#Cost of the Crown

[ingek73]

India archive reveals extent of ‘colonial loot’ in royal jewellery collection

File from India Office archive details how priceless items were extracted from colony as trophies of conquest

by David Pegg and Manisha Ganguly

Published: 14:00 Thursday, 06 April 2023

Five years ago, Buckingham Palace marked its summer opening with an exhibition celebrating the then Prince Charles’s 70th birthday with a display of his favourite pieces from the royal collection, Britain’s official trove of items connected to the monarchy. “The prince had a very, very strong hand in the selection,” the senior curator said.

Among the sculptures, paintings and other exhibits was a long gold girdle inlaid with 19 large emeralds once used by an Indian maharajah to decorate his horses. It was a curious choice to put into the exhibition in light of the violent means by which it had come into the hands of the royal family.

Emerald girdle of Maharaja Sher Singh, c 1840. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023

As part of its Cost of the crown series, the Guardian has uncovered a remarkable 46-page file in the archives of the India Office, the government department that was responsible for Britain’s rule over the Indian subcontinent. It details an investigation, apparently commissioned by Queen Mary, the grandmother of Elizabeth II, into the imperial origins of her jewels.

The report, from 1912, explains how priceless pieces, including Charles’s emerald belt, were extracted from India as trophies of conquest and later given to Queen Victoria. The items described are now owned by the monarch as property of the British crown.

Plundered stones

To fully understand the context behind the jewels, and their place in India’s history, it was necessary to visit the archives.

A journal records a tour in 1837 of the Punjab area in north India by the society diarist Fanny Eden and her brother George, the governor general of the British Raj at the time. They visited Ranjit Singh, the maharajah in Lahore, who had signed a “treaty of friendship” with the British six years earlier.

The half-blind Singh wore few if any precious stones, Eden wrote in her journal, but his entourage was positively drowning in them. So plentiful were the maharajah’s gems that “he puts his very finest jewels on his horses, and the splendour of their harness and housings surpasses anything you can imagine,” she wrote. Eden later confided in her journal: “If ever we are allowed to plunder this kingdom, I shall go straight to their stables.”

Twelve years later, Singh’s youngest son and heir, Duleep, was forced to sign over the Punjab to the conquering forces of the British East India Company. As part of the conquest, the company did indeed plunder the horses’ emeralds, as well as Singh’s most precious stone, the legendary Koh-i-noor diamond.

The queen mother’s crown sits on top of the coffin during her funeral in 2002. Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

Today, the Koh-i-noor sits in the crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, on display at the Tower of London, and it has become an emblem of Britain’s tortured relationship with its imperial history.

Anita Anand, a journalist and historian who co-wrote a book titled Koh-i-noor on the diamond, said it was “a beautiful and cold reminder of British supremacy during the Raj”, the period between 1858 and 1947 when India was ruled by the crown.

“Its facets reflect the fate of a boy king who was separated from his mother,” Anand said. The stone too was “taken far away from his home, recut and diminished”. Anand said: “That is not how India sees itself today.”

Buckingham Palace is plainly aware of the sensitivities surrounding looted artefacts. After the Indian government let it be known that for Camilla, the Queen Consort, to wear the Koh-i-noor at Charles’s coronation would elicit “painful memories of the colonial past”, the palace announced she would swap it for a less contentious diamond.

But, as was discovered by Queen Mary, the Koh-i-noor was not the only gem taken from Singh’s treasury to have found its way to the British monarchy.

Royal with a pearl necklace

Among the jewels identified in the document found by the Guardian is a “short necklace of four very large spinel rubies”, the largest of which is a 325.5-carat spinel that later came to be identified as the Timur ruby.

Its famous name is erroneous: research by the academic Susan Stronge in 1996 concluded it was probably never owned by Timur, a Mongol conquerer. And it is a spinel, a red stone similar to, but chemically distinct from, a ruby.

Elizabeth II was shown handling it in the 1969 BBC documentary Royal Family, and was clearly acquainted with the myths surrounding it. “The history, of course, is very fascinating. It belonged to so many kings of Persia and Mughal emperors, until Queen Victoria was sent it from India,” she observed.

The Timur ruby necklace, 1853. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023

The queen was never pictured wearing the item. However, she may have worn another of the Lahore treasures, identified in the India Office report as “a pearl necklace consisting of 224 large pearls”.

In her 1987 study of royal jewellery, Leslie Field described “one of the Queen Mother’s most impressive two-row pearl necklaces … made from 222 pearls with a clasp of two magnificent rubies surrounded by diamonds that had originally belonged to the ruler of the Punjab” – almost certainly a reference to the same necklace.

