Late last week, Britain’s National Audit Office released a report on royal lodgings and who pays what for various properties. That’s when we learned that “royal sources” had been lying their asses off for years and years about royal leases, sublets and more. We learned that the Crown Estate, NOT Prince William and Kate, spent £400K to renovate Forest Lodge, despite “sources” claiming the opposite for the better part of a year. We also learned that Princess Beatrice and Eugenie both maintain London homes which are entirely paid for by the Duchy of Lancaster (meaning, the sovereign’s private funds). Additionally, we learned that Prince Andrew and Prince Edward are able to sublet their royal leases to whomever they want, and they can pocket the money too.
Well, over the weekend, Prince William was in a rage about all of this (except the Forest Lodge lies, naturally). In between kissing Princess Beatrice’s cheek in greeting at Peter Phillips’ wedding, William found time to brief several royal reporters on his big Scooter King plans. From Roya Nikkhah’s piece in the Times:
The Prince of Wales will “do things differently” with the royal family’s many properties when he is King. He will consider banning the sub-letting of homes, as well as stopping those who do no official duties from living rent-free in palaces. Under his future reign, reviewing the official use of all royal residences and members of his family’s living arrangements is understood to be a priority for William. The King has always done an annual review of the arrangements.
William, 43, is understood to be concerned about the optics of non-working royals benefitting from preferential living arrangements. William recently made public the terms of his lease on Forest Lodge, the Waleses’ home in Windsor where he and the Princess of Wales will remain living when they are King and Queen. It showed they pay £307,500 a year in rent on the grade II listed mansion, £100,000 more than the previous tenants. A clause in the lease also prevents the sub-letting of three cottages in the grounds of Forest Lodge.
William is planning changes in how the monarchy operates that will be swiftly implemented under his reign. Sources close to the prince told The Sunday Times that he wants to ensure it is “fit for purpose in the modern era” and will “look under the hood” of the institution. He is said to be “mindful of how much the monarchy costs” and the size of the organisation, and will be “hands on” in restructuring a leaner machine while assessing the “footprint of the institution”.
It is understood the King will also continue to annually review the living and rental arrangements of members of the royal family at royal residences. Sources close to Charles noted that under his reign, the rent paid on Beatrice and Eugenie’s royal homes has risen to more than 68 per cent and 64 per cent respectively of market value. Under the late Queen’s reign, the rent set for Beatrice’s apartment at St James’s Palace was 60 per cent and Eugenie’s Ivy Cottage was 50 per cent. A royal source said: “In this, and more broadly, the King has attempted to deal with some of the challenges he inherited from his mother.”
The revelations have sparked more scrutiny for the royal family’s finances. On Friday, Baroness Hodge of Barking, the former chair of parliament’s public accounts committee, told Times Radio: “I cannot for the life of me understand why any members of the royal family were able to charge rent [and] make money out of properties that they got on lease.”
A few things are happening all at once. For one, King Charles is trying to avoid blame for a situation which, to be fair, he actually did inherit. That being said, the “annual review” is BS, because he clearly wasn’t in any hurry to change Prince Andrew’s leases or B&E’s leases. While Charles is trying to avoid blame, Prince William is calling up his media allies and pontificating about all of the changes he’ll make as king, while simultaneously pointing out that Charles is dithering. What’s remarkable is that father and son are quite similar in this narrow way – they want all of the royal loot and royal land all for themselves, no sharing with cousins or uncles or brothers. William can’t wait to start evicting everybody, I guess.
William's kiss for Beatrice showed that King Charles 'is reasserting control over Royal Family' and wants his son to welcome 'freeloading cousins' back into fold https://t.co/8Sq7EQHuiU
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) June 7, 2026
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, screencaps courtesy of AppleTV+.
