Prince William happily shared good news about his wife, Princess Kate Middleton, who spent much of 2024 battling cancer. “She’s doing really well,” he gushed while in Cape Town, South Africa, to present his Earthshot Prize awards on November 6. “She’s been amazing this whole year.” But behind closed doors, the same can’t be said for the royal family. A bombshell investigation into how King Charles and Prince William’s private estates profit off of taxpayers, was released on November 2 — becoming the latest nightmare in a long line of setbacks and scandals to spark “panic” among palace aides, a source exclusively tells In Touch. And with King Charles and Queen Camilla battling separate new health issues, says a source, Kate and William “are under enormous pressure to represent a positive image of the monarchy.”
The burden is especially hard on William, royal author Robert Hardman writes in a November 2 update to his book Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story. “He has lost his mother, he’s effectively lost his brother, his wife’s got cancer, his father’s got cancer, and he’s trying to keep the show on the road,” Hardman quotes a friend as saying. “It could hardly be more stressful.”
SHOCKING EXPOSÉ
As heir to the throne, his every move is scrutinized. And the joint, unprecedented probe by the U.K.’s Channel Four and The Sunday Times shed a damning light on William’s $1 billion fortune. When Charles, 76, inherited the Duchy of Lancaster following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, he handed the Duchy of Cornwall, which he’d been running for more than 50 years, to William, 42. Both private estates have been passed down through the family since medieval times and reportedly rake in millions every year through land leases to charities, hospitals, schools and even the British military, effectively meaning they are earning money from British taxpayers beyond the $170 million a year they already receive to pay for palaces and official duties from the sovereign grant. “In the court of public opinion, you always have to be cleaner than clean,” British politician Margaret Hodge said in The King, The Prince & Their Secret Millions, a documentary about the investigation, noting that Charles and William don’t have to pay taxes like regular corporations do. (Both claim they do so voluntarily but recently refused to disclose the amounts.) “If a charity has royal patronage and therefore gains extra income, and that income is then used to pay rent back to the royals, it just doesn’t feel quite right,” added Hodge.
Even worse, William’s estate was accused of ignoring serious environmental issues. In the documentary, tenants complain that the homes they rent are full of mold and failing energy efficiency standards, while a group of residents in Cornwall actually wore Kate and William masks it comes to the environment,” said Guy Shrubsole, author The Lie of the Land. “But I think it’s important to look at what is actually going on on their extensive landholdings to see if they’re actually walking the walk.”
William has vowed to address the problems. “Prince William became Duke of Cornwall in September 2022 and since then has committed to an expansive transformation of the duchy,” his office 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.”
But even his efforts on that front have drawn flak. After his documentary We Can End Homelessness was released on October 30, William’s efforts were slammed for being hypocritical, out of touch and an “abject failure,” as one critic wrote.
CONSTANT SCRUTINY
Kate isn’t immune, either. She and William were “astonished” by the photoshop scandal over her Mother’s Day post earlier this year, Hardman writes: “The reaction seemed extremely disproportionate” because Kate, 42, had only intended to “bring joy.”
Prince William and Kate Middleton Are ‘Under Enormous Pressure’ to Positively Represent the Monarchy
They’ll have to get used to it as anti-monarchy sentiment grows. Charles was heckled by a politician who yelled, “You are not my king!” during a visit to Australia and Samoa recently. (The king and queen of Spain were also pelted with mud and eggs by angry subjects in November.)
That royal tour ended with Camilla uncharacteristically sobbing in public, presumably because it is the last state visit for the cancer-stricken king, royal experts speculated. Not long after they returned home, the queen herself was sidelined by a chest infection.
As a result, “Kate and William have had to step up” and prepare for the fact they may have to take the throne “sooner than expected,” says the source. “Kate was just trying to concentrate on getting back on her feet as she eases back into her public duties after her own cancer battle, so the strain must be taking a toll. But they really have no choice — as the next king and queen, it’s their unique burden to shoulder.”