The queen wearing pearls at the Royal Opera House in 2012. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

In 2012, Elizabeth II attended a gala festival at the Royal Opera House in London to celebrate her diamond jubilee. Photographs showed her wearing a multi-string pearl necklace with a ruby clasp.

Were these Ranjit Singh’s pearls? There was speculation they may have been, though Buckingham Palace was unable to confirm either way.

Queen Mary’s interest appears to have been prompted by curiosity about the origin of some of her pearls rather than any moral concern about the manner in which they were obtained. But a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said slavery and colonialism were matters that “his Majesty takes profoundly seriously”.

Shashi Tharoor, formerly an undersecretary at the United Nations, and currently an MP in India, said: “We have finally entered an era where colonial loot and pillage is being recognised for what it really was, rather than being dressed up as the incidental spoils of some noble ‘civilising mission’.

“As we are seeing increasingly, the return of stolen property is always a good thing. Generations to come will wonder why it took civilised nations so long to do the right thing.”

[xtruss]

Cost of the Crown: Windsors v Borbones: Comparing the Public Pay of European Filthy Royal Families

Stipends, palace maintenance, staff costs and taxes all differ, but the British royals are given the most taxpayer money

King Charles III and Camilla, the Queen Consort; Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II; Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia; and Belgium’s King Philippe and Queen Mathilde. Composite: Guardian Design/AFP/Getty Images/ SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock/PA

— By Rupert Neate, Henry Dyer and Ashifa Kassam | Wednesday 5 April 2023

Comparing the cost of Europe’s royal dynasties is akin to comparisons between apples and oranges. Each family is unique, and each government has a different way of paying for them. Some royal budgets cover the cost of maintaining palaces, staff and security; others are limited to annual stipends to individual kings or queens.

Tax is paid by some European royals but not others. Some countries are highly transparent, providing detailed breakdowns of how public money is spent on individual royals. Others are more opaque, with royals supplementing an official government lump sum with other quasi-private sources of income. One thing, at least, is clear: European royal families come with vastly different price tags.

United Kingdom 🇬🇧

Members of the British royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the trooping the colour ceremony in June 2018.

Members of the British royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the trooping the colour ceremony in June 2018. Photograph: Shutterstock

Family name/House: The Windsors

Monarch: King Charles III

Approximate Public Funding: £86m-£127m

The most famous of Europe’s grand hereditary families, and probably the richest and most powerful too. Many Britons wrongly assume their monarch fulfils purely ceremonial roles, and has no real power. However, an archaic procedure known as “consent” allows the monarch, or heir, to secretly vet laws before they are approved by the elected members of parliament.

It was once used by Queen Elizabeth II to persuade ministers to change the law to conceal her “embarrassing” private wealth from the public.

There is no breakdown of how much individual members of the royal family receive for their official duties. The monarch does receive a lump sum – the sovereign grant –which has risen dramatically over the last decade. The UK taxpayer gave £86.3m towards the cost of the British royal family last year. Of that, £34.5m was spent on refurbishing Buckingham Palace as part of a 10-year restoration programme. The core cost to the taxpayer, for the royal household’s operating costs, travel and maintenance on other residences, was £51.8m.

Controversially, the new king and his heir, Prince William, also receive income from two hereditary estates – the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall – which pay no corporation tax or capital gains tax. There has been a centuries-old debate over whether that money – currently more than £40m a year – should really go to the public. Buckingham Palace insists the revenue is “private income” buts says part of it goes towards official duties.

From 1993, the monarch agreed to pay “voluntary” income tax, although they are exempt from inheritance tax, meaning the late queen passed her fortune to the king without any deductions for the public good.

Spain 🇪🇸

Clockwise from top left: King Felipe, Queen Letizia, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofia pose for their 2021 Christmas card. Photograph: Zuma/Alamy

Family name/House: The Borbones (or Bourbons)

Monarch: King Felipe VI

Approximate Public Funding: £7.4m

Spain’s royal family ranks among the most beleaguered on the continent. Marred by accusations of corruption, extramarital affairs and a precipitous fall from grace, the former king Juan Carlos I abdicated in 2014 and eventually left the country.

Investigations into his financial dealings were eventually shelved and the former king’s lawyers noted he had been cleared of “any illicit conduct susceptible to criminal reproach”. However, the scandals led to an intense debate among Spaniards about their royal family, who this year will receive €8,431,150 (£7.4m) from the state budget.

Seeking to present a new era of transparency, Juan Carlos’ son, King Felipe VI, made public his personal assets of €2.6m (£2.28m). He renounced his personal inheritance from his father in 2020 and removed him from the royal family’s payroll.

From the public grant, Felipe receives €269,296 (£236,214.10) in an annual personal allowance, while his wife, Queen Letizia, gets €148,105 (£129,911). His mother, Juan Carlos’s estranged wife, Sofía, receives an annual stipend of €121,186 (£106,299). Spanish royals pay tax on their income.

