How the Queen’s inheritance will be distributed among members of the Royal Family
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s personal wealth was estimated to be worth at least $640 million at the time of her death. Here is what will happen to it.
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The Royals are a 1000-year-old family-run business worth more than $36 billion and as such, arrangements for the death of its CEO the Queen including her will have been set in stone for centuries.
But just who now will inherit what has had to be updated with Prince Harry publicly quitting his apparently loathed royal family and their wealthy trappings, and Prince Andrew who forfeited his public purse in disgrace, having lived for years off his mother’s benevolence?
Her Majesty’s personal wealth was estimated in 2021 to be $640 million within the $36 billion dollar Crown asset holdings, mostly in property, art, jewellery and investments.
This control will now be signed over to King Charles III, specifically all assets within the Duchy of Lancaster private estate and its Privy Purse created in 1265 as a source of income for the monarch of the day.
This estate’s assets can never be sold but earn a lot of money through rent to farmers, retailers and residents.
This inheritance means King Charles’ Duchy of Cornwall, created in 1337 for the eldest son of the reigning monarch, will automatically by decree be passed to Prince William as the next heir to the throne.
The Duchy of Lancaster is worth about $966 million whereas the Duchy of Cornwall, with its 130,000 acres of property, is worth $1.7 billion, so in essence Charles will get a pay cut in asset holdings from which income is derived as a percentage out of the earnings of the estates.
In 2020 the Duchy of Lancaster reported a net profit of $39 million which Charles has inherited but as the Duchy of Cornwall generated more revenue it is William, who already received an income from his father’s estate, who technically is the biggest beneficiary of the Queen’s will.
With her death, William is now England’s largest land holder with the duchy’s holdings in 23 counties including large tracts of residential homes and whole satellite suburbs and lucrative London assets such as the iconic The Oval cricket ground.
It is expected the Queen bequeathed special gifts to her grandchildren and those closest to her outside the family, particularly members of staff from her homes at Sandringham and Windsor.
When the Queen Mother, Elizabeth’s mother, died in 2002 she had a personal wealth of $90 million all of which went to her daughter except for $18 million she put in trust for her great grandchildren William and Harry.
There were instructions Harry was to get a bigger cut not because he was a favourite but as he was further down the pecking order to the throne, would most likely not have a duchy estate to fund his ventures.
It is expected the Queen may well leave token amounts for her grandchildren, of which she has eight as well as 11 great-grandchildren, including Harry who suggested in his infamous Oprah TV interview he no longer received an allowance from the royal estate.
But what she has given may never be known.
When the Queen Mother died, age 101, Buckingham Palace released an outline of her will but only after trying through the High Court to keep it private.
There is a lot of wealth to consider and it grows each year since its income has always outstripped expenses, which largely have remained the same.
For the end of financial year 2020, the Crown Estate made $904 million of which $615 million was profit with the vast majority going to the British Treasury but with 25 per cent, under a “sovereign grant” going to the royal family for official expenses such as staff, security and maintenance.
Some of the Queen’s wealthy personal portfolio of art works may well be given to the Royal Collection, the largest private art collection in the world and overseen by the Royal Collection Trust. This is where her mother’s favourite personal possessions landed such as her Faberge egg collection.
With the Queen’s death comes a change of titles and homes for many members of her family. Charles will inherit and now call Windsor Castle with Buckingham Palace his residence in London, to replace St James’s Palace. Princess Anne, the second child and only daughter of the Queen, may well inherit assets out of the Royal Mews, a collection of equestrian stables, given the lifelong passion the pair shared with horses.
It’s a passion Anne’s daughter and the Queen’s eldest granddaughter Zara Tindall also shared and she may well inherit a private gift since it was said the pair shared a close bond exemplified by the fact Zara honoured both her grandparents by including their names in the names of her two children Lena Elizabeth Tindall and Lucas Philip Tindall.
While members of the royal family have all in some way benefited from the management of the billion dollar Crown Estate and its overall control has been determined over the centuries by status and pecking order of its heir to the throne, individual payments have been left to the controller of the day.
The Cornwall duchy, for example, has funded William and Harry but with Harry and his wife Meghan making such a show in breaking off royal ties and frequently attacking his family’s lifestyle, history and structure it would be curious to know if the Queen has made any special instructions on what he should get out of that estate, if anything.
So too Prince Andrew, long reported to have been the Queen’s favourite child, who derived an income from his mother but in 2019 stepped away from royal life after exposure of his ties with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. His quitting public duties saw him forfeit his $460,000 a year salary from public coffers with suspicions his mother then gave him an annual salary out of her own private account. He was also receiving an income out of the Lancaster duchy although his lavish lifestyle – he was dubbed Air Miles Andy for the huge travel bills he would rack up travelling the globe with air costs in 2012 alone totalling more than $690,000 – appeared to eclipse any income he could possibly have been receiving.
He may also receive some inheritance provision from the Queen since it would be unlikely King Charles or Prince William would be as readily agreeable to supplement his lifestyle in some way. Royal trust funds, of which there are numerous, have long been kept secret as had under whose control they came with the accounts simply slipping between members based on long held wills.
The Queen’s death and inheritance may well throw up tensions and renewed rivalries particularly since Charles has long declared, with the Queen’s blessing, a slimmed down core monarchy of just seven members – including himself his wife Camilla, William and Kate, Princess Anne and Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, countess of Wessex.
Prince Philip was also to be in the planned core before his 2017 retirement then death in 2021 and Prince Harry before his resignation in 2020.
Charles and his mother had been planning her will and exchange of estates for many years along with the handover of the monarchy.
The future fortunes of some in the royal family from the Crown will come down to businesses management but also the level of inherited control the new CEO of the “Firm”, as the royal family itself calls it, has been granted.
Originally published as How the Queen’s inheritance will be distributed among members of the Royal Family
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