Kate Middleton costs us $200,000 per engagement
In her first full month on the job, the brand new Princess of Wales appears to be struggling to live up to the gig.
In Britain, £1.29 (A$2.30) can buy you roughly one-quarter of a cheese toastie, three-quarters of a packet of chocolate Hobnobs, or your country’s very own monarchy, on a per-person basis at least.
That figure is how much the House of Windsor works out to cost every man, woman and child in the UK and is really something of a bargain. For only a smidge more than a box of home-brand tea bags, Brits get their own real-life king and all the pomp and ceremony to boot.
Adding to the question of value, so the argument here generally goes, is that the royal family brings in a reported $1.7 billion of tourist revenue each year (given there aren’t planeloads of Americans who would visit the UK for Cadbury World or to stock up on overpriced Fortnum & Mason marmalade).
Buckingham Palace and all who sail in her, to this line of thinking, is an incredibly valuable addition to not only British life but the country’s balance sheet. Pip pip!
But the thing about the royal family is that that picture changes, dramatically, depending on which members you look at.
I’m going to tell you a tale of two princesses.
First off the blocks is the formidable Princess Anne (number-one fan right here), a woman who has a seemingly endless supply of serge, mustard-coloured wool suits that look like they were bought in bulk when Edward Heath was Prime Minister.
In the month of October, she undertook two investitures, 37 engagements, and managed to squeeze in working trips to the US and Uganda. If we assume that her monthly allowance from the Duchy of Lancaster, the sovereign’s private estate, is the same as Prince Andrew’s reported take-home of $37,325 ($447,900 or £250,000 annually) then that is equal to Princess Anne being ‘paid’ $1008 per outing.
Now, that same time period happened to represent the first full month Kate was in her new role as the Princess of Wales. Based on the Court Circular, the daily official record of royal activity, she managed to squeeze in eight engagements, including a few meetings at Windsor Castle, just up the road from home, and a quickie visit to Northern Ireland with husband William.
So, if we apply the same mathematical formula, dividing the monthly income she and husband William, Prince of Wales receive from the Duchy of Cornwall ($37.6 million annually and $3.13 million per month) by the total number of outings they clocked up on behalf of the Crown (eight apiece, so 16 in total) and you get $195,833 per engagement.
And this right here is a problem. A serious problem.
The fact that William and Kate are pulling in $195,833 for, say, a meeting with one of their charity initiative’s heads is just distasteful at a time when the country is in the grip of the biggest cost of living crisis in decades and the UK is bracing for a hellish winter of skyrocketing power bills.
Sure, I know the royal family has much bigger threats to fret about right now, what with Prince Harry’s autobiography, Spare, hitting shelves in early January and he and wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s mysterious Netflix series debuting at some point soon. (Not to mention the fact that the new season of The Crown is about to introduce a whole new generation to Tampongate).
However, with the passing of Queen Elizabeth in September and the advent of King Charles, the monarchy is at a crossroads and while early signs are good, with His Majesty enjoying a certain amount of leftover goodwill from his mother, he is still an untested quantity who has yet to truly prove himself in the top job.
What that means is that in the months to come, once the misty-eyed affection for the late queen has dissipated and some fresh scandal hits His Majesty, not only the 73-year-old but the whole monarchy are likely to come in for a period of public reappraisal and re-evaluation.
(In an odd way, Charles is lucky that Harry and Meghan’s various attention-seeking shenanigans have largely obscured, press and social media-wise, a couple of revelations surrounding the king’s charity work. First, that he accepted a $4.65 million donation in bags of cash from a Qatari politician and, in another instance, a $1.7 million donation from Osama bin Laden’s family. Meanwhile, his Prince’s Trust charity is being investigated by London police over an alleged cash-for-honours scheme).
Which brings us back to Kate. She now has one of the most freighted and senior titles in the royal pantheon – and the last title she will hold before she herself becomes queen.
So how did she approach her first calendar month in this elevated role? How did she decide to embark on her princess career?
By managing to squeeze in an average of two days work per week, where ‘work’ can constitute simply making a phone call or sitting through a meeting where tea and biscuits are provided (I’m guessing). Hardly onerous stuff.
Now, I know the princess has three young children and has only recently moved house, trading the Wales family’s four-storey Kensington Palace digs for the comparatively modest four-bedroom Adelaide Cottage, but c’mon. The woman has staff not to mention a full-time nanny at her beck and call.
Here’s the real kicker: Kate’s very modest workload constitutes full-time royal duties. Let that sink in.
There was a good two-week chunk in October, loosely covering the British half-term school holiday, and Kate often takes off chunks of time at school break. On one hand I have great sympathy for any parent who is able to do that but on the other … she has a 1000-plus-year-old institution to keep ticking over.
Situations like this only reinforce the worst image of the royal family as overprivileged and work-shy.
This is, of course, a decidedly bad look, especially for a royal family that has a dwindling number of working members and which is facing a sceptical younger generation.
In a September poll, only one third (32 per cent) of 18-24-year-olds said they thought the monarchy was good for Britain, with a very similar figure (27 per cent) saying they viewed it as a bad thing. And nearly equal numbers think the royal family is bad value (39 per cent) as good value (40 per cent).
A Princess of Wales who turns up for work, in public at least, as often as a reality show judge whose job is to press a big red button, is hardly the way to turn those numbers around.
The House of Windsor is facing a fight for younger hearts and minds. I know there is more to Kate’s schedule than gets recorded in the Court Circular, such as planning meetings and briefings, but perception matters keenly here.
The princess’s Early Years Foundation and the prince’s Earthshot Prize are innovative and exciting projects that could have real impact and change lives.
Let’s hope they do, because Kate and more importantly Charles can’t afford for any family members to be seen as idlers enjoying the perks of royal life.
Really, the number one mantra for anyone with an HRH should be: ‘what would Princess Anne do?’
Just never, ever, ‘what would Princess Anne wear?’
There is only so much mustard serge that royal commentators and the public can hack.
Daniela Elser is writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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