Sweden 🇸🇪

L-R: King Carl XVI Gustaf, Prince Daniel, Queen Silvia and Crown Princess Victoria attend the Nobel prize ceremony in Stockholm in December 2022. Photograph: Christine Olsson/TT News Agency/AFP/Getty Images

Family name/House: The Bernadottes

Monarch: King Carl XVI Gustaf

Approximate Public Funding: £11.5m

Sweden was the first monarchy to change its rules on succession from agnatic primogeniture (the eldest male son) to absolute cognatic primogeniture (the eldest child). The change was passed by the Swedish parliament in 1980, and led to Crown Princess Victoria becoming heir apparent instead of her brother Prince Carl Philip.

The Swedish royal court received a total grant of 147.9m Swedish krona (£11.5m) in 2021 (the latest figure available). Of this, 73.9m kr (£5.8m) covered the cost of the king’s official duties, travel, staff and stables. Within this, 13.6m kr (£1m) was allocated to the king and other titled royals who carry out official duties to cover costs of a “non-official nature which are connected with, or caused by, the royal position”, according to the court’s annual report.

Individually, Carl Gustaf and his wife, Silvia, get 8m kr (£625,423) between them, while Victoria and her husband collect 4.5m kr (£351,800), and Carl Philip and his wife get 1.1m kr (£85,995). In 2019, the king stripped five of his grandchildren of their royal titles in order to reduce the total cost of “appendages” to serving royals.

Belgium 🇧🇪

King Philippe and Queen Mathilde with their children (L-R) Princess Eléonore, Prince Gabriel, Crown Princess Elisabeth and Prince Emmanuel at 2022 National Day celebrations in front of the Royal Palace in Brussels. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Family name/House: Van België, De Belgique, or Von Belgien (or “of Belgium”)

Monarch: King Philippe

Approximate Public Funding: £12.5m

Like the British royals, the Belgian monarchy ditched its previous surname, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, in 1920 in response to fierce anti-German sentiment after the first world war. The new name – van België (Dutch), de Belgique (French) or von Belgien (German) – means “of Belgium” in the country’s three official languages.

The Belgian monarch has had no direct power since 1951, although the king has kept the right “to be consulted by his ministers, to encourage them, and to caution them”.

King Philippe, or Filip, is granted an annual civil list to cover the cost of performing official duties. The amount is established at the start of each reign. Philippe, who acceded to the throne in 2013, received €12.5m (£11m) in 2021, according to the Belgian government’s latest report. The amount is set to increase with the consumer prices index measure of inflation. As well as the £11m paid to Philippe, other members of the royal family receive yearly “emoluments”. Philippe’s father, King Albert II, who abdicated in 2013, receives €980,000 (£862,635); Albert’s eldest child, Princess Astrid, receives €341,000 (£300,161), slightly more than her younger brother, Prince Laurent, who gets €327,000 (£287,838). Their half-sister, Princess Delphine, who had Albert’s paternity recognised by the court in 2020, does not receive any royal funding. The payments are subject to income tax.

Denmark 🇩🇰

Queen Margrethe II (centre) with Crown Prince Frederik, his wife, Mary and their children (L-R) Vincent, Isabella, Josephine and Christian at Fredensborg in April 2022. Photograph: Patrick van Katwijk/Getty Images

Family name/House: The Glücksburgs

Monarch: Margrethe II

Approximate apublic Funding: £14m

On average, each Dane cycles 1.4km a day, according to the Denmark tourist board, and those cyclists include the royal family. Frederik, the crown prince and heir apparent, competed in the Tour de Storebælt cycle race near Copenhagen; he and his wife, Mary, ferry their children around town on a cargo bike.

Queen Margrethe II, 82, Europe’s longest-serving monarch, receives about 91.1m kroner a year (£10.7m) in civil list payments. The government says this covers expenses “relating to staff, operation of the royal household, administration and properties as well as the queen’s expenses of a more private nature”.

Separately, Frederik receives 22,434,876 kroner (£2.64m) a year, 10% of which goes to his wife. Frederik’s younger brother, Prince Joachim, the sixth in line to the throne, gets 3,965,400 kroner (£467,045) a year. All the money is received tax-free.

Queen Margrethe has stripped Joachim’s four children – Nikolai, Felix, Henrik and Athena – of their royal titles in a move designed to slim down the size of the family. The palace said the queen wanted to “create a framework for the four grandchildren, to a much greater degree, to be able to shape their own existence without being limited by the special considerations and obligations that a formal affiliation with the royal house as an institution implies”.

