It’s Good To Be King: How Charles III is secretly profiting off his dead countrymen

King Charles is making bank – off the backs of dead British. The British monarch, who is already an extremely wealthy man, has received tens of millions of pounds in recent years from his dead countrymen. The money has been used to renovate a slew of the King’s properties. Charles, who waited years to ascend the throne, in September marked his one-year anniversary as sovereign. Charles became King on 8 September, 2022 – the day Elizabeth died after ruling for more than 70 years. Let’s take a closer look: How does it work? As per The Guardian, the estate of The Duchy of Lancaster has taken in £60 million over the past decade. This financial windfall comes from people in the north-west England who died without a will or next of kin under a feudal system entitled bona vacatia. This system is in force in much of England and Wales.

As per Investopedia, the term itself means “vacant goods” or “ownerless goods” in Latin.

The Duchy of Lancaster receives the money from those whose last known address is in a territory that, during the Middle Age, was called the Lancashire county palatine and ruled by a duke. Lancashire and parts of Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Cumbria make up the area today. Where is the money going? As per the newspaper, the estate has for years insisted that it donates such revenues to charity after subtracting costs. However, the report says that just a fraction of the money taken in is used for charitable purposes. The money is instead used to revamping the King’s properties which are then leased out, documents seen by the paper show. The properties renovated include town houses, holiday lets, rural cottages, an old petrol station and barns. As per Daily Mail, a leaked internal duchy policy from 2020 codenamed “SA9” shows how officials representing the King’s real estate empire have been allowed to use such funds. One document shows how an old farmhouse was remodelled into a high-end residential home. Another shows how a building was converted into a commercial office.

A source told The Guardian that those at the duchy view the system as “free money” and a “slush fund.”

The newspaper identified dozens of individuals whose estates were used to upgrade the King’s properties. Many of the deceased themselves had been living in ramshackle homes and in public housing. Friends of those who had passed away called the practice “disgusting”, “shocking” and “not ethical”. A Duchy of Lancaster spokesperson told the newspaper that Charles, upon his mother’s death, confirmed the policy of spending bona vacantia funds on “the restoration and repair of qualifying buildings in order to protect and preserve them for future generations”. Charles III’s reign thus far has been marked more by continuity than transformation, by changes in style rather than substance. Charles, who moved seamlessly into his new role, has avoided controversy and sidestepped major reforms despite questions about whether an unelected king can still represent the people of modern Britain. Most people seem to have shrugged off Charles’ occasional faux pas — most publicly when he threw a hissy fit over an aide’s failure to move an ornate pen case during a signing ceremony — focusing instead on successes like his state visit to Germany, where the king wowed his audience by switching effortlessly between English and German during a speech to lawmakers. It remains to be seen what impact this story will have – or if it will have any impact at all. With inputs from agencies