The Queen's Favorite Residence Revealed by Former Royal Footman

Queen Elizabeth and Kate Middleton — (Image credit: Getty Images)

The Queen, like many other royals including the Cambridges, has a bunch of residences she can bounce in and out of. (OK, it's probably not that simple, but you get the gist.)

There's Balmoral Castle in Scotland where she is currently in residence. That's where she spends her summers, with family members coming to stay at various points in the season.

There's Sandringham Estate, where the Royal Family celebrates Christmas.

There's Buckingham Palace in London, which served as her official residence for much of her reign, until she recently established herself permanently at Windsor Castle.

And there's also Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh and Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland, plus a bunch of other royal palaces that the Queen doesn't stay in.

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But which does she like best? Former royal footman Steven Kaye weighs in.

"Balmoral and Sandringham [are] where the Queen is most relaxed because they are private residences," Kaye tells Slingo. "Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace are much more formal."

Kaye knows exactly which is the monarch's top pick. "Without a doubt, the Queen’s favorite residence is Windsor, but I think she likes Balmoral as she can walk about with the dogs and nobody disturbs her," he explains.

"She’ll tend to have the dogs with her for the first four weeks and then on staff changeover day, we would then have to fly the dogs back to Windsor."

You want details of the dogs' trip? I got those for you. "They’d get flown on the private jet to Northolt and a lady that lived on the Great Windsor Park would come and collect them," Kaye reveals.

The phrase "it's a dog's life" is making less and less sense every day.

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Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.