Luxembourg 🇱🇺

L-R: Crown Prince Guillaume, Princess Stephanie, Grand Duchess Maria Teresa, Grand Duke Henri, Princess Alexandra, Prince Louis and Prince Gabriel outside Luxembourg Cathedral in June 2022. Photograph: Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images

Family name/House: Grand Ducal Family of Luxembourg

Monarch: Grand Duke Henri

Approximate Public Funding: £16.9m

The Windsors are not the only royals to deliver a Christmas speech. The grand duke’s message is broadcast from the yellow room in the Grand-Ducal Palace every Christmas Eve.

The latest government budget for 2023 shows payments to the Maison du Grand-Duc (House of the Grand Duke) totalled €19,257,155 (£16.9m). Of that, €15.9m (£13.9m) was spent on day-to-day expenses, and €3.3m (£2.9m) on capital projects, such as renovations.

In addition to the civil list payments for staffing costs, the grand duke and his heir receive endowments for personal expenditure: in 2022, Henri received €523,103 (£460,381) and Crown Prince Guilluame received €217,985 (£191,848).

From July, legislation drafted by the prime minister, Xavier Bettel, will peg future changes to the personal allowances to the public sector. Bettel has said the centralisation of royal funding will provide more transparency, after anger at the blurring of public and private budgets. “Now we have a monarchy that moves out of the 19th century and into the 21st century,” he said.

Norway 🇳🇴

Princess Ingrid Alexandra (C) stands between her grandparents King Harald and Queen Sonja for a family photo to mark her Covid-delayed 18th birthday celebrations in Oslo in June 2022. Photograph: Lise Åserud/AP

Family name/House: The Glücksburgs

Monarch: King Harald V

Approximate Public Funding: £24m

The Norwegian monarchy dates back more than 1,000 years. Harald Fairhair is regarded as the first Norwegian king, who united several “petty kingships” into a single realm in about 885. The current king belongs to the House of Glücksburg, which has held the Norwegian throne since 1905.

The royal court’s latest annual accounts say the Norwegian royal family received 312m Norwegian kroner (£24m) in 2022 in the civil list. It is unclear how this is distributed. A previous report from 2015 states that “the king and queen and the crown prince and crown princess all receive an allowance” to cover “the management, operation, maintenance and development of the private properties and households, as well as appropriations for private expenses and official attire”.

The Netherlands 🇳🇱

(L-R): Queen Maxima, Princess Amalia, King Willem-Alexander, Princess Alexia and Princess Ariane pose at the New Church in Amsterdam in November 2022. Photograph: Koen van Weel/ANP/AFP/Getty Images

Family name/House: Van Orange-Nassau

Monarch: King Willem-Alexander

Approximate Public Funding: £44.2m

The Dutch royals are among the monarchies exempt from paying income tax. This year, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, rejected opposition demands to scrap the exemption. His government proposed an annual royal budget of €50.2m (£44.2m) for 2023.

That includes €1,035,000 (£911,162) for King Willem-Alexander, and a further €5.37m (£4.7m) to pay for his staff and other expenses. His wife, Máxima, collects €411,000 (£361,823), and an additional €700,000 (£616,245) for staff and expenses. The king’s mother, Beatrix, who abdicated in 2013, receives €1.73m (£1.52m).

Princess Amalia, the 19-year-old heir to the throne, has been granted €1.72m (£1.51m), of which €307,000 (£270,235) is salary and the rest is for staff and expenses. However, she has waived her right to the allowance, saying it would make her feel “uncomfortable” to accept it “until I incur high costs in my role as Princess of Orange”.

[lilaccatholic]

I am once again thinking about the reluctant ruler whose arc justly and correctly includes assuming the throne and taking responsibility for the people set before them

[jadeinretrogrde]

Elm "I Cannot Let It Be You" Rowan

Elm "Don't. Fucking. Yield." Rowan

Elm "A Hundred Years" Rowan

Elm "I’d Be Your King, But Always Your Servant" Rowan

Elm "There You Are" Rowan

[desultory-novice]

"Money Tree"

All this Hell Branch talk and including the non-Soul bosses and well, suddenly I HAD to address the giant tree elephant in the room...!

[For Context]

Marx: "Before I slice you up and shove you in a wood chipper a piece at a time...what's up with the drastic personality shift?"

Crown: "...Do not mistake me, Jester. I remain exactly the object your broken king knows me for, as the pain I have carved indelibly on his soul whispers to him even now..."

Crown: "But...I have not the power to Control that I did before, this incarnation of myself having been felled by another version of HIM. Ahh, he was shivering as he struck the final blow. The hot tears in his eyes. How I would have liked to feast on them like I did your king's..."

Crown: "My physical form may be buried, to take seed as a harmless fruit tree, but...the memory of my terrifying and wrathful hegemony lives on forever in the minds of every Magolor..."

Marx: "You're back to torment him more?"

