It is land. Much of the land is rented out; that includes farmland (not sharecropping but just cash rent), shopping centers, even The Oval cricket ground in London. The rents paid generate substantial income. The Duchy also manages some land directly, especially holiday cottages in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly that tourists can rent by the week. Woodlands managed for forestry purposes yield some additional income.
Are sharecroppers what we’d call tenant farmers? Share croppers sound like one step up from slaves, toiling the land only for the landowner to take all the profits. Tenant farms are often pretty substantial properties in themselves - I actually know a tenant farmer for the Duchy of Cornwall, and he’s quite a wealthy guy in his own right.
There’s a website, if you’re interested.
they are forcing younger royals to get regular paid jobs so they won’t have much time to give speeches, cut ribbons, etc. If they need more help they should not have made that group work full time. I mean the kids of Andrew, Anne and other cousins Edward’s daughter is 18 this year so she could do events soon.
Fair questions, to which I have no answer/opinion. I guess my answer would depend on how much they were getting paid (including their entire lifestyle subsidy/benefits), and how onerous the tasks were. And what is their motivation? Do they enjoy it? Think it their duty?
My personal opinion is that if the queen is too old to put in a full day’s work, maybe there should be a max age at which she goes onto inactive status. But no one asked me. And yeah - given her uniquely lofty position, it doesn’t seem outrageous that she is expected to open a box and scribble her name a couple of times every day.
And I’m not sure why the # of royals is being reduced. Is it because those IN the group do not want to share their money? Or is it because those OUT of the group prefer a different lifestyle and income.
Of those outside the inner circle - like younger siblings and their children, what are their sources of income/wealth? What are their real world careers? Do they pay mortgages? Report for 9-5 jobs?
Heck - I really couldn’t care less about the Royals. I’m not British. I think they are pretty silly and anachronistic, but I’m not paying for them. For me, they are nothing other than another country’s very expensive state sponsored soap opera. A source of modest amusement, nothing more.
The more I hear of them, the more average I imagine they are, with all the range of ignorance, abilities, biases of any other group of very wealthy Europeans. What I find curious is the extent to which they seem - um - sheltered and provincial in their thinking. I guess that might come from their great wealth and extensive support and security staffs. But ISTM that given their resources, they have access to just abut ANYTHING in the realm of culture, learning, history, travel, sport… Like I said, they just seem quite average.
The Queen has the Duchy of Lancaster (and the Sovereign Grant, although as noted that’s mostly for the buildings), the Prince of Wales has the Duchy of Cornwall, and Prince Philip has a parliamentary annuity (since 1952). Other than that, nobody is getting official money; they’re all living on gifts/transfers, inherited wealth, or what they can make from their jobs. The Queen and the PoW pay official expenses for the other members of the family from the Grant or the Duchies, and are presumed to pay day-to-day expenses for at least some of them out of their private wealth.
For example, the Queen’s youngest son Edward and his wife Sophie (the Earl and Countess of Wessex) work fulltime on royal duties, and the Queen pays their official expenses, such as their office, from the Sovereign Grant. They live in the Mansion House, Bagshot Park, which is owned by the Crown Estate and rented out to the Earl, reportedly on a 150-year lease. At the time he took the lease, the house was renovated, paid partly by the Crown Estate and partly by the prince (doubtless from money given by his mama as a wedding gift), and he was at that time supposedly paying 90,000 pounds annually in rent. The Queen purchased Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire as a residence for Princess Anne back in the 1970s, and she still lives there; both of her children live in homes on the estate. Other royals receive “grace and favor” residences: apartments at Kensington Palace, St. James’s Palace, etc., often with nominal rents or with the Queen paying commercial rents on their behalf. Obviously, the Queen can gift whatever she chooses to whomever she chooses, regardless of whether they have a royal title.
Part of the problem is that there has been a public perception that there are too many royals soaking up too much public money, even people who didn’t actually receive anything. For example, Prince Michael of Kent is the Queen’s cousin; it was apparently never intended that he join The Firm, and he had a military career and then established a private consultancy. He represented the Queen overseas occasionally and showed up for the big events like Trooping the Color, but wasn’t considered a ‘working royal’ and didn’t receive public funding (although he did have cut-rate rent at Kensington Palace). The public perception that this royal didn’t do anything led to periodic controversies, particularly since he accepted financial assistance from the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
Charles in particular has been keen to avoid the perception that there are a lot of royals who don’t really do that much as royals, so he has pushed slimming down the royal family, to where the title of prince or princess is only borne by those who are expected to be working royals.
