Prince Andrew’s inheritance gripes reveal a dark truth about royal money

Prince Andrew’s friends were busy last weekend whispering to the U.K. media about how he’s been left “bewildered” and in “despair” because he has not received any inheritance from Queen Elizabeth II.

But what Andrew — or his friends — apparently don’t realize is that he was never going to get a share of the queen’s “big pot of private money,” as Daily Mail royal correspondent Rebecca English refers to it. That’s because his savvy mother wanted to take advantage of special 1993 legislation designed to protect that money from being taxed when she died.

The money that Andrew is presumably griping about is the estimated $791 million in the Duchy of Lancaster estate, said English on the Daily Mail’s Palace Confidential YouTube show. Allowances from the duchy covers the private expenses of the king and his extended family. But as English and other U.K. reports have said, control over this  estate automatically went to Andrew’s big brother, King Charles III.

Legislation passed under former Prime Minister John Major says that inheritance tax does not have to be paid on the transfer of assets from one sovereign to another, The Telegraph reported. As a result, the estate was left in its entirety to the new monarch, as opposed to being divided among the queen’s four children or her other descendants.

“It’s a way of avoiding inheritance tax,” Richard Eden, the Daily Mails’ diary editor, said on Palace Confidential. “It’s a big deal.”

English said the legislation also puts limits on how Charles can spend the money. “Charles can’t throw the money around,” English said. “It’s protected and meant to be enhanced to be passed down to future generations.”

A 2021 report by Forbes said the duchy reported a net profit of $30 million in that fiscal year. At the time, Forbes estimated that the royal family is the face of a $28 billion empire that includes the $19 billion Crown Estate, which oversees the assets of the monarchy, and various enterprises, investments and prime real estate across the U.K., including Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace. The queen’s personal fortune includes Balmoral Castle and Sandringham Estate.

English said it’s difficult to talk about who will inherit what from the late queen’s personal fortune, because of another privilege enjoyed by the monarchy. “Royal wills aren’t like any other in the UK. in that they are kept secret, to protect the royal family’s dignity, so to speak,” she said.

English and Eden said it’s entirely possible that the queen didn’t leave Andrew anything in her will. Meanwhile, Eden said the beleaguered Duke of York already spent the estimated $18 million he made in 2007 from selling the 12-bedroom mansion the queen gave him and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson when they married in 1986,

The Duke of York put all that money into fixing up Royal Lodge, the 30-room mansion near Windsor Castle he has been living in.

Following the queen’s death, reports say that Charles cut Andrew’s annual allowance from the Duchy of Lancaster, starting next month. That leaves him with no way to afford the upkeep for Royal Lodge. By vacating Royal Lodge, he’ll have spent his inheritance on improving a house he can no longer live in, Eden said.

Andrew and his siblings, Anne and Edward, also face the possibly of relying on Charles for their livelihoods. “It’s a difficult situation for Anne and Edward, too,” Eden said, to which English chimed in, “But you don’t hear them moaning about it.”

The Daily Mail reported last week that Andrew feels an amount of “resentment” that his brother has not shared any of his new wealth among his siblings.

Andrew was forced to step back from royal life in 2019 after he embarrassed the queen and the monarch with his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the globe-trotting financier and convicted pedophile who died by suicide after being jailed on new sex trafficking charges. Last year, Andrew settled a lawsuit brought by one of Epstein’s victims, who said she was forced to have sex with the duke when she was 17.

“Andrew is in despair,” a friend told the Daily Mail. “He’s been left completely in the dark. Andrew’s a member of the family, for God’s sake, yet he had no idea this was coming. I gather he’s checked it out and it’s true. It’s all gone ‘monarch to monarch.’”

“What’s he meant to do?” the friend said. “Go cap in hand to his older brother to keep a roof over his head? Things are going from bad to worse. It’s a disaster.”

Royal sources have insisted to English and other reporters that Charles won’t leave his brother “homeless or penniless,” The Telegraph said. But the new king reportedly has balked at some of Andrew’s luxuries, including the $38,000 he was paying each year to an Indian healer to come to his home, lead him in chanting exercise and provide massages and holistic therapy.

“What the king sees as a fair settlement and what Andrew sees as a fair settlement are not the same thing,” English said.