Crown: "You foolish clown. I am here to play. Do you know how many years it takes an apple tree to grow from a seed? ...I tire of waiting."

Marx: "Play?! As in HERE? Nuh-uh. You gotta be insane if you think we're letting you set one branch inside our theme pa..."

Magolor: "Every ride and game costs x 1000 the list price."

Crown: "...Deal."

Marx: "Mags!?"

Magolor: "What? Money is money. And we do need a way to keep up with all the competing businesses opening up down here!"

Marx: "So Mags, would you say hell's become a hot spot? Hohoho..."

Magolor: "Heh...Heheh."

Crown: "...I'm going to get some shaved ice."

[giantkillerjack]

Betty is so relatable I would do the same shit for my wife

[rainintheevening]

Caspian IX & Caspian X

There was a time / I used to look into my father's eyes / In a happy home / I was a king, I had a golden throne / Those days are gone ... I remember how it all changed / My father said / Don't you worry, don't you worry child / See Heaven's got a plan for you /Don't you worry / Don't you worry now

- 'Don't You Worry Child' cover by Kurt Schneider & Sam Tsui

For @an-angels-fury because this song has been making me feel things.

[ingek73]

Official jewellery gifts to royals worth £80m are not in national collection

Palace refusing to explain why official state gifts worn by Princess of Wales and Camilla are not in the royal collection

David PeggFri 14 Apr 2023 07.29 BST

Buckingham Palace is refusing to explain why 11 pieces of jewellery potentially worth £80m that were official gifts to the royal family are not held in a trove of national heritage.

The jewels, which have been worn by Queen Elizabeth II; Camilla, the Queen Consort, and Catherine, Princess of Wales, are not contained in the royal collection, the custodian of culturally significant items held in trust for the nation.

The pieces include a set of aquamarine jewellery, four brooches and six necklaces, including an extraordinary Cartier necklace of emerald- and brilliant-cut diamonds worth at least £40m given to the late Queen by an Indian prince.

At least four of the items were presented by heads of state. The palace’s policy states that “as a general rule” gifts to the sovereign from another monarch or head of state “automatically” become part of the royal collection, a body that manages items held by the sovereign in trust for the nation.

The Royal Collection Trust, which manages the collection, confirmed that it does not have custody of the 11 jewels.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson declined multiple invitations to explain the current ownership of the 11 pieces. They suggested the royals do not regard the jewellery as their private property and that the items, which were given to the late queen between 1947 and 1979, “may” in the future be added to the royal collection.

“Official gifts are not the personal property of the member of the royal family who receives them, but may be held by the sovereign in right of the crown or designated in due course as part of the royal collection,” the spokesperson said. They declined to explain why the items were not already in the royal collection.

The palace’s policy on official gifts was first formulated in 1995 and updated in 2003. The guidelines state that items received on state visits or in connection with the royal family’s official role are not their private property.

All of the pieces identified by the Guardian were given to the queen before the guidelines were established. There is nothing in the policy that addresses gifts received by the royal family or the monarch before the code was set up.

The potential value of the items is hard to determine. Were anyone else to sell them, they would collectively be worth at least £8m, according to expert valuers.

However, analysis of previous auctions of jewels that were owned or worn by royals suggest the link to the Windsors would add a premium that could easily increase their total value to well over £80m.

‘An exceptional jewel’

Among the gifts identified are pieces of jewellery given to the queen at her wedding in 1947 and at her coronation a few years later by state officials.

It is one of the late queen’s most elaborate diamond necklaces and one she wore regularly. It has also been worn by Catherine, now the Princess of Wales, including at a gala at the National Portrait Gallery in 2014.

Sara Abey, a gemologist and jewellery merchant who estimated the value of several items for the Guardian, said the necklace could be worth more than £4m before considering its association with the British royal family.

“Having a renowned maker, important history and notable provenance, the queen’s Nizam of Hyderabad necklace is an exceptional jewel,” she said.

However her estimate of its value did not take into account what is described as the royal premium, which can dramatically inflate the sale value of an item and could make this necklace worth at least £40m.

Another diamond necklace was given to the queen as a wedding present by distinguished individuals from the City of London.

This, like many of the 11 items identified by the Guardian, was worn regularly by the queen. Other members of the royal family have also been seen wearing some of the gifts.

A diamond necklace presented to the queen during a state visit to the United Kingdom in 1967 by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was lent to Diana, Princess of Wales in 1983. The necklace was originally made by the American jeweller Harry Winston in 1952 and could be worth as much as £9m.

Twelve years later, during a reciprocal visit by the queen to Saudi Arabia, Faisal’s successor, King Khalid, gave her another of Winston’s diamond necklaces, now worth more than £8m.

