During Queen Elizabeth's reign, the Buckingham Palace balcony would be packed with extended family members during events like Trooping the Colour, and her cousins, like the Duke of Kent, were paid as full-time working royals. But King Charles has embraced a slimmer monarchy in recent years—especially after losing Prince Harry and the former Prince Andrew as senior royals. In his forthcoming book The Windsor Legacy, author Robert Jobson revealed that The King has been busy making a number of cuts to streamline the Royal Family and save taxpayer money.
"Several non-working members of the Royal Family, including Charles’s nieces Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, have been told unequivocally they’ll have to stand on their own two feet and pay their own way," Jobson wrote in the book, which has been serialized in the Daily Mail.
Reportedly, The King has felt "frustrated" by the fact that extended family members "have continued to enjoy subsidised accommodation, with some allowing their apartments to be used by their children as ‘London pads.'" Jobson wrote that the monarch "confided to friends" that Buckingham Palace "was being run like a hotel, and not a very good one."
A number of extended family members live at Kensington Palace.
"The King isn’t running a housing association for distant relatives," one insider told the royal author.
Currently, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent all live at Kensington Palace, along with Princess Eugenie and her family, who split their time between the palace's Ivy Cottage and Portugal.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle intended to keep Frogmore Cottage in Windsor as a U.K. base after they moved to California, but a palace source told Jobson, a longtime royal journalist, that evicting Harry and Meghan from the house was "the tip of the iceberg."
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's former home, Frogmore Cottage, has been unoccupied for years.
Now that Frogmore Cottage and Royal Lodge are sitting unused, as well as Prince William and Princess Kate's former home, Adelaide Cottage, The King must decide what to do with the properties.
A royal source told Jobson that homes on the Crown Estate "will be let at commercial rates going forward and to people outside the family. Where it is in a palace environment, they will of course be security vetted."