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- Catherine, Princess of Wales and Prince William, Prince of Wales visit Long Meadow Cider on October 14, 2025 in Craigavon, Northern Ireland. Long Meadow has been owned by the McKeever family for three generations and has been cultivating premium-quality apples since 1968. The Prince and Princess of Wales are visiting organisations providing creative and entrepreneurial opportunities for young people in rural areas of Northern Ireland Featuring: William, Prince of Wales Where: Craigavon, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom When: 14 Oct 2025 Credit: Cover Images
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- The Prince of Wales meets call handlers and dispatchers in the Emergency Operations Control room where 999 calls are managed 24/7, during a visit to the London Ambulance Service at its headquarters in Waterloo Featuring: Prince William Where: London, United Kingdom When: 17 Oct 2025 Credit: Aaron Chown/PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- The Prince of Wales takes part in a community football event, with community leaders and local young people who run and participate in football programmes across the city and the state, at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, on day one of his visit to Brazil for the annual Earthshot Prize Awards Featuring: Prince William Where: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil When: 03 Nov 2025 Credit: Aaron Chown/PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- The Prince of Wales takes part in a game of volleyball with players from thee Levante Institute, a local beach volleyball school, at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, on day one of his visit to Brazil for the annual Earthshot Prize Awards Featuring: Prince William Where: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil When: 03 Nov 2025 Credit: Aaron Chown/PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- The Prince of Wales takes part in a game of volleyball with players from thee Levante Institute, a local beach volleyball school, at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, on day one of his visit to Brazil for the annual Earthshot Prize Awards Featuring: Prince William Where: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil When: 03 Nov 2025 Credit: Aaron Chown/PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- The Prince of Wales sits inside a car during a visit to Formula E Team Jaguar TCS Racing in Kidlington, Oxfordshire Featuring: William, Prince of Wales Where: Kidlington, United Kingdom When: 22 Apr 2026 Credit: Justin Tallis/PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
The only thing that Charles did inherit re royal leases that he made changes to was the Sussexes lease on Frogmore cottage. He was happy to leave the Yorks and the Kents as they were- subsidising them from duchy monies, even though they weren’t working royals. Yet evicted his close flesh and blood young family and made it impossible for them to return safely to the UK……..
An awful individual,who does that? He should not be head of any Church or the Commonwealth he is a lousy racist human.
The fact that Forest Lodge had “only” 400k worth of renovations seems to be the biggest lie here.
There is no way that a home that hadn’t been modernized and was in many rooms taken to the floor boards and the frames to renovate for the Wales cost 400k to renovate. The massive security and privacy installations – they dug ditches everywhere? – seem to not being taken into account. Nor anything else really.
Completely agree 👍 they’re just giving the British people a bone 🍖🤣🤣🤣
All of that would have been paid for out of a separate fund – not Duchy not Crown Estate. It would come straight from taxpayers and billed out as “royal security” and barred from FOI requests.
The same thing happened when Billy refused to live on base in Wales. News leaked out of a million pound security door for the 4 bedroom cottage on the private estate where it was being leased. All other inquiries were shut down after that as “royal security”.
Yup, agree with @irisrose. We’re not going to find out what it actually cost to renovate Forest Lodge and make it “appropriate” for the Wales. The 400k is probably less than half the actual cost.
Becks1, I could see Keen spendingthrifting 1,000,000+ on her custom hand printed wallpaper, having walls repainted multiple times, dozens of ugly curtains, and custom furniture she couldn’t steal out of the royal collection.
The costs of actually fixing up the house (windows, flooring, electric, fixtures, new fireplaces and new kitchens), buying out leases, and the massive security changes? That’s in the millions upon millions, all paid directly by taxpayers, and we’ll never see the amount. Add in the financial losses to the nature center, shops, and restaurants they forced to close.
That’s exact why I don’t believe that Charles is paying a dime 😳 THE YORK SISTERS WERE LIVING THERE FOR FREE 😳
Charles did not only inherit the “rent situation”. He inherited his place in a institution which centers a monarch, with all the other family members (except the heir with an own income) circling him like planets the mighty sun. Working royals or not – they all are desperately depending on him. The real scandal is not how much money Charles is spending for distanz cousins of his late mother or the daughters of his awful brother. The scandal is the obscene amount of money streaming in his private purse every year, gigantic sums the monarch can spend as he sees fit!
What really hacks me off is that Charles lost no time in evicting Harry from Frogmore Cottage when he was actually paying market rent and also via the BM successfully put pressure on him to repay renovation costs to bring it up to standard.
That whole thing makes me so angry, and I understand that Harry really spent time and effort looking for every single lever of control that could be held over him, and dismantled it. He cut off every easy money based attack by overly paying back, and then wrote a tell all book to cut off attacks about “dirt.” The story about him being high at courtney cox house was especially that, I thought. The only real remaining lever is security, and that is theoretically getting ruled on soon. If it goes against him being able to have his family protected, it’s pretty clear that all the relationships are severed. I’m impressed by how thoroughly he is gray rocking, even though it’s not even a little fair.
This is June. Amazing how those people in Ravec, which has Charles and William’s representatives, are taking so long.
Yes, if the answer is no and Charles won’t pay for his son’s security out of his pocket like he pays for Andrew, I hope Harry cuts all ties with him.
A father who doesn’t answer his child’s call! Harry should do the same! Go to Invictus “one year to” by himself, in and out, and then go next year. Keep his family safe in California.
While everyone in the U.S. was raving about Charles’ speech (“I don’t do what I preach”), almost no one mentioned what he does to his son. Don’t seek your father while there. And their children will have to wait to decide on their own as adults if they want to visit their father’s country. There are many other countries in the world to visit. And they can go all to Ireland which is not part of the kingdom and they have pints too.
All this talk while his father is still alive and is still King. Such dysfunction.
Such treason.
Yes, very bad. But Charles stays mum because the heir is everything. It’s always been the institution who provides free and luxury living for them above family ties.
