Following the death of Queen Elizabeth, the new titles of Prince and Princess of Wales weren’t the only things that Prince William and Kate Middleton inherited. They also became the owners of the Duchy of Cornwall—a 135,000-acre estate in southwest England.
Its value lies far beyond its beautiful landscapes. Each year, the Duchy makes money through residential and commercial rents, as well as its investment portfolio. The surplus income goes to the Prince and Princess of Wales. How much is that, exactly? Thanks to the Duchy of Cornwall’s Integrated Annual Report, which publishes the finances of the vast land holding, we now know.
This year, the duchy generated a surplus income of £23.6 million from rents and investments. In layman’s terms: Prince William and Kate Middleton made over $30 million from March 2023 to March 2024.
That $30 million, according to the Crown Estate, “meets the cost of the official, charitable, and private lives of their royal highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children.” So that’s things like travel, staff salaries, property maintenance, clothing, donations that the couple makes through their foundations, as well as any other miscellaneous associated with their roles as working royals.
When Prince Charles oversaw the Duchy of Cornwall as Prince of Wales, it also covered his official and private costs, as well as those of Camilla, his sons, and their spouses. Harry wrote in his memoir, Spare, about the tension this caused between him and his father. When he began dating Meghan Markle, Harry claims his father asked him if she’d continue acting. Harry responded that she’d likely become a working royal with him, and Charles allegedly then said there wasn’t enough money to go around.
This angered Harry. “Pa didn’t financially support Willy and me, and our families, out of any largesse. That was his job. That was the whole deal. We agreed to serve the monarch, go wherever we were sent, do whatever we were told, surrender our autonomy, keep our hands and feet inside the gilded cage at all times, and in exchange the keepers of the cage agreed to feed and clothe us,” he wrote. “Was Pa, with all his millions from the hugely lucrative Duchy of Cornwall, trying to say that our captivity was starting to cost him a bit too much?”
Although Prince Harry’s problems with the Duchy of Cornwall and its profits are now non-existent: In 2020, he and Meghan Markle signed a reported $200 million Netflix deal. Seems like the brothers are doing just fine.
