‘It’s truly appalling’: The unbelievable reason Kitty Spencer won’t inherit the family fortune

She’s an Instagram star who spends her time travelling the world in designer frocks — but Kitty Spencer is the victim of something “truly appalling”.

Lady Kitty Spencer is having a very busy summer if her sun-soaked Instagram account is anything to go by. There she is in Saint Tropez posing up a storm with her mother, Victoria Lockwood! There she goes gadding about Capri spruiking designer handbags! And the Hamptons this time of year? Simply diviiiiine …

But there is one particular lavish, famous destination that she might not be so keen on jetting off to, namely Althorp, the vast 90-room ancestral home that has been in the family since 1486. That’s because of a nasty little thing called male primogeniture, and it is the reason that her much younger brother Louis Spencer, Viscount Althorp, will end up with the keys to the family’s colossal holdings (including Althorp along with the surrounding 13,500-acre estate, properties in Northamptonshire, Norfolk and Warwickshire, plus farming, forestry and other business interests) rather than her, the eldest child.

Over the weekend her father Earl Spencer, Diana, Princess of Wales’ beloved younger brother, gave an interview to the (UK) Telegraph about his stewardship of the family seat and associated holdings that are worth, according to some estimates, about $179 million.

He revealed that rather than entailing his estate to his oldest child — Lady Kitty — he intends to stick to the plainly sexist rules that have dictated inheritance among aristocrats since King Henry VIII was in short pants.

“Is it any fairer that the eldest child gets it instead of the eldest male? Whatever you say is a selection,” Earl Spencer pondered, betraying all the sensitivity of your uncle after his fourth port on Christmas Eve.

Now while centuries of tradition still govern much of upper class British life, none other than the Queen herself has decided that the nasty, hoary practice of giving male children precedence over females is just plain rubbish.

Earl Spencer with Prince William during Diana’s funeral cortege. Picture: Supplied

In 2013, when Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, was pregnant with her first child, Her Majesty did away with male-preference primogeniture, scrapping the archaic practice in favour of absolute primogeniture. This meant that if the couple’s first child had been a girl, she would inherit the throne, no matter how many other brothers her impossibly svelte mother might go on to produce.

Princess Charlotte made history in 2018 when Prince Louis was born — rather than her being knocked down a peg in the line of succession to the throne, she retained her seniority. (15-love for gender equality!)

All of which makes perfect sense, given we now live in an age where daughters and sisters aren’t mere chattel.

Yet the push for gender equality has so far only made a minor dint in the upper classes, with even titled women still struggling to stake a claim to what should be rightfully theirs.

For years, the Daughters Rights Movement, has been fighting through British and now European courts to end male primogeniture so that they may claim their fathers’ titles, seats in the House of Lords and estates, all of which they would have gotten if they had been born with a penis.

To be clear, this isn’t about money. For one thing, Lady Kitty — frequently dubbed the “sexiest” royal — seems to be making plenty of it on her own. She is a spokeswoman for Bvlgari and Dolce & Gabbana. She is also dating fashion tycoon Michael Lewis who is 32 years her senior and worth a stonking $140 million.

It’s a question of doing away with these vestiges of entrenched sexism. As the father of five daughters, it is galling that Earl Spencer would so cheerfully waive any claim these girls could have to the family holdings. (I’m guessing he never cracked open any Germaine Greer or Andrew Dworkin while he was at Oxford …)

If Earl Spencer doesn’t want to choose between his children, then get the raft of expensive London lawyers I’m sure he has access to to create some sort of nifty trust.

I understand he would want Althorp to stay in the family, but I refuse to believe there are not legal means to recognise his daughters to some extent.

Choosing one child over another based on nothing more than gender is downright appalling.

It is not good enough to write off this situation as simply some sort of benign hangover from centuries of aristocratic custom or as some sort of curious foible of the titled classes.

If there is one thing Her Majesty knows, besides good equine breeding and how to make a cracking martini, it’s that no one is immune from shifting social mores. Which is a convoluted way of saying, if the Queen can do away with these sort of misogynistic practices, so can a ruddy-faced 50-something from Northamptonshire.

I personally hope Louis Spencer, Viscount Althorp, a dashing 25-year-old whose aquiline jaw could launch a thousand pieces of lusty fan fiction, decides to show his support for his sisters and will find an equitable way to give his sisters what is their due. And I bet his aunt, Diana, would have approved.

Daniela Elser is a royal expert and freelance writer. Continue the conversation @DanielaElser