He’ll do nothing but threaten his relatives while he lazes around
They should really brace themselves for his reign. When Meghan and Harry were still in the system, I worried about the oppression they would endure under King William since he’d be the one to control the money purse. Am so glad that they’re out
What do you want to bet that he changes his own rent to the proverbial peppercorn?
I bet many RF members in attendance at Saturday’s wedding are very jittery about just how much the next king will throw them off the gravy train to stay there himself. The York daughters were clearly under duress to be photographed paying homage to Godfather Wilbur! I am so glad Harry and Meghan left years ago to escape his baleful control.
Scooter also wanted to show up Harry,SEE Harold THEY got invited NOT you. Peter should get out of there too and move away with his wife. He won’t be so complacent with Scooter around.
So when William looks in the mirror, he sees a “working royal” looking back at him? Get the f*ck outa here!
@Gabby I am loving how delulu slothful Wilbur truly is! Keep that balcony exclusive because he is DA man!
All while spending Crown Estate funds fixing up a (stolen) cottage for a rent-free home for Ma Midds. She’s been panting after space on royal property for years, now he’s having taxpayers pay for it.
Roya’s such a good little stenographer. She parroted the KP talking points about the rent on Forest Lodge but just casually forgets to mention his 3 other homes and how much does(or doesnt) pay oj them, including that 20 bedroom ‘apartment’ that taxpayers paid millions to renovate that his family apparently never uses.
Andrew Lownie in his current sub stack article actually gets in a reference to PoW SEVEN homes and asks if they are tax deductible? Financial scrutiny of his vast wealth and tax arrangements could get him hotter under the collar than contemplating Meghan’s next move!! Despite initially resisting calls to declare how much tax he pays on the multi-million-pound income he receives from the Duchy of Cornwall – the £1billion estate he inherited when his father became King in 2022 – William has finally revealed that he handed £7million to the taxman last year. But a top rate tax of 45 per cent suggests he should have paid more than £10 million on the Duchy profit of around £24 million. Does that mean he has found more than £3 million in deductible expenses, perhaps relating to his seven homes?
These are dangerous issues for the Crown. A recent opinion poll by The Mail on Sunday found that most people, 54 per cent, want Prince William to be more transparent about where his income comes from and how it is spent. Only 23 per cent prefer the status quo.
Actually, William didn’t reveal anything about the amount of tax he pays, only that it’s the “top rate” which the press said “could” (the word ‘could’ doing all the heavy lifting) be “up to” 7m.
Did Roya even mention the £400m (low-ball) estimate for renovations to Foreest Lodge, or did she just piously repeat that they’re paying rent?
Agree that nobody ever claimed William actually paid £7m in taxes. That figure was somebody’s estimate based on what Charles reported paying a few years ago. KP mumbled something about how William pays the highest income tax rate (although he still doesn’t pay inheritance or capital gains taxes on duchy lands). But even if that’s true (and raise your hand if you trust KP), he’s paying the highest tax rate on what, exactly? It makes all the difference to know what deductions and write-offs he’s taking before he calculates his taxable income–when Charles made his returns public, everyone saw that he was writing off Camilla’s stables and her clothing before they married.
The whole system really does only work when the public can see that charity begins at home, and the head of state cares for his or her family, and is not penny pinching. There’s enough to go around. When they start fighting amongst themselves… the public has to wonder, why on earth they’re being expected to pay for this unedifying saga.
Exactly! I think most people were fine with the late queen paying for her cousins housing, especially cousins would did at least some “royal work”. During the late queen’s time the Royal Family actually seemed like a family, less so now under the reign of Charles and William will do away completely any notion of a “Royal Family”, focusing instead on his own immediate family. I truly believe that the BRF, under William’s reign, will end.
The whole thing needs to end now under Charles. That way all of these funds and homes would be returned to taxpayers and Bill is left penniless.
I agree. Before they started this nonsense about ‘working royals’ she gave them a place to live and everyone pitched in to a greater or lesser degree. If you’re going to have a model when the money sits with one individual (and get passed on tax free on this basis) then I have no issue with that individual giving the extended family homes.
Now, whether the institution exists at all is a whole other conversation but while it does exist and if you don’t want family members doing dodgy things because they’re pretty inept but need money to live like the aristocrats they’re supposed to be then support them financially.
This isn’t saying he’s going to save money for the taxpayers.. it’s basically saying he’ll stop paying for his relatives safety and security…
It’s funny how the British people only worry about how their taxpayer money is being used when it comes to giving Harry armed security.
I came here to say the same thing- he is not going to take less money from the Duchies he would have access to both if Charles died while George was under 18. I think he is siphoning off huge chunks now while he can stashing it offshore for Charlotte and Louis because he must realise that the way Harry was treated was an utter disgrace. The Yorkies had better accommodation than Harry.
