the cottages on the estate. Same thing at AC – they lived across the driveway. Its just enough distance that W&K can get praise for no live in staff when they’re closer than my kids bus stop is to my house. (thats an exaggeration bc our bus stop is really close but you get the point lol).
The title “butler” is old fashioned and gendered. The more common term these days is “house manager.” Yes, it’s true they don’t have a butler, but I bet they have a house manager.
Just like us.
I don’t even understand the point of these stories. Are we supposed to read this and feel like they are just like us? Because I don’t. Oh so your staff doesn’t live in the house with you, okay. You still have five homes with 8 to 10 bedrooms each, sitting on acres of land.
You don’t have to punch a clock anywhere. No one is holding you to account on how many hours you worked. You’re not trying to fit doctors visits, vacation, and sick days into an allotted amount of time. I just don’t understand the point of this. It’s like middle class cosplay, but they’re so out of touch they don’t realize how insulting it actually is.
Its because they’re trying to do this “middle class cosplay” as you put it but they have no clue what being middle class actually is (or even upper class, but the upper class who works for their incomes.) So they think not having a butler means they’re middle class when the reality is….the fact that its even a discussion means they’re not.
Anyway, I can believe they dont have a butler. from my understanding after years of watching period pieces lol – butlers interact with the kitchen a great deal, run the staff along with the housekeeper, keep track of things like silver, china and crystal, prepare the house for visitors and entertaining, help to organize things like hunting parties or whatever.
W&K dont entertain, at all, not even friends there for a weekend hunting party*, so I feel like that removes 75% of the need for a butler. I’m sure there is a housekeeper, chef, and other staff that do the cleaning, cooking, organizing – but maybe not to the extent a butler to supervise it all is needed. Probably one or two housekeepers is sufficient.
*my guess is when William does host hunting parties its at Sandringham and that staff takes care of it.
The article also doesn’t admit that they have separate staff for each house. The multiple nannies travel with them. Everyone else is assigned to a house and stays there. The housekeeper for 1A oversees the staff at 1A and lives in her own apartment on the KP grounds. The housekeeper for Anmer oversees the staff at Anmer and lives in Norfolk, etc.
Each house has a full complement of staff including housekeeper, cook, cleaners, groundkeepers. All stay at their assigned location and do not move around to work a different location.
What I’ve always wondered about this is what does the staff do when they’re away? Okay Anmer they’re back there often enough that the staff is probably busy. But for example the staff at Clarence house – when Charles goes to Balmoral for a month in August what do they do? take time off? Just clean the same thing every day? What does the staff at 1A do considering the family is pretty much never there except to get ready before Trooping or something?* What happened to the staff at BP that was specifically there for the royal family? (like not the staff there for BP as a tourist attraction or exhibits etc.)
*or so we’ve been told, story is different if William lives there.
I can see groundskeepers having year-round employment; maybe household staff have reduced hours/obligations when their principals are not in residence? Somebody needs to ensure that there have been no break-ins, pest control, make sure the pipes don’t freeze (I’m thinking of the times I’ve been away from home for months at a time for work purposes; I’d have friends check on my place–they did miss the great mouse invasion of 2014, though).
My guess is that the Anmer house staff probably help at sandringham too. Since these properties are all privately owned by the monarch, I suspect William doesn’t pay the Anmer staff himself.
KP staff are likely much busier than they want to admit.
“middle class cosplay” 🤣
Ok, this makes them so much more relatable. Not!
This. It doesn’t make me think they’re just like us. But it makes me feel like they want me to think they’re just like us. So they have staff but the staff doesn’t live with them. As they live in multiple houses and just land-grabbed 150 acres of public park land. So yeah, agree, it feels insulting.
Don’t they have a staff of 60+? They must have a chief of staff type person who organizes everyone. Ridiculous to tell us this yeoman handles everything, or suggest that Kate washes and irons Willy’s clothes, or that the poor dears don’t have a team of gardeners to do all that weeding. No doubt 10 people are filling the missing butler’s functions.
