As Prince William vows to rule with humility, his multibillion-dollar estate raises eyebrows

By Lucia Stein and Rebecca Armitage, ABC News

After a “brutal” year of family health battles, Prince William has used a recent trip abroad to lay out his vision for his future reign.

The Prince of Wales was in South Africa to deliver five awards as part of his environmental foundation, The Earthshot Prize, when he unveiled his grand plans for the House of Windsor in a surprisingly candid interview.

Dressed casually and sporting a grown-out beard from the summer, the 42-year-old said he hoped to use his role to “do things differently” for a younger generation.

“To give you more of an understanding around it, I’m doing it with maybe a smaller R in the royal, if you like. That’s maybe a better way of saying it,” William told reporters at the end of his Cape Town trip.

It is one of the clearest signs yet the future king is thinking about how the monarchy should evolve in the 21st century and find its place in a globalised world.

Part of that transition would involve the House of Windsor pivoting away from its traditional way of thinking, from Queen Elizabeth II’s ideal of “never complain, never explain”, to what the prince describes as a more “empathetic” approach.

“It’s more about impact philanthropy, collaboration, convening, and helping people,” he said.

“And I’m also going to throw empathy in there as well because I really care about what I do… I think we could do with some more empathetic leadership around the world.”

But while the future king may be hoping to set a new tone, long-running scandals and rivalries persist.

The heir and his father have raised eyebrows after an investigation by the Sunday Times and Channel Four’s Dispatches program revealed how money is made from the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster.

William is also embroiled in a drawn-out squabble between his father and Prince Andrew over a sweetheart rental deal, as well as an ongoing feud with “the spare”, his brother Prince Harry.

The lingering issues have opened the royals up to more scrutiny and could get in the way of William’s desire to chart a new course for the House of Windsor.

William’s plan for an ’empathetic’ monarchy

Queen Elizabeth described 1992 as her annus horribilis, but for her grandson, William, 2024 has been the “brutal” year.

After his father and wife were both diagnosed with cancer in February, the prince was left to steer the monarchy largely on his own as the pair temporarily withdrew from their royal duties.

BBC senior royal correspondent Daniela Relph said he found “a peace by trying to carve out the role of Prince of Wales in his own way”.

A new documentary on an initiative close to his heart seemed like the perfect way to reset the dial on the family’s public image and carry out his vision of working on projects with a high impact.

The series, released in October, tracked the launch of Homewards, a five-year, locally led program that he hopes will help end homelessness in six locations across the United Kingdom.

Following in the footsteps of his mother, William said he had drawn “inspiration and guidance” from Princess Diana when deciding to tackle the problem of homelessness.

More than 350,000 people in Britain are living without a permanent home, a situation only made worse by the recent cost of living crisis.

The prince launched the initiative last year and said he came to Homewards with “no other agenda” than wanting to “help people who are in need”.

But the project and the documentary based on its launch did happen to have the added benefit of highlighting the royals’ various charitable works.

Cameras follow the future king as he spends time with struggling Britons who have fallen on hard times, showcasing William’s philanthropic work and the impact of his unique role when used to bring attention to a hidden issue.

“We see him as the real person. When he comes [to The Passage] he’s very relaxed, very chilled …,” Mick Clarke, chief executive of London homelessness charity The Passage, explained in a question and answer session after a press screening of the documentary.

“He’s also very authentic and people who have lived with homelessness are very good at sussing almost instantly whether someone is straightforward, whether they are authentic or not, and he just feels very comfortable.”

In many ways, Homewards is a continuation of his parents’ work. It was one of his mother’s special causes as well as a focus of King Charles’ passion project, the Prince’s Trust, a charity designed to help vulnerable young people get their lives on track.

It also appears to be in line with the prince’s desire for “small R” royalty.

“He wants to modernise the way royals conduct their interface with the public,” Giselle Bastin, a royal commentator from Flinders University, says.

“He wants the way he conducts his public duties to be more relaxed in terms of protocols and formalities, so that he can spend more time talking and listening to the people he meets from the various charities and public programs with which he’s involved.

“William wishes to carry on with his mother’s legacy of spending quality time with people, listening to their stories and their needs, rather than merely helicoptering in and opening hospital wings and cutting ribbons.”

But his ambitious plans to pull the monarchy in a new direction have been slightly derailed by questions about his family’s mysterious duchy.

The royals face backlash over the duchy

When Homewards was first launched, critics argued William’s involvement was at odds with his position, personal wealth and extensive property portfolio.

On the UK radio station LBC, he was cheekily christened with the title the “prince of homelessness” by host James O’Brien after a republican phoned in to complain about the optics.