I seriously doubt that William will do anything to change the situation about royal leases or rents because the people who rent or live on those properties are the ones supporting the monarchy and the status quo, not to mention that they are the ones who know pretty much everything about William (see the case about Beatrice etc.). So, I don’t think he would jeopardise his position by throwing them out…he would probably raise the rent, but that’s it. Don’t forget that these people support the monarchy and they are (most of them) part of the aristocracy.
I think Beatrice and Eugenie have things on William and Charles (told by their father) that William doesn’t want to be known….and are using it as leverage.
Wiliam only wants to change the situation because there’s no way in hell he’s covering Beatrice and Eugenie’s London rents. He’s too cheap for that. He’s not going to pay for anything or anyone besides his immediate family.
I actually dont have a problem with Andrew or Edward subletting their properties if doing so was explicitly allowed in their lease. BUT my issue is that I dont think the lease should have allowed for them to make private money off crown estate property in such a way. But they weren’t doing anything illegal in itself.
And I said the other day that my issue isn’t Charles paying B&E’s rents – its that they were so far below market value, which is a bad look in these economic times.
And of course, the elephant in the room here is how Harry was treated, even before he married the Black American woman. and then once he married her and she was pregnant, he had to call his grandmother to ask for another property. Why wouldn’t it have been something being discussed when they got married?? I know W&K “lived” at Nott Cott too but really they were in the private farmhouse in Wales or Kate was in London or Bucklebury with her parents. They were given 1A when she was pregnant with george and Anmer around that same time.
Anyway not to rehash all of that lol. But for me that is the sticking point in all this – the royals are a bunch of grifters, so grifters gonna grift, etc. But Harry was never allowed those same perks as the other royals, even when he was a “working” royal.
And I will say that in the scope of the royal world, it makes sense that the billionaire matriarch or patriarch (Elizabeth or Charles) takes care of the ones who didnt inherit anything (in order to preserve the wealth in one piece.) the monarch should seem generous and providing for the family at large. but he could afford to pay full market rent for Beatrice and Eugenie……
Here’s my thing. William says he’s concerned about the optics of non-working royals living rent-free. But that doesn’t really touch those peppercorn leases they get. And it goes back to whether Charlotte and Louis are working royals. Bc if they’re not, then they shouldn’t get free housing either. Which means if they want their kids to have housing, if we go by this sentiment, then they would have to be working royals.
And it doesnt touch the optics of William moving into yet another home, demanding a 150 acre buffer zone, and charging the crown estate 400k to fix up that home……when he and his wife combined don’t crack 400 engagements a year. COMBINED!!!!
I think we’ve found the freeloading nonworking royals….
and why did elizabeth II make harry pay market rent and have only a two-yr. lease? seems he has always gotten the short end of the stick.
if he didn’t ask for another home, they probably would’ve kept him in that kp cottage.
Yesterday in the Inewspaper they printed a letter in response to PoW being praised for visiting a pub as a royal event. A man wrote in pointing out that Will gets paid £24 million a year to visit a pub and drink and being described as an ordinary Joe. I mean you couldn’t make it up could you? During the pandemic 6 years ago we were clapping the NHS on our door step because they were absolutely vital to coping. No money but applause compared with the heir: endless money, endless fawning and a pretend job where pub going counts as work!
Willy digging Charles’ grave and beating his chest above the hole is a terrible look, we all agree. And over what? Royal sublets seem like a big nothing-burger. Does anyone do sublets besides Andrew and Edward, and does it amount to more than a few hundred thousand pounds a year?
Although I do have a soft spot for the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent, who are in their 80s and 90s and are outworking William and Kate. Is there a retirement clause, like if you did more than 100 engagements/year for 40 years, you get to stay in your grace and favour when you’re too old to work? Charles bought AKelly47 a bungalo when she retired, so is that the future?
If he tried to evict any of the elderly cousins I would be appalled. For those of us old enough to remember these people did a lot of heavy lifting in the early years of Lizzie’s reign and have no other private source of income. The Gloucesters have I think done the same level of work for years, it is just more obvious now because there are so few others working. The finances of the non- direct royals should also be reviewed to ensure they have enough money to live a life that is commensurate with the work they do relative to lazy Willi.
1) For all of William’s supposed “intentions,” remember that he will do fck-all to right any wrongs once he is king (he likes the unfairness since it benefits him). His yowling about change is strictly for public relations and not for reality. 2) I see William has graduated to new hand gestures to make him look authoritative and powerful. What an ass! He wants the optics of being a good King, but he has no intention of being a good King. He will only change what will benefit him personally (and damage the nation). 3) The Brits should hope that Charles lives forever because it will get a whole lot worse when William “ascends/descends.”
Oh No, no more “Aunt Heap”! Whatever will William do to curry discretion and loyalty from his relatives?