Absolutely, they have someone who manages their (many, many) households and oversees the staff. They just don’t call that person a “butler.”
They have someone they call a house manager, absolutely.
150 acres is a lot to keep an eye on; it would require professional arborists or foresters or silviculturists, I would think. I’m guessing Windsor Great Park is an historic landscape, hence the requirement to preserve the trees, etc.
They don’t have someone with the title and uniform of “butler” but I’d wager they have a house manager, a head housekeeper, and I’m sure myriad other staff.
Why do they bother to say anything at all about this stuff? It’s always the part that’s missing that tells the full story. “Cancer cells were present” “No live in staff”. They need to quit the holier than thou act and tell the truth.
Lies, as usual. The 60+ Household Staff reported in the Duchy of Cornwall report (before William stopped providing such figures) exist and do something. The question is, what do they do?
I’m sure the valet is very much there (doing what? No one knows) as well as the staff that William inherited from Philip, one of whose job is specifically “mixing drinks”. I do believe that they make some poor yeoman of good family and military training huck around luggage and do various lowly tasks, just as Kate made Natasha be a dogsbody. Then you have the cooks, gardeners, housekeepers, cleaners and other staff who follow William and Kate around their various properties and/or vacation homes. The nannies (multiple, as has been well established).
Oh, and for the times when they actually work, there are “secretaries” (Outlook Bingo, dragging William out of bed after a bender, reading the Post-It Note above their cubicle that reads IF YOU MAKE RESERVATIONS FOR WILLIAM’S MISTRESS BE SURE NOT TO LET KATE KNOW, etc) and communications people and whatnot. Kate most likely has a hair person on staff (who should be fired) for her events especially in the official Royal summer “season” (Trooping, Ascot, etc) and this year, Peter and Harriet’s wedding, Wimbledon, the yacht vacation, Balmoral…
Agree except for one part. I can’t believe that Kate has a hair person on staff. I just can’t.
@Jais 😂😂😂
If she does, they should be fired!
Someone has to oversee and coordinate all the households and staff. They can’t say Kate does that – the school run alone exhausts her. And just because they don’t employ someone with the title of Butler doesn’t mean a butler’s work isn’t being done.
They might not have a butler, but they will have a housekeeper who basically does the same thing. Organises all the staff, keeps things running.
And probably gets paid less than a butler, because, you know, butlering is the purview of men & housekeeping is for women. You know they cling to this old-fashioned nonsense.
The only thing I am getting from all these stories about Kate and William needing and wanting so much privacy is that they have something they are trying to hide from the public. The paranoia probably comes from their use of household staff to spy on Harry and Meghan.
🎯
They’re trying to hide the fact that they don’t live together, that they’ve been separated for years! I’m just sorry for their kids, who have to pretend that they do.
I don’t understand the point of this information when we know that they moved into this additional forever home and took 150 acres of park land away from families and children as well as evicted families from nearby homes to house their staff. They took all of that additional land and the nearby homes to ensure that they maintain the ridiculous number of staff they already have are nearby but far enough away to not expose that they live separately and that their arguments with throwing cushions and things doesn’t get leaked again. They want us to believe they are just like us while not paying any of their personal money to kick children out of parks and families out of homes.
So what? William wants a cookie for this? Apparently KP has over 60 people working for William and Kate which is huge considering they don’t do much work.
Keen got another People Cover story. Big surprise. I am glad I cancelled my subscription All this overhype about Keen calls attention to her laziness.
Oh, my take on why they put this out there is that they’re still trying to make the “Meghan bullied the butler by asking him to make coffee” trope happen. Well, they don’t even have a butler to bully so take that!
This constant need for isolation of the Wales or of Kate in particular, (because I believe that FL is her forever home) shows one thing only: they have things to hide and they’re afraid that the more people who know, the riskier for the truth to come out. I remember reading articles during Kate’s disappearance that they were isolated from the rest and that they had limited their stuff…obviously, the pattern continues because the problem isn’t solved, just kept secret.