Then earlier this month, a Sunday Times and Channel Four investigation lifted the lid on Prince William’s and King Charles’s sprawling property empires and the wealth generated through this land.

The duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster have existed for centuries to ensure that the reigning monarch and their heir are financially independent, but the income generated by these complex webs of investments and real estate holdings has long been shrouded in mystery.

The investigation revealed the duchies were worth upwards of £1.8 billion ($3.51 billion) and held 5410 properties in England and Wales.

The Sunday Times found the duchies charge for the right to cross rivers, offload cargo onto their shores, run cables under their beaches, operate schools and charities, and dig graves.

The duchies also make income from services, including the use of toll bridges, ferries, sewage pipes and car parks.

The investigation revealed the royals both pay income tax voluntarily at the highest rate, but a special agreement with the UK Treasury means they pay no capital gains or corporation tax.

“The duchies are not private property, they are state assets. Parliament allowed the royals to maintain control over these estates when other land was surrendered three centuries ago. It’s time Parliament abandoned that arrangement,” said Graham Smith from the UK Republic group, which advocates for the abolition of the monarchy.

“There is no possible justification for allowing William and Charles to control the duchies and take the profits while avoiding taxes and facing accusations of neglecting tenants.”

The prince was left red-faced when tenants living on land belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall complained that their homes were poorly insulated and riddled with black mould.

An investigation by Channel 4 and The Mirror newspaper found several of the properties also failed to comply with minimum energy-efficiency requirements for landlords.

“Prince William became Duke of Cornwall in September 2022 and since then has committed to an expansive transformation of the Duchy,” a duchy spokesman said in a statement.

“This includes a significant investment to make the estate net zero by the end of 2032, as well as establishing targeted mental health support for our tenants and working with local partners to help tackle homelessness in Cornwall.”

William is not the first royal in his position to be criticised over the money earned from the hereditary estate.

The king also faced disapproval when he was the Prince of Wales.

A troublesome uncle and a wayward prince

The long-running and perplexing tabloid story of the “siege of Royal Lodge” has been another strange twist in William’s difficult year.

The battle between Charles and his brother, Prince Andrew, is over a sweetheart rental deal the Duke of York cut with their late mother to give him lifelong possession of a grand mansion on the grounds of Windsor Castle.

Andrew secured a 75-year lease on the property in 2002 for £250 a week, on one condition: he pays for all the upkeep of the mansion for as long as he lives there.

But the deal left the royal family in an awkward position after the Duke of York’s scandalous friendship with Jeffrey Epstein drew public ire, only made worse by Andrew’s disastrous interview with the BBC in 2019.

Observers say the optics of a senior family member remaining in a luxurious property after being forced to step back as a working royal are far from ideal and have fuelled the king’s drive to push his brother out.

“It has recently been announced that Prince Andrew can maintain his tenancy of Royal Lodge as he’s been given money from an unnamed donor,” Bastin said.

“Unsurprisingly, there are many calling for the donor’s name to be made public.”

These reports first surfaced in UK tabloids and have not been verified by the ABC.

“Charles and William have been working to deflect attention away from scandal-ridden Prince Andrew, and this development will only serve to open the royals to more scrutiny about their dealings with – often questionable – financial donors,” Bastin said.

Prince Harry, despite living in another country in self-imposed exile, has also been caught up in the siege of Royal Lodge.

When reports surfaced in February that Andrew was offered the keys to Frogmore Cottage as a proposed compromise, a friend of Harry and his wife, Meghan, was quoted as saying: “It all feels very final and like a cruel punishment.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped back from royal duties in 2020 after revealing their struggles with negative media coverage. They accused the royal family of doing little to protect them.

Since the couple moved to California, a bitter feud between the heir and the spare has become public, with Harry alleging in his memoir, Spare, that William called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.

He claimed a physical fight took place with his brother and he believed the family leaked stories against him.

The ongoing feud remains a looming issue for the future king and one William may need to resolve if he hopes to “do things differently”.

Critics say Harry’s absence is an ever-present reminder of the problems the monarchy does not want to address.

“What Harry has done is shown that royals can walk away and do the right thing under their own steam. They can fund their own lifestyles and get celebrity endorsements and do just fine,” Smith told NBC.

“So why his brother feels that he needs to hang on to the titles and the status and the public money, I think, is a question that is only highlighted by Harry’s departure.”

While it’s unlikely Harry will be allowed to return, a rapprochement may allow William to push forward with his vision for a new future free from the burden of an unresolved past.

– ABC News