Other members of the family do have inherited wealth to fall back upon, but many are working fulltime jobs. The Earl of Ulster, for example, is the son of Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester; Ulster saw active service in Northern Ireland and in Iraq during his army career. More recently, he has worked for various nonprofits, while his wife is a licensed pediatrician and lectures on gene therapy at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (where she writes articles with fun titles such as “Absent B cells, agammaglobulinemia, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in Folliculin Interacting Protein 1 deficiency”).
Princess Beatrice is Vice President of Partnerships and Strategy at the software firm Afiniti; her sister Princess Eugenie is a director at the London branch of the art dealer Hauser & Wirth. I doubt either have to worry about paying the bills, but they do have real jobs.
These two are known simply as Beatrice York and Eugenie York in their working roles; you’ve probably never have heard of Alex Ulster, or Eddy Downpatrick (Edward Windsor, Lord Downpatrick), the founder of Scottish menswear line FIDIR, or Nicholas Windsor, who is notable mainly for his hardline stance against abortion. Without royal titles and roles, they are free to pursue their private interests and goals.
Charles must have expected that Andrew, Harry, and Harry’s wife would be working royals; the departure of all three was never part of the plan, and their absence leaves a gap. William and Kate and Edward and Sophie are now the only fulltime royals under the age of 70. Beatrice has displayed little or no interest in taking up the mantle; Eugenie might be interested, but Edward’s and William’s kids are all too young.
Popes retire now so why not the Queen? Pope Francis says he won’t stay on until he dies.
Nobody in the royal family should get any tax money. Queen is rich enough on her own to support the ones who need support.
Turns out that Oprah is the one who “determined” it wasn’t Philip, by whatever means.
Considering the Queen is Head of the Church of England by virtue of Henry VIII getting shot of the Pope, I’m not sure what relevance Popes have.
Thx for the detailed info, slash.
British law, as it currently stands, doesn’t give her that option. She’d either have to abdicate altogether (which she’d never do–too many echoes of 1936) or get some combination of the Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls, and Prince Philip to declare she has “an infirmity of mind or body,” accompanied by evidence from physicians.
As a practical matter, Charles has already taken over the Queen’s overseas travel and he (or others, including William) perform many investitures and other ceremonial duties. Her workload is a lot lighter now than it was ten or twenty years ago, in deference to her advancing age. However, she seems to take to heart what she said on her 21st birthday back in 1947: “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”
But can’t that law be changed?
IIRC, they somewhat recently made some changes to make some succession rules (or something) equally open to women. If the Queen decided she had had enough, and it was time to give the next generation a shot before THEY became aged and infirm, how challenging would it be to amend the law? Would it have to apply to all future rulers or could it be a 1x thing?
What are the cultural factors preventing a king or a queen from voluntarily moving into senior status, w/ a more advisory role.
In general terms, I would think it kinda dickish for someone who inherited a family business to hold onto the reigns well into their 90s, thereby preventing their kid from exercising control until they are well past what is generally considered retirement age. At least if the kid is not a complete idiot/reprobate.
It can be, yes. Whether the current British PM and Parliament has the political capital and willpower to do so I somewhat doubt (the hash they’ve made of Brexit is not confidence-inspiring) AND at least some of the Commonwealth realms would need to pass matching laws. The decision to change male-preference to absolute primogeniture (i.e., eldest child inherits regardless of gender), for example, was “agreed in principle” at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the fall of 2011, passed the British Parliament in April 2013, and didn’t come into effect until March 2015, with the government of Western Australia, for no particular discernible reason, being one cause of the delay. A judicial challenge to the Canadian version was not finally settled until the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear a further appeal just last spring [April 2020].
In some of the realms, possibly even including Britain, a change in the law allowing a monarch to resign could turn into a fight over whether they needed a monarch at all; I’m sure the Queen is not eager to open that can of worms.