No, instead, like many aspirational posh people, they pile responsibilities outside their scope on the staff they do have, and in William and Kate’s case, they also use the staff for Windsor Castle and the staff Charles keeps there and at Sandringham. This is why they can pretend to be so frugal while meals, gardening, etc. comes from Windsor.
Breaking news: I don’t have a butler either. So Kate and I have something in common!
Is that supposed to be the point of this? Because it’s not doing much for me.
This positively screams “Look at us, we’re just like you!! We don’t even have a butler! See how down-to-earth and normal we are”.
I can believe that they don’t have a butler after Paul Burrell has spent the past 30 years living off the fact that he was Princess Diana’s butler.
This is a list of things I do virtually every day that Kate need never ponder:
1. Shopping for food
2. Cooking food
3. Cleaning up after food
4. Vacuuming
5. Sorting recycling & rubbish
6. Putting dirty laundry in the machine
7. Hanging wet laundry up to dry
8. Folding dry laundry
9. Walking the dog
10. The school run (no RPOs)
11. Packing sport kit for school
12. Coordinating club fixtures
13. Paying bills (council tax, etc.)
14. Mowing the lawn
15. Watering the lawn
16. Picking up dog deposits
17. Charging the car
18. Scrubbing the bathroom floors
19. Changing the sheets / bedding
20. Supervising homework (tutors)
…….and I do it all without a butler. Sigh. Plus, I spend several hours a week doing local volunteer work, usually 6-8 hours, equal to about one working day. I do all this — as does every other parent I know — without taxpayer appropriations. In fact, thanks to the sly operation of HMRC, I am liable effectively for 60% of household earnings in tax because if you pass the 45% threshold, you also forfeit the child tax credit and other allowances that bring your tax rate to an actual 60%. Take that, Katey!!!!! LOL.
Plus:
being the one who takes the family pet to the vet when he or she gets sick.
giving said pet the medication each day
buying cat or dog food to keep in stock
Calling in a person to repair the clogged sink. Waiting in for the repair person to show up
So the question is, What does Kate do all day?” Studying up on her patronages? Learning a new language? Researching early years? Practising the piano? Working on speech skills? Painting, sculpting? She probably practises her tennis and exercises for sure. She doesn’t seem to have any hobbies or interests. Phillip had myriad interest and hobbies, Charles does, even Camilla. Even Fergie was always working on something along with her scamming. Unfortunately, we all know what Andrew’s hobby is, but he will always be protected. Even William lets it be known he loves football. What does Kate do, to echo the departed Queen?
Exercise and stalk what other women are doing/wearing.
Whoa! @YankeeDoodles! That is some tax rate! I’m irritated at paying more income taxes than Musk, Bezos, et al., and I’m ‘only’ at 24%. And now that my 24% is going to build concentrations camps & pay off traitors, I am beyond p*ssed off.
I don’t care if they have a butler or not.
That first picture never fails to amuse me. The phrase ‘ Look at this, this means I’m important’ always pops into my head when I see it.
Butlers are so vulgar.
I have a majordomo instead.
They might not have a butler, but the have 40 maids and 30 nannies. The nerve of them! (and I just made that up to parallel the “journalism” the Brit psychos do).
I can certainly believe that the Wails don’t have anybody on their staff whose role is “Butler” – that does seem like one of those old-fashioned things that William would want to do away with in the name of “modernization”. But here’s the thing – they live in a damn CASTLE. They have multiple estates in different parts of the UK.. They have maybe the most old-fashioned job imaginable, in fact, and that job requires someone with pretty high level coordination and organizing skills, plus some pretty specialized arcane social etiquette, too if they are hosting events. And it sure as hell ain’t WanK doing that stuff. SOMEONE is managing their household(s).
It may simply be that that person doesn’t have the title of “butler”. Remember, Natasha Archer worked for Kate for more than a decade as her “personal assistant” so that Kate could pretend that she doesn’t have a stylist. Archer was variously credited for selecting and maintaining Kate’s wardrobe and travelled with her on tour, but the rota were clear: she’s not a stylist, don’t call her a stylist. She’s just a PA!