A necklace of turquoises from the then president of Pakistan, Muhammad Ayub Khan, given on a state visit in 1966, and four brooches are among the other official gifts identified by the Guardian. These include the Flame Lily brooch, which was presented to Elizabeth on her 21st birthday by the children of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), who were each asked to donate three pence to pay for it.

The diamond necklaces and brooches were included in a 2012 reference volume published by the Royal Collection Trust or exhibited in Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration display.

The exhibition was described as including “an unprecedented display of a number of the queen’s personal jewels – those inherited by Her Majesty or acquired during her reign.”

Quick Guide

How we estimated the value of the royal jewellery

Valuing the royal family’s private jewellery collection is exceptionally difficult. A professional valuation would require each stone of each item to be inspected for occlusions or other imperfections that cannot be detected by the naked eye.

Even where an estimate can be made, there is then the ‘royal premium’: the association with the royal family, which could multiply the value many times over.

In 1989, Laurence Krashes, a senior assessor for the US jeweller Harry Winston, described the task as ‘like landing a plane in fog without a radar’. He assessed the family’s collection – excluding the royal premium – at £36m for the royal journalist Andrew Morton.

The Guardian has identified several items Krashes did not consider, such as the Cullinan IX ring and a diamond necklace given to the then Princess Elizabeth as a wedding gift in 1947. Sara Abey, a fellow of the Gemmological Association and jewellery merchant, provided the Guardian with estimates for the additional pieces.

Morton multiplied Krashes’ estimates tenfold to try to achieve a more realistic value. However an auction of the late Princess Margaret's jewellery in 2006 suggests this may have been a considerable underestimate. A Guardian analysis found items sold for an average of 18 times the auction house’s top-end estimate.

Since that 2006 auction, the value of royal jewellery has increased further. Fifty of Margaret’s items went on sale again in 2020, with one diamond ring having an asking price of £1.1m, almost 10 times the 2006 sale price of £142,000. This was already higher than the original auction valuation of £70,000

Opting for caution, the Guardian has used a multiplier of 10 to reflect a conservative estimate of the royal premium.

[xtruss]

Filthy Monarchy | Cost of the Crown: How The British Filthy Royal Family Hides Its Wealth From Public Scrutiny

Ahead of the coronation of King Charles III, the Guardian’s Cost of the crown series exposes the entrenched secrecy around the royal family’s money and wealth

— By David Pegg and Paul Lewis

How much money will the coronation of King Charles III cost the British public? What tax rate will our new king pay on his private income? How many engagements did “working royals” such as the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent attend over the last five years? How much were they paid? How much rent do Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who are not working royals, pay for residences in royal palaces?

In recent weeks, the Guardian has posed all of these questions to Buckingham Palace. The responses boil down to “ask someone else”, “work it out for yourself”, or simply “you have no right to know”. We beg to differ.

Obituaries of Queen Elizabeth II uniformly applauded her calm stewardship of the realm, or her supposed non-interference in British politics. None mentioned another hallmark of her reign: entrenched secrecy, which has given rise to a culture in which the British people are deprived of the most basic information about the monarchy.

Queen Elizabeth prepares to sign her Commonwealth Day message in 2021. Official papers uncovered by the Guardian revealed how she and her advisers repeatedly abused crown consent to secretly alter British laws. Photograph: Newspix International

Correspondence with the monarch or the heir, whether seismic or harmless, is banned from disclosure. Parliamentary criticism of conduct of royal family members, no matter how disgraced, is prohibited. The palace says the royal archives – the repository of our constitutional monarchy’s history – are open to “any serious researcher”. However they are the private property of the Windsors, who grant their permission before researchers can examine them.

Nowhere is the refusal to let the light in more fiercely enforced by the royals than over financial matters. The wills of even obscure members of the family are censored by judicial decree. The royals closely guard the secrets of their financial wealth, insisting it is “private” even when it is clearly born of their public roles.

It should not detract from Elizabeth II’s achievements to observe how this addiction to secrecy allowed the most unacceptable and corrosive practices to take root. In the past three years, official papers uncovered by the Guardian have revealed how the Queen and her advisers repeatedly abused the procedure of crown consent to secretly alter British laws, including, in 1973, as part of a successful bid to conceal her “embarrassing” private wealth from the public.

Until at least 1968, and very probably after, Elizabeth II’s household did not appoint “coloured immigrants or foreigners” to clerical roles, although they were permitted to work as domestic servants. Even today, Buckingham Palace insists it only complies with non-discrimination law voluntarily. Does the king approve of this? What other abuses have yet to be revealed? And how are they going to come to light when the monarchy is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FoI)?

