It’s time to break out your royal detective hats, because Prince Charles just published his annual review.
Today, the Prince of Wales, 72, published a video summing up the year’s accomplishments and recapping his highly anticipated financial report, which breaks down all of his spending for 2020-2021.
While the video offers a brief glance at royal outings and social media initiatives, we couldn’t resist analyzing the full review online (there’s a summary here), where we found several key takeaways.
Prince Charles is one of the biggest spenders (kidding…sorta), since he had the most expensive royal trip of the year. Back in October 2020, the royal flew to Kuwait shortly after the death of Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, where he paid his respects. In total, the outing cost £58,993 (about $82,000).
The second most expensive trip goes to Prince William and Kate Middleton, who embarked on a royal train tour across Edinburgh, Manchester, Berwick, Batley, Cardiff, Bath Spa and Windsor. The entire thing totaled around $66,700.
However, it’s important to note that Prince Charles’s cost of travel has significantly dropped compared to last year’s numbers. The overall amount for the entire royal family was about $4.4 million, which is $2.9 million less than 2019’s expenses. This is largely due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it puts things into perspective.
As for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who stepped down as senior royals and moved to California, the majority of their costs were covered by Prince Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall income.
The report also confirms that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did, in fact, repay the royal family for refurbishing Frogmore Cottage. The couple reportedly repaid around $2.8 million to the Sovereign Grant, which covered the original expenses.
Oh, and did we mention the review says the royal family made 348 virtual appearances in 2020? (That’s nearly one a day.)
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