Beatrice and Eugenie Told to 'Stand on Their Own Feet' As King Charles Cracks Down on ‘Freeloaders’
The royal family is large and famously close-knit, but King Charles is proving that affection doesn’t exempt anyone from accountability. In his version of a modern monarchy, sentiment takes a back seat to structure, and the family ledger, it seems, is finally being balanced. The monarch has reportedly delivered a firm message to his nieces, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, that it’s time to start 'paying their own way.'
According to royal author Robert Johnson, whose upcoming book The Windsor Legacy dives into Charles’s deliberate reshaping of the royal institution, the King has made his stance clear – the days of Crown-funded comforts for non-working royals are coming to an end. “Several non-working members of the royal family, including Charles’s nieces Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, have been told unequivocally they’ll have to stand on their own two feet and pay their own way,” Johnson writes in his book serialised by the Daily Mail. He adds that the directive comes as part of a wider review of subsidized royal housing.
Beatrice and Eugenie have enjoyed grace-and-favor residences within Palace walls, Beatrice at St. James’s Palace, and Eugenie at a Kensington Palace cottage, both properties reportedly offered at rates far below market value. The new push to reclaim such spaces, Johnson says, is in a bid to 'trim the fat' from the royal establishment and ensure the monarchy mirrors the frugality of the times.
Charles has long championed an idea of a slimmed-down monarchy, and so has Prince William; one focused on senior working royals who actively support the Crown. A Palace insider put it rather bluntly: “The King isn’t running a housing association for distant relatives.” Jobson claimed that the King confided in one of his friends and said that the Palace was "being run like a hotel, and not a very good one."
The shift also follows a pattern. Earlier this year, the King reclaimed Frogmore Cottage, once gifted by the late Queen to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, after the Duke's tell-all memoir Spare. “The message is clear: no freeloaders in the modern monarchy,” Johnson said. "Indeed, several members of the extended royal family have continued to enjoy subsidized accommodation, with some allowing their apartments to be used by their children as ‘London pads.’"
Sources close to the Palace say the King is now considering reclaiming several royal residences to lease them out at market rates to private, vetted tenants — a move that would both streamline royal property management and ease the taxpayer burden. Those who know Charles well say the decision is less about cutting ties and more about enforcing boundaries. The King remains fond of his nieces and is said to be 'very keen' to protect their titles as granddaughters of the late Queen Elizabeth. But affection, it seems, won’t exempt them from fiscal responsibility.