Not yet crowned but already very rich: Charles III, who is about to receive the inheritance of his mother Elizabeth II, valued at 360 million pounds (406 million euros), will add this sum to assets that he has managed well as prince. According to the Times, his total fortune will amount to 600 million pounds (678 million euros). The former Prince of Wales has led an ambitious investment policy to replenish his coffers after divorcing Diana, says the daily, citing a close to the royal family.

The separation cost him 17 million pounds in 1996, but Charles did not start from scratch and could count on the resources of the Duchy of Cornwall, from which he received the benefits of his mother's accession to the throne in 1952 on her death in 2022. This heritage was set up in the fourteenth century to give financial independence to the royal heir. Concretely, the latter does not own the assets of this fund, but receives its profits until his accession to the throne.

Poundbury, laboratory of the managerial passions of Charles III

For Charles, the duchy "brings together everything he is passionate about," said his wife Camilla, in a 2019 ITV documentary. The future king toured the farms he rented to farmers and encouraged them to use sustainable farming methods. In addition to 260 farms, the duchy owns 52,450 hectares of land, and leases 345 million pounds of commercial property. Charles even created a village, Poundbury, on the outskirts of Dorchester, where he applied his architectural preferences.

Under his leadership, the size of the duchy has increased and in its latest annual report, it has more than one billion pounds in assets, a record, for income returned to the heir amounting to 23 million pounds, an increase of more than 40% in fifteen years. This income is now paid to his heir William, but he had time to fill Charles' account even before his royal inheritance.

Balmoral Castle in the account, not Buckingham

Because of a centuries-old tradition confirmed in the 1990s to avoid dissolving the royal patrimony, "he will not pay any inheritance tax," says Geoff Kertesz, a London lawyer specializing in heritage. If the Queen's will is not public, another exception, Balmoral Castle, where the royal family spends its summers, and Sandringham, are among the properties inherited by Charles.

Conversely, Buckingham and Windsor Palaces, historic homes of the royal family, belong to the State. Another historical symbol of the British monarchy, the Crown Jewels are also the property of the nation, and are therefore excluded from the assessments of the royal fortune, since they alone represent several billion pounds.

A complex calculation

On the other hand, the State pays the sovereign a "sovereign grant": an endowment for the sovereign of a quarter of the income generated by the "Crown Estate", a vast fund composed of real estate assets such as offshore wind farms. The rest goes to the public purse. The Royal Endowment has reached £86.4 million for 2021-2022. Finally, a third fund completes the royal fortune: the Duchy of Lancaster, controlled by the sovereign, and which brought the Queen 24 million pounds in 2022.



In a series of articles entitled "The cost of the crown", the Guardianattempts to assess the royal fortune, making the choice to include the property of the Duchy of Lancaster, legally defined as controlled by the state but whose entire benefit goes to the sovereign. The daily also includes luxury vehicles, technically owned by the state but used by the royal family. There are also works of art, including a painting by Claude Monet, The Bloc, bought for 2,000 pounds by the Queen Mother, the mother of Elizabeth II, in the post-war period and now valued at twenty million pounds. As a result, Charles' fortune would then be 1.8 billion pounds (two billion euros).

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