Royal relatives far removed from the direct line of succession are still benefiting from the Queen Mother’s reported £19million trust fund, according to a royal finance expert, who says the arrangement has been bolstered by “extraordinarily generous handouts from the taxpayer.”
Speaking to the Daily Mail, author Norman Baker claimed that members of the extended Windsor family — including Sam Chatto, the grandson of the late Princess Margaret — can live with little financial pressure because of a legacy of “gifts” made by Queen Elizabeth, the wife of King George VI.
“There may be a strong wish among the public for a slimmed down monarchy but the Windsor tentacles stretch far and wide,” said Baker, whose 2019 book And What Do You Do? What The Royal Family Don’t Want You to Know offered a sharply critical examination of royal finances. “And so does the royal wealth.”
Chatto, 29, who recently announced his engagement to his university sweetheart after proposing with a handmade porcelain ring, is said to be among those who have benefited from the family wealth.
“Even distant relations of the King need have no financial worries, including Sam Chatto, grandson of the late Princess Margaret and who announced his engagement a week or so ago to his long-time girlfriend Eleanor Ekserdjian,” Baker continued.
He added: “Old Etonian Sam Chatto, along with other marginal royals, can thank Elizabeth, the late Queen Mother, for his financial comfort blanket. Back in 1994, she created a tax-minimising £19million Trust Fund specifically for her great-grandchildren.”
Sam Chatto, 29, recently proposed to his university sweetheart with a handmade porcelain ring and is said to be among the beneficiaries
Baker acknowledged that many families seek to provide long-term security for younger generations, but said the Queen Mother had an unusually large fortune available to pass down. “Naturally all parents and grandparents want to do what they can to help provide financial security for their descendants,” he said, “and in her case, there was a very tidy sum to distribute.”
‘The Queen Mother benefited from extraordinarily generous handouts from the taxpayer to the tune of £643,000 a year and over her life had accumulated vast wealth from gifts bestowed on her by star-struck members of the public, including the Castle of Mey in Scotland, for which she paid just £100.
‘It also helped no doubt that she paid her staff very meanly and offloaded as many costs as possible onto the taxpayer.’
The fund was allegedly set up in 1994, and its contents were reportedly to be distributed between all her grandchildren.
It was believed they would receive the first payment on their 21st birthday and the second payment on their 40th birthday.
Royal ‘nepo babies’ – even those who are largely distant in line to the throne – continue to profit off the Queen Mother’s £19million ‘trust fund’, helped by ‘extraordinarily generous handouts from the taxpayer’, a royal expert has claimed. The Queen Mother pictured with Sam in 1997
The Queen Mother, left, pictured with her daughters Margaret, centre, and Elizabeth, right
In 2024, a former Palace aide told The Times: ‘There was a trust fund set up at the time.
‘It was a way in which the Queen Mother could set aside money for when her great-grandchildren were older and a way of passing a slice of her estate down in a tax-efficient way.
‘It was a way in which some of her estate could be ring-fenced for them.’
The Queen Mother’s legacy is complex, and the royal is just as fondly remembered for her role as ‘the nation’s grandmother’ as she is for her love of spending.
She is known for having had an overdraft of £7million at Coutts, a taste for champagne and fine food and a string of the most expensive racehorses ever bred.
Five homes – four of them permanently staffed – and a vast personal retinue of pages, butlers, gardeners, maids, footmen, housekeepers, equerries, chefs, dressers and chauffeurs which altogether numbered around 80.
Flowers were planted at each of her various homes to be in bloom in time for her visits. Vegetables were grown to be ready for her glittering dinners and lunches.
There were racing house parties at Royal Lodge, fishing house parties at Birkhall in Scotland and weekend house parties at the Castle of Mey.
And after her daughter ascended the throne in 1952, life became just one big – and ruinously expensive – celebration.
