I guess my question is specific to the british royal family.
I saw a post online that said “God save the King” and had a photo of the king. The idea of a monarch or reverence for any other type of leader simply because they are the leader is outside of my experience.
I’m not here to disagree or argue, please don’t feel like you need to justify or convince me. I can accept that people value different things.
I would like to understand the appeal the monarchy or even specifically King Charles has for people who respect and support the monarchy.
I’m from the UK and I’m a Monarchist in so much as I want to keep the Royal Family. I certainly don’t like the idea of Kings and Queens broadly speaking and “respect” is a strong word, but here in the UK we’ve got a lot of institutions that have vile histories but wouldn’t serve to benefit anyone if we were to scrap them today.
The Mountbatten-Windsor family also happen to be the Royal Family. These days they’re basically powerless and have less influence and sway than pundits on GB News, the Murdoch media and Facebook, who also aren’t elected. But they’re still an aristocratic family, which means they have access to extraordinary wealth and control of a vast business empire… except they don’t. All their estates, land, businesses, interests, etc are held in reserve as the Crown Estate which is operated on their behalf by a Government-appointed manager. The income from the Crown Estate goes straight to the Government and the Government pays the Royal Family a salary - the Sovereign Grant - which is typically between 25% and 35% of the Crown Estate’s profits. So for all those people who say “ThEy’Re TaX dOdGiNg PaRaSiTeS”: they pay an effective tax rate of at least 60%, which is about 60% more than anyone else with that income. Anyone who moans about the couple of quid a year the Royal Family “costs” them must be ecstatic beyond words to learn about the few extra quid they actually make in profit.
Having a Royal Family is amazing for tourism. Yes, the French have palaces too, but they attract nothing like the numbers as the actual real, functioning palaces and castles actually used by a real, breathing monarchs. The Palace of Versailles makes Buckingham Palace look like a shanty but can you guess which one nets more visitors? Windsor Castle, same deal. Moreover, they’re an amazing soft political power. What would your response be if you found out the Prime Minister of the UK was visiting your country? For most people it’d probably be “oh, who is it this week?”. But what about a visit from the Actual King of England? There would be grand receptions, concerts, speeches, unveilings, all because the Actual King of Actual England is coming. Add demagogues like Trump to the equation and the Royal’s value is amplified further.
Then there’s the scrutiny. We all know the Andrew Formally Known As Prince being a nasty little pervert and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s far more to it. And yet, no-one talks about the Dysons, or the Cavendish-es, or the Rothschilds, or the Montagus, and so on, all of whom are richer and more powerful than the Mountbatten-Windsors and far, far, far more sinister and vile, but they’re not the Royal Family so they’re unknowns. They make the Royals look like cherubs, but they’re well-connected enough to avoid scrutiny and smart enough to remain basically anonymous. Personally, if I was the King I’d tell the UK to fuck off. I’d make the UK a Republic, take my estates and wealth and power back, thankyou very much, and tell everyone to go suck their Mum’s dicks. I don’t know why or how they continue being the Royal Family, but if we “got rid” of them tomorrow we’d lose a tremendous political power and gain yet another unaccountable group of unjustifiably powerful aristocrats.
If you do the “getting rid” of them correctly, they definitely won’t be aristocrats anymore.
Thank you for your detailed reply! Some of what you said didn’t match my understanding. I recognize I’m taking this from wiki vs your experience as a person from the UK, but maybe you can help me understand?
I don’t think this is true. For example:
This article says the crown is tax exempt and that the dutchy of Cornwall claims this too. It states the Sovereign Grant is tax exempt, but individuals have voluntarily paid equivalent amounts.
Royal.UK says:
And
The 2024-2025 financial statement mentions that
But the above states that this is voluntary. I’m not seeing anything about the 60% effective tax rate. What am I missing?
Actually, I think the links you provide back my points up pretty well. In fact, the Wikipedia articles you linked mentions that the Sovereign Grant is “15% to 25%” of the profits of the Royal Estate, not 25% to 35% as I thought. That’s means the Government keeps 75% to 85% of their income, which is the “effective tax rate of at least 60%” I was talking about.
Aristocrats gonna aristocrat. There isn’t a stately home in the country that doesn’t generate income from just existing. The National Trust owns a lot of them and is a charity that is broadly laudable, but most of the rest don’t burden themselves with the notion of being “non-profit”.
And as you mentioned, the rest of their income is taxed as if they were normal humans rather than aristocrats. It may be on a “voluntary” and incredibly malleable basis, but that’s probably because they know they’d get crucified if they didn’t and, regardless, the income from non-Crown Estate concerns is basically negligible.
Look, I’m not saying this because I am assigning some moral or ethical judgement to paying taxes but calling the set up of the Royal Estate as tax is…flawed.
That is like saying an individual who withdraws a salary from their corporation is taxed at the rate equivalent to what they didn’t withdraw.
Further,
…
I guess the revenues don’t fully cover the cost of the government? Seems like a good deal for the monarchy vs a tax?
how do you feel about the paradise papers and the queens (well kings now but at the time) private estate?
I feel the same as I do about all the other landed gentry who were also in there.