Windsor town, and castle (L), prepare for the coronation of King Charles. How much money will the ceremony cost the British public? Photograph: Maureen McLean/Rex/Shutterstock

Today, the Guardian is launching Cost of the crown, an investigation into royal wealth and finances. In the coming days and weeks, our reporting will reveal information in the public interest about the fortunes that have been quietly amassed by the royals by dint of their public function. Our reporting will also demonstrate the vast challenge of obtaining answers to the most simple of questions.

Take, for example, the question of how much public money is spent on security for the royal family. The government, so often the monarch’s ally over matters of secrecy, claims that to disclose even just a single totalised figure for the entire family, without any further details whatsoever, would constitute an unacceptable threat to their safety.

It refuses to explain this reasoning in any detail, or why heads of state in other developed countries, including French and US presidents, can publish details about the costs of their security.

Instead, an FoI request to disclose the security costs of British royals was rejected, first by the Home Office and then, on appeal, by the Information Commissioner’s Office – forcing the Guardian to instruct lawyers last month to bring a further appeal at the information tribunal. To say it will take months to get an answer would be optimistic.

It took our colleague Rob Evans 10 years and a trip to the supreme court to secure the release under FoI of Prince Charles’s “black spider memos”, which showed how the heir to the throne lobbied senior government ministers on everything from badger culling to alternative herbal medicines. The government spent more than £400,000 on legal costs in an ultimately failed bid to keep the memos secret.

A copy of a 2004 letter from Charles to the then prime minister, Tony Blair; one of a series of his private letters to government ministers published after a ruling by the UK’s highest court. Photograph: Philip Toscano/PA

This is not merely a problem for journalists. Academics, biographers, archivists, activists, curious citizens and even parliamentarians seeking basic information are denied clear answers. Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich, historians of Britain’s intelligence services, are well acquainted with official secrecy where it is warranted.

“Richard and I have both spent our entire careers trying to write histories of MI5 and MI6,” Cormac said. “We completely understand the need for secrecy around intelligence services. We spend our time going through archives, trying to piece together snippets of declassified material, to arrive at something historically rigorous. We think the intelligence services are the secret state. But they are like WikiLeaks compared to the royal family.”

How Hard Are The Filthy Royals Working For Their Money?

In 1993, John Major’s government published an open government white paper that was ahead of its time in setting out a vision for an informed citizenry, including on royal matters. It declared: “Records relating to the royal family will be treated in the same way as all other records.”

The previous year, Elizabeth II acknowledged in a speech to the City of London’s Guildhall that “no institution – City, monarchy, whatever – should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty”.

The clarity of those commitments makes the secrecy in the ensuing decades all the more striking. One stark example is the creation of the sovereign grant, the funding settlement introduced in 2011 by David Cameron’s coalition government.

The previous system for funding the royals, a device called the civil list, had been in operation since the 18th century. For all its flaws, it provided parliament with a breakdown of how much money each member of the family was to be paid. And it gave the elected representatives of the British people a regular chance to debate how much taxpayer money should be handed over to the unelected monarch.

Queen Elizabeth in the House of Lords before the state opening of parliament in 2016. Photograph: Chris Jackson/AFP/Getty Images

Under the sovereign grant, public funding for the royals is set as a proportion of the profits of the crown estate. It has proved to be a financial coup for the royals, who had surrendered the crown estate in 1760.

The Windsors no longer have to endure the civil list ritual of parliamentarians debating how much they should receive. The settlement has proved generous (£86m this year) and an expected windfall in crown estate profits has put the king in the enviable position of having to ask for a reduction in future payments.

Yet our attempt to discover precisely what public functions royals have fulfilled in return for all this money is less than straightforward. The palace directed reporters to the Court Circular, the official record of their activities. However, the information is only available in daily editions, with no totals and no way of easily searching what engagements royals have undertaken in recent years.

To work this out, we first had to drive to the village of Datchet in Berkshire, and the home of Tim O’Donovan, an amiable retired insurance broker who has spent the past 44 years compiling his own paper records of these engagements; archives that he generously agreed to share. We commissioned a team of software engineers to build a machine-learning program to read as many of the circulars as have been digitised and ask it to analyse them in an effort to find answers.

If the UK is going have a royal family as its head of state, surely its citizens should have easier access to information about what exactly they do for them?

What Is Kept Secret From The British Public?

The disparity between how we treat regular public figures and those who happen to have royal blood is made plain when they die. Under British law wills are public, partly to prevent fraud or malpractice by executors. However, the wills of the royal family are routinely sealed by judges. The historical event that gave rise to this custom was the cover-up of a royal sex scandal.

Until 1911, Windsor family wills – other than those of a monarch – were public, like any other British family. The judiciary began censoring them at the request of Queen Mary after the death of her brother, Francis of Teck, in order to conceal from the public his decision to bequeath jewels to a woman with whom he was having an affair.

