Pity Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. They get no money from the civil list or from the Queen and are widely regarded as freeloaders who exploit their titles for financial gain. He is dubbed the royal-for-rent, she princess pushy for her imperious manner and her apparent desire for self-promotion.
But life is not all bad for the Kents. Over their 33 years of marriage, they have used their minor royal status to carve out an existence for themselves that provides a constant round of world travel to promote a vast array of business and charitable organisations.
Now, after the Sophie tapes affair, there is growing concern about the Kents' activities among senior diplomatic and Buckingham Palace figures, who fear that the couple's endless globetrotting is tarnishing the international reputation of the royal family.
The prince does not carry out any official engagements on behalf of the Queen, but a glance through his diary since the start of January last year reveals the extraordinary scale of his travelling.
During the last 15 months he has been on more than 20 trips to destinations ranging from Dublin to Australia, as a representative or guest of more than 100 organisations. Few, if any, of the trips were paid for by the Kents.
The new millennium began for the prince with a week-long trip to New Zealand in January last year as a guest of the luxury goods manufacturer Louis Vuitton. He was there to watch the semi-final of a sailing contest sponsored by the company, but he managed to squeeze in one formal event: presenting a medal on behalf of the Royal Life Saving Society, of which he is Commonwealth president.
From there it was back to Britain, but not before a stop-off in Los Angeles during which he met the consul general to "discuss forthcoming initiatives in California". It is this sort of contact with British diplomatic representatives while on private business that is causing growing unease among senior Foreign Office ministers.
Diplomats fear a rerun of the row that erupted five years ago when it emerged that he used the facilities of the British embassy in Beijing while on a private business trip to China. The prince's office insisted then that he was there at the invitation of the Chinese government, and that the embassy had extended only "the same assistance as given to any other visiting party".
According to senior ministerial sources, the prince is still treading a similarly thin line on some of his trips. A spokesman for the prince, however, denied the claims out of hand.
Dismayed
The Kents defend their travelling on the basis that the vast majority of it is on behalf of good causes, but diplomatic and palace sources have been dismayed by the obscure nature of some of the organisations they the couple lend their support to.
In April last year, for example, the prince travelled to Singapore and Australia as patron of a medical charity, the World Health Network Foundation, the "ethical watchdog" of a commercial venture called World Health Network which allows doctors around the world to share information via the internet.
Inquiries by the Guardian have established that neither the World Health Organisation, British Medical Association nor the Royal College of Medicine were previously aware of its existence.
Much of the prince's work involves representing two business organisations, the British Security Industry Association, with whom he travelled to Dubai and Athens in the past year, and the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, under whose auspices he travelled to Russia at least twice in the last year.
A hitherto unnoticed memorandum from the RBCC, of which the prince is patron, to the Commons foreign affairs committee in 1999 sheds some light on the tensions between the Foreign Office and the prince. Under the heading Prince Michael of Kent, the organisation com plained that senior members of the British embassy in Moscow, along with the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, and ministers in London, "do not appear to acknowledge the role HRH Prince Michael is carrying out".
The memo said that the prince was regarded by the Russians as a significant character whom senior government figures wanted to deal with. "As such, therefore, he is seen as a quasi-diplomatic representative and his views are sought. Distancing of any sort by the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] is therefore logically and clearly a reduction in its level and effectiveness of diplomatic representation."
Yesterday, both the prince's office and the RBCC distanced themselves from the memo. A spokesman for the prince said that it had not expressed his views and that relations with both the Foreign Office and the Moscow embassy were "improving all the time as they come to understand what the prince is doing".
Lectures
Princess Michael is also a keen traveller. Her main vehicle is a twice-yearly lecture tour of the United States, which involves speaking at dinners on art and history topics, with titles such as Louis XIV: Substance and the Show. All the money raised from the lectures goes to charity.
While the Kents are at pains to insist that they travel as private individuals, before going abroad on a trip, they always meet with the London ambassador of the host country, either at the embassy or at Kensington Palace.
On January 8 this year, for example, the prince went to the Peruvian embassy to discuss the arrangements for a visit by the princess with the ambassador and other officials.
The meeting took place even though the princess was travelling to Peru in February on a private visit as a guest of Jim Sherwood, founder and president of the Sea Containers Group and head of Orient Express Hotels.
The prince's spokesman insisted that the prince had not met the ambassador to request facilities from the Peruvian government. "When they go to a country, it is something that people are interested in and it would be quite wrong and lacking in manners not to meet with the ambassador of that country."
But several leading British charities and business organisations involved in organising visits overseas with celebrities and famous patrons told the Guardian yesterday that they never felt it necessary to have meetings at ambassador level ahead of their trips.
Useful links:
www.royal.gov.uk/family/kent3.htm Buckingham palace biography of the Kents
www.princemichael.org.uk Prince Michael's website
www.pglmiddlesex.free-online.co.uk/pmk Prince Michael of Kent freemasons' lodge