Queen Elizabeth II is the last of the European hereditary monarchs to be crowned in an explicitly religious ceremony, and she is thought to believe that her service as monarch is part of her duty to God as well as to Britain and the Commonwealth. One does not retire from duty to God just because you’re old and frail. The Queen also is a very firm believer in tradition, and there’s just no tradition in England of a monarch voluntarily retiring. There were monarchs who were forced out (e.g., Richard II or James II), and there is the example of Edward VIII, who “shirked his duty” by abdicating in 1936, but other monarchs just delegated increasing amounts of day-to-day work to their heir while remaining firmly on the throne. The Queen herself took on work during her father’s illnesses, and she will have heard from older relatives how Victoria delegated.
Thx again for the detailed response.
I thought at least some priests and spiritual leaders retired or went on senior status. 
Say what you will about her belief in tradition and religion, but if I were Chuckie, I’d be pissed.
Well, Charles would also be aware that if he can force his mother out because she’s too old, then what is to stop William from forcing HIM out in favor of a younger, more active, more dynamic, and better-liked king (i.e., William)?
Her personal expenses are paid for by her. The only “tax money” the Queen gets is to support buildings that the Crown owns and to pay the costs of duties the Government wants done by Royals (including some staff). She is the Head of State of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. She’s not some squatter who happened to stumble into Buckingham Palace and take up residence. Do you expect the US President to pay rent to stay at the White House or the PM to rent out #10?
In fact, the revenues generated by the Crown Estate go to the Government and the Sovereign Grant referred to above is pegged at 25% of the NET revenue brought in by the Estate. In other words, the lands and property generate a tidy little profit for the UK Government.
You don’t get it, do you?
Most of the remaining European royalty views the job as something to be cast aside when it becomes inconvenient. But the Windsors (well, most of them, at least) are made of sterner stuff. They view the job that they were born into as a sacred duty. And they do not shirk that duty, no matter what the personal cost.
Philip, for example, has paid a terribly high personal price for his role. He would have been VASTLY happier with a full career in the navy. But circumstances didn’t allow him to do that.
For the Queen to somehow step aside would be a dereliction of duty. It would be an act of supreme selfishness on her part–putting her personal wishes and feelings before her duty. And she has seen first-hand the sort of chaos and ugliness that comes from THAT.
Well, I was thinking of it as a more voluntary thing, that the QUEEN would/could decide when it was time to pass the reins. Hell, no matter how impressed I was with myself, I’d have a hard time thinking that at age 70 after doing a job for 1/2 century, I was better able to handle it than my decades younger eldest child. IMO, even the most impressive octogenarian is not as sharp as most reasonably competent 50 yr olds.
No, I readily admit that I DON’T get it. You say they are of sterner stuff, but I see nothing weak about giving it a good go for a half century, and then letting the next generation have a shot. And I really don’t get why this one family is somehow uniquely entitled to a hugely lavish publicly funded lifestyle - through nothing other than an accident of birth. Like I said, they impress me as a state-sponsored soap opera.
But I don’t have to get it. And my opinion should matter NOTHING to any Brit. Same way way no one else needs to “get” American politics or officeholders.
Which says a lot about what Queen Elizabeth thinks about Charles’ competence to run the monarchy…
Lizzie would lose a lot of goodwill and sympathy if she were to retire now, as this would lead to Brits losing out on an additional holiday in 2022 (Platinum Jubilee bank holiday)…
Being the sharpest, though, isn’t really the point. (If you’re looking for the sharpest monarch, picking him or her based on birth order in a particular family isn’t really the way to go.)
The point is duty, devoting “my whole life” [emphasis added] to the service of the nation. That’s not “my whole life until I get old and tired” or “my whole life until I decide to retire,” but “my whole life until my body gives out on me.”
Having two monarchs, two power centers, doesn’t really work; Charles can’t stand on his own two feet as king until his mother is out of the picture. If she is still alive and competent but out of the picture, then what does that say about duty? How can she serve the nation and God by sitting quietly next to the fireplace doing nothing?
Fellow monarchs such as Beatrix of the Netherlands and Juan Carlos of Spain did not swear an oath of lifelong service to their God and country; Elizabeth did, and she means to stick to it.