“Queen Mary wanted them back again,” explains Michael Nash, a lecturer in British constitution at the University of East Anglia. “She called in her legal advisers and she said: I want nobody to know about this. So the will was sealed.”

Members of the family have been able to request their wills be hidden, on account of their bloodline, ever since. Official papers reveal senior government officials seriously doubted the legal basis for this process half a century ago, but it has continued unabated.

After the death of Prince Philip in 2021, the president of the family court, Sir Andrew McFarlane, held a secret hearing from which the media were in effect excluded. The judge went further than ruling that just Philip’s will should be sealed, announcing that the wills of all senior royals should henceforth be secret for a minimum of 90 years.

McFarlane did not fully explain how he reached this 90-year figure in the judgment; it exceeds the normal level of secrecy applied to government papers almost five times over. It means that if Catherine, Princess of Wales, survives as long as her grandfather-in-law, her will cannot be unsealed until the year 2171. Once that period has elapsed, her will could be disclosed to the public. But only, following McFarlane’s ruling, with the Windsors’ permission.

If Catherine, Princess of Wales, lives as long as Prince Philip did, her will cannot be unsealed until the latter half of the next century. Photograph: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

When McFarlane’s judgment was made public, the Guardian hired lawyers to mount a legal challenge – not over the decision to seal the will, but over the media’s exclusion from the hearing, on the grounds it was contrary to the principle of open justice. We lost the case, after the court of appeal ruled that the media did not have the right to be notified about it.

In their ruling, the judges observed that publicity of the court hearing would have compromised the need to preserve the dignity of the queen and her family’s privacy.

McFarlane’s ruling is being cited by the National Archives to justify banning researchers from other public records discussing the royal family’s wealth. Four files sought by the Guardian concerning bequests of obscure members of the family – Helen, Duchess of Albany; Alastair, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn; Princess Victoria, and Princess Arthur of Connaught – are now sealed.

Challenging Questions For The King

Last year, the veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby, who helmed the BBC commentary of the queen’s funeral, broke with custom to advance an opinion that some might categorise as political. Speaking at a literary festival, he complained about Buckingham Palace’s attempts to steer the state broadcaster’s coverage, and complained that the BBC had an “old sore about the monarchy”.

The corporation, he said, “would not go near things like the power that the palace has to change taxation legislation”, or ask whether the Duchy of Cornwall, a business portfolio that controversially generates profits for the Prince of Wales, should pay tax.

“All those issues are never touched by the BBC because I think they feel their viewers will not like it – a visceral feeling,” he said. “It is not discourteous to question, it is not rude, it is important, because the way we are governed is important, and the way our constitution works is important.”

In the coming weeks, the Cost of the crown series will ask challenging questions of the new king. Questions about the personal enrichment of his family, and the extent to which they have profited from their public roles. Questions about the dubious origins of some of their wealth. And questions about whether the public is getting value for money for the record sums it gives over each year to fund the Windsors and their lavish lifestyle.

Buckingham Palace argues that the financial arrangements of royals should “remain private, as they would for any other individual”. But the mist that shrouds such questions comes from the confusion over what can legitimately be called the royals’ private wealth, what belongs to the British people, and what, as so often is the case, ambiguously straddles the two.

These are not easy topics for King Charles to confront. He may prefer that we were not raising them on the eve of his coronation. But we believe the time is right.

• Cost of the Crown Reporting Team: David Pegg, Rob Evans, Maeve McClenaghan, Felicity Lawrence, Henry Dyer, Severin Carrell, Manisha Ganguly, Rupert Neate, Greg Wood, Harry Davies, David Conn, Aamna Mohdin, Lucy Hough, Maya Wolfe-Robinson and Richard Nelsson.

[nostalgia-tblr]

fancy thinking jewels and gowns don't work as symbols of authority. imagine not making the link between wealth and power. couldn't be me. couldn't be any number of monarchs displaying their authority on their bodies. look at this absurdly expensive frock my wife is wearing. it's worth as much as your house. kneel, peasant, and kiss the hem of her luxurious garment. you're lucky, the next sumptuary laws will ban you from being in the same room as crimson silk.

[rpfisfine]

dude there’s a clothing store where I live that has a bunch of plushies like hanging at the window outside for sale and I’m not joking they have a skibidi toilet plushie i wanted to take a picture of it for you guys to see so bad but when i returned with my phone the store had already closed and the guy had put the plushies back inside but I’ll be back tomorrow or in the nearest future I need to see it again to make sure I didn’t dream it

[illyrianinvelaris]

Finished Kingdom of Ash today, effectively completing TOG. I will need a week to process. I will be requesting bereavement time at work. I will not be recovering from this I fear.

[falmerbrook]

the way you buy dlc for eso is so stupid. why can't i just pay with real money on steam or something