Note: The release of the report on royal residences by the National Audit Office has caused me to shift my publication schedule.
I’m pushing back to next week the start of my new series – its working title is “A regal ode to Canada” – that focuses on the Canadian-related gowns, dresses, jewels, and other items at the Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style exhibition at the King’s Gallery. The series culminates on Canada Day with the most drenched-in-maple-syrup outfit in the exhibition.
A peppercorn.
The fruit of the Piper nigrum vine has come to symbolize the intense interest into what the royals pay for their residences. The palace has always done what it could to keep such financial dealing out of the public view. That proved impossible after revelations last year about the relationship between the former Prince Andrew and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. That scandal soon became entwined with the related mystery of how a disgraced royal with few public means of income could afford to live in Royal Lodge, the palatial former residence of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
The news that Andrew’s rent was literally a peppercorn provoked outrage from politicians and the public alike. In December, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published the full lease, while announcing an even broader inquiry into the financial arrangements of royal residences. It promised to hold an evidence session after the National Audit Office (NAO) updated its 2005 report, “The Crown Estate – Property Leases with the Royal Family.”
On Friday, June 5, the National Audit Office, Britain’s independent public spending watchdog, released its latest report: “Investigation into residential property arrangements with members of the Royal Family.”
The NAO report’s findings placed the two daughters of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in the centre of a media storm as it revealed that neither Princess Beatrice or Princess Eugenie personally pay rent for their homes in occupied royal palaces.
For approximately two decades, the tab for their expensive accommodation in London palaces has been picked up by the monarch – first, their grandmother and now their uncle. While that may have been understandable when they were young women, trying to establish themselves as private members of the royal family, it looks distinctly less salubrious now. The princesses are in their late 30s, are not working on behalf of the Crown, have what appear to be lucrative private careers, are married to successful businessmen, have their own multi-million-dollar homes, and yet continue to rely on their extended family to pay for their accommodation in London.
The divulgence about the sisters’ free London pads wasn’t the only revelation in the NAO report. There’s a lot in the report, so I’m picking and choosing items I found interesting or new, or both. I’m also keeping the currency in British pounds as exchange rates have fluctuated significantly over the decades, which makes conversions a tad difficult.
This is not a broad investigation into every royal residence, so those hoping to know more about the monarch’s private estate of Balmoral or Sandringham are going to be disappointed.
The NAO looked into “the arrangements for residential accommodation” for members of the royal family that are provided by:
a) the Crown Estate, an independently-run business that manages “hereditary possessions of the Sovereign held ‘in right of the Crown’”
or
b) the royal household, which supports the sovereign and working members of the royal family in their official duties.
In particular, the NAO examined the residential leases held by royals and managed by the Crown Estate, as well as the household’s arrangements for providing properties within the occupied royal palaces in England to members of the royal family.”
The 52–page report focuses on 15 properties: