It’s been eight months since Queen Elizabeth II died and passed on the crown to her son, who decreed that he would reign as King Charles III. Saturday marks his coronation as ruler of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, making him the 40th monarch anointed at Westminster Abbey.
The coronation is set to be a suitably royal affair with the cost ranging between £50 million and £100 million (about between $63 million and $126 million), according to estimates cited by the BBC. But it comes as Britain is in the midst of an ongoing economic downturn that has the country bracing for one of its longest recessions ever.
In the midst of all that gloom, we have Charles’ coronation.
Even in a scaled-back format, the pomp and splendor are set to make a garish split screen with the daily hardships of the British public. There are signs that Charles understands this and the need for the monarchy to adapt as it once did under his mother, but he needs to go further and faster if the institution is to survive a new era.
The country’s economic strife was triggered by Brexit, exacerbated during the pandemic and really hit home last winter as the war in Ukraine helped spike home heating prices. When combined with overall inflation, which has been higher than in either the U.S. or the eurozone, rising interest rates increasing the cost of mortgages and public services having their budgets slashed, the cost-of-living crisis has been a massive weight on Britons’ shoulders. In a clumsy bid to lower consumer spending and thus inflation, the Bank of England’s chief economist said on a podcast that people need “to accept that they’re worse off.” That went over about as well as you would expect.
And in the midst of all that gloom, we have Charles’ coronation. While some might agree with the Evening Standard that this “renewal of contract between the king and country” could help people forget their woes, a viral Instagram post from model and British Vogue contributing editor Munroe Bergdorf this week didn’t quite share that sentiment:
I couldn’t find the original Twitter source for the text that Munroe cited in her caption, but there really are more food banks than McDonald’s operating in the U.K. as of October, according to Insider. And she’s right about another thing: Charles is absolutely loaded.
An analysis from the Guardian last month pegged the new king’s total private wealth at £1.815 billion (about $2.276 billion). (A spokesperson for Charles told the Guardian in response: “While we do not comment on private finances, your figures are a highly creative mix of speculation, assumption and inaccuracy.”) The royal family, broadly speaking, is even wealthier, though, with an estimated $28 billion in assets.
The largest of those assets — the $19.2 billion holding known as the Crown Estate — generates hundreds of millions of dollars each year, which the British government holds onto for the family. Every year, 25% of that money goes to the royals as the Sovereign Grant for palace upkeep, staff pay and all the other things that royalty needs to seem royal. As king, Charles also gets the income generated from the Duchy of Lancaster, which amounted to roughly $27 million in profit last year, per The Washington Post.
Charles' authority is claimed through inertia only because the governed have not summoned the countervailing energy to halt it.
It’s worth noting then that the coronation will be “paid for by the U.K. Government as well as Buckingham Palace, through the Sovereign Grant and Privy Purse,” according to the BBC. Without knowing how much Buckingham Palace is actually kicking in, it’s impossible to know how much the British taxpayers are paying for this. But the appropriate figure is obvious: £0. With the kind of assets that the royal family holds onto solely due to the monarchy’s existence, it would be more than fair to have that wealth fund the entirety of the coronation.
Pro-monarchists might want to compare the coronation — the first in more than 70 years — to, say, the much more frequent inauguration of the U.S. president. The latter tends to cost upward of $150 million these days, with the bulk of it typically going toward security. The federal government covers most of those costs, while a private inaugural committee fundraises to handle expenses for, for example, the multiple inaugural balls.
But there’s a difference between a celebration of the transfer of power in a democracy and one held under a monarchy. For all America’s faults on this front, the president is elected as a representative of the people. In contrast, Charles is forced to rely on heredity and the last vestiges of the divine right of kings as the foundation of his legitimacy. His authority is claimed through inertia only because the governed have not summoned the countervailing energy to halt it.
Not yet, that is. Support for the British monarchy continues to dwindle among the younger generation. A YouGov poll conducted last month found that of the 18- to 24-year-olds they surveyed, “only 36% want to keep the monarchy compared with 40% who want to have an elected head of state.” The BBC likewise found that 32% of people in that age group thought the monarchy should continue. Any steps King Charles takes to reverse that trend must focus on the Crown playing a tangible, positive role in British society rather than the current (and accurate) perception of it being a drain on the country’s resources.
The coronation would be the perfect time to begin such a campaign. Imagine the surprise if Charles were to announce immediately after being crowned that he will open up the royal coffers to fully pay his own way for the ceremony and celebrations. Or, if he really wanted to make a splash, he could donate the equivalent of the government’s contribution to British food banks and other forms of direct aid. But he wouldn’t be the first monarch to try to buy the support needed to remain on the throne — so it would behoove him to get started sooner rather than later.
