‘Astronomical’: Princess Kate’s insane salary revealed

The latest royal accounts have revealed the astronomical sum that the Prince and Princess of Wales collected last year.

There are plenty of things you supposedly can’t put a price on. Happiness. Good health. The relief of a viable, exciting presidential candidate who is building momentum and gathering steam.

But what about a Princess? Like, a really, really good Princess?

Absolutely. And that particular number is nothing short of astronomical.

This week the latest royal family accounts for the 2024 tax year came out, documents that are both as dull as some particularly greasy, flat dishwater and simultaneously bananas.

(Do you know how much it cost to use the royal train one single solitary time? $102,000. And $1.1 million to store the sucker for the rest of the year).

And one of these lengthy PDFs was from the Duchy of Cornwall, the vast private estate set up in the 14th century to support whoever holds the Prince of Wales title and which is now worth $2.46 billion.

Thus, since being elevated to the position in 2022, Prince William and his better half Kate, the Princess of Wales have gotten massive pay rises, with them pocketing the Duchy’s annual surplus.

And oh my, what a surplus it is. This week we learnt that, in the last year, William and Kate earned $46.1 million.

That works out as – carry the one, divide by seven, and indexing for Prince Louis needing new shoes on a monthly basis – at $126,301 a day, a truly eye-popping figure that must have whoever is on the tea roster over at the Republic UK HQ positively spitting organic chips.

You may be surprised to hear how much Kate earns. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Or let me put it another way.

Last year, the Prince and Princess were paid the equivalent of at least 635 nurses. And remember when, two weeks ago, the princess appeared at the Wimbledon men’s finals? She and William have earnt nearly $1.7 million since then.

On one hand, this is all lovely for William and Kate.

Unlike Sovereign Grant money – which can only be used to fund official expenses for work they do on behalf of the crown – that Cornwall cash can be splashed on all the boondoggles and Bugattis their little hearts might desire. (Although they actually drive very sensible Audis).

Cornwall cash can be splashed on all the boondoggles and Bugattis their little hearts might desire. Picture: Alberto Pezzali – WPA Pool/Getty Images

However, they don’t actually own any Bugattis, instead preferring to own sensible Audis. Photo: Supplied

But on the other hand, their extreme personal wealth also poses something of an image problem for them.

It immediately becomes much more of an uphill slog for the prince and princess to brand themselves as devoted, hardworking, committed servants of the people and the greater good when we are reminded that they earn tens of millions to do so.

Would Mother Teresa have quite the same rep if it had turned out that she had bought Microsoft shares in the 80s? Or if it was revealed that Malala Yousafzai had an extensive Bitcoin holding?

They are devoted. Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

These sorts of reminders of how one per cent-y William and Kate are – despite their Marks & Spencer jumpers, and how much they bang on about being a normal family – only make this job harder.

One detail that was not in the Duchy report was the extent to which they are willing to put their own money where their mouths are.

Ian Patrick, William’s new private secretary, said this week: “The Prince and Princess seek to deliver real impact and help people using their voice and their platform”, but “impact” and “voice” and “platform” do not necessarily translate to “using their own money”.

We know that William and Kate do put their hands in their pocket to help out.

Patrick has said the Wales' “regularly undertake private philanthropy” including, in the last 12 months, making donations to earthquake appeals in Turkey and Syria, to Hurricane Beryl recovery, to charities linked to the war in Ukraine, to the London Air Ambulance, to support the Shout mental health support text service they helped set up and to James’ Place, a charity that supports men in crisis.

So, how much do they dip into their own pockets to help out? Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Let’s be frank – that’s far more good than most people do – but we are not talking about regular people, but a couple whose bank account grows by the better part of $200,000.

Every. Single. Day. Of. The. Year.

Full marks too for the Prince of Wales as he is already doing things differently, earmarking 24 properties on one Duchy development for the homeless and committing to build more than 400 social rented homes on another.

But the Duchy of Cornwall owns 135,000 acres of land across the UK. You’d think they could find space to build more than 24 properties given William is on a quest to help end homelessness.

The sticking point is the issue of proportion between their wealth and whatever their own contributions might be.

(The same goes for King Charles too. To what extent does he personally support his various good works? In December 2022, it was announced he would personally help hundreds of food banks across the UK buy new fridges and freezers. But would even a bulk order of whitegoods put any sort of a dent in the nearly $1.2 billion that Charles inherited from his late mother?)

Another figure that was also doing the rounds this week was £1,000,000, or $1.9 million.

That’s how much William helped raise earlier this month by playing in a charity polo game, a sum that was then divided up among 11 charities. Assuming each charity got an equal portion, that comes to $172,727 per charity.

William playing in a charity polo game. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for TGI Sport

Or to put it another way, that is less than William and Kate earn in less than a day and a half.

The thing is, the Prince and Princess of Wales have spent the last couple of years very busily rejigging the way they work – more getting their hands dirty on some of the biggest challenges facing the world like the climate crisis and mental health, less opening Sheffield Scout halls – to make the monarchy seem like a can-do, useful outfit.

Charles and Queen Camilla fall under this banner too, all of them busy plugging away at making Crown Inc seem relevant and like a net positive for British society.

But it becomes much harder to make that particular argument when we are reminded of how amply the House of Windsor is rewarded for working to ensure their own survival.

When he isn’t taking part in charity polo games, William works with Kate to make the monarchy seem like a useful outfit. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for TGI Sport

This latest Duchy accounting only highlights the much bigger problem of the opacity around royal finances in general.

The House of Windsor has long looked a bit squirrely and not entirely playing straight when it comes to money matters. Take Prince Andrew having bought himself, with ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, a $37 million Swiss ski chalet despite his allowance from his late Mumsy being less than $500,000.

The wooden chalet Helora, owned since 2014 by Britain's Prince Andrew, Duke of York and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. Picture: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

Or the very advantageous, bespoke tax arrangements that the Duchy of Cornwall enjoys.

The King is hardly an unblemished paragon here either.

One scandal that failed to be as significantly covered as it should have been was the 2021 revelation that the King had accepted $5.85 million in donations for his charity in cash in bags, including in a Fortnum & Mason plastic bag, by a Qatari politician.

Or the bombshell the following year that Charles had accepted a nearly $2 million donation from Osama bin Laden’s family.

All that money went to support his charities, but Lord – imagine what the headlines would have been if it had turned out that Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had accepted a donation to their Archewell Foundation from anyone with the surname bin Laden.

UK newspaper publishing plants would run out of red, angry ink within a day.

This week’s accounts also invite one other inevitable question – are they worth it?

Does the royal family deliver value for the $1.51 they cost every Brit?

It’s a question that has always set the Cromwellian fault-finders against flag-waving sorts eagerly citing the extent to which the Windsors prop up the national GDP.

The words of Notorious B.I.G. have never been more applicable – mo money? Mo problems.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as ‘Astronomical’: Princess Kate’s insane salary revealed