Less than a year ago, the Prince and Princess of Wales announced that they would move into their latest “forever home,” a manor house called Forest Lodge, on the Windsor estate. They emphasized the pain and suffering they had dealt with while living at Adelaide Cottage, and “sources” kept framing it as “they deserve to create happy memories somewhere new.” The problem? They grabbed 100 acres of Windsor public parkland for their scenic views, made an extreme security cordon around Forest Lodge and evicted several residents of cottages close-by. All so they could hide out in their own makeshift country estate and do absolutely nothing. Well, with the confirmation that King Charles and Camilla will never move into Buckingham Palace, the Mail’s Christopher Wilson points out that when William becomes Scooter King, he won’t be able to hide out in Forest Lodge. He’ll have to move to one of the generally-accepted royal residences, be it Buckingham Palace, Clarence House or Windsor Castle.
He said that Forest Lodge was to be the family’s ‘forever home’, but as he prepares for kingship, Prince William is being forced to face the realities of becoming monarch. And that includes moving house – again. With King Charles’s shock announcement last week that he’ll never move into Buckingham Palace, traditionalists cling to the hope that William will follow in the footsteps of previous monarchs and take up residence in the world’s most famous palace.
But one former courtier I spoke to this weekend told me that with Charles’s announcement last week, ‘the spell is broken’. ‘Buckingham Palace will forever remain the symbol of monarchy, but this now clears the way for the prince never to live there. Times change – and so will people’s expectations.’ The ex-courtier warned that William will have to [move into Windsor Castle eventually]. ‘Obviously, he means Forest Lodge to be a secluded family home for him, his wife and children, and that’s entirely understandable. But Windsor Castle was built by William the Conqueror and our Royal Family has lived there ever since – whatever the prince’s plans for modernising the monarchy, that’s one thing he can’t get around. Buckingham Palace has been occupied by the royals for 200 years, and you can see it’s outgrown its appropriateness as a home. Windsor, on the other hand, has been lived in for a thousand years.’
The pressure on William to deliver what the public wants and expects of him has never been greater, and he knows that while he’s trying desperately to streamline the monarchy to fit its reduced numbers, he can’t ignore public opinion. A report at the weekend showed that the Royal Family has halved its workload but more than tripled its taxpayer funding since the controversial Sovereign Grant was introduced in 2012… But as the report concluded, while last year the royals undertook 2,273 public engagements, in 2012 the total was nearly twice as many at 4,127. ‘In part, the workload has dropped because the number of working royals has fallen from 15 to 11,’ the report continued. ‘’It’s also declined because of age, illness, and the fact that the Prince and Princess of Wales, who take off around 16 weeks per year with their children, focus on a more campaigning style of monarchy rather than traditional ribbon-cutting duties.’
Its message – don’t expect to see more of Kate and William on the street because that’s not how they’re going to ‘do’ monarchy – implies that if we’re to see less of them, the foundation-stones shouldn’t be mucked about with. That includes all the full-dress panoply of State Banquets, Trooping the Colour, Garden Parties and other such events that have to remain in place. And that the public, less often able to see William and Kate, will in return expect them to be seen in Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle – nothing less will do. That means that the future King William can’t expect to reign from a secluded country house an hour away from the capital city, the former official told me.
‘The Palace is the royal engine-room, with sometimes up to 800 people working there daily – courtiers, officials, secretaries and all the people who keep the monarchy in the public eye. William can’t expect his private secretary or his valet to hop in a cab and drive all the way out to Forest Lodge when he calls. He has to be able to come into the office, just as Queen Elizabeth used to do every day while she reigned. That means he’ll need a handy London home very close to the Palace – just like Charles has at Clarence House.’
At present, William and Kate have the use of the colossal 20-room Apartment 1a at Kensington Palace, but though they use ‘KP’ as the address in their daily engagement reports in the Court Circular, the couple are rarely seen there these days.
‘When he succeeds to the throne, William can’t be crisscrossing busy London streets in rush hour with numerous security vehicles and motorbike outriders in tow – KP is two miles from Buckingham Palace, and the traffic between the two is probably the worst in Britain,’ I was told. ‘He’ll need to be much nearer to the office.’
So, one theory goes, he and Kate will move into Clarence House, just down The Mall – the home that his father Charles, grandmother Queen Elizabeth (as a newlywed), and great-grandmother the Queen Mother all occupied in their time – if Camilla decides to step back from public duties once the new reign begins. Failing that, there are 27 different royal apartments ranging across the adjacent St James’s Palace for the future king to choose from, including York House – an imposing, sprawling mansion hidden away from public view and entirely befitting a future king.
As he plots his next moves, it will become increasingly clear to William that the dream of a ‘forever home’ for him, Kate and the children was just that – a dream.
At some point, these people will probably need to acknowledge that Forest Lodge was always about the Princess of Wales and tucking her away somewhere out of sight (and out of mind). It was never about preparing to be king and consort, it was never meant to actually be William’s forever home. Think of Forest Lodge as a convenient cover story for William – if he’s meant to be hidden away there and barely seen out and about, then no one will look for him elsewhere, right? That’s what I believe in any case, that Forest Lodge was always a forever home for Kate in particular, especially as the kids are growing up and leaving for boarding schools. I’ve been convinced for some time that William basically had full or partial reign of Windsor Castle already – at the very least, I’m sure he keeps an apartment or suite of rooms there, just as he likely stays at the big house in Sandringham quite often. Still, it’s funny that the “forever home” crap has fallen apart like a cheap suit in less than a year. They’re going to need several new cover stories.
Photos and screencaps courtesy of AppleTV+, Cover Images, Avalon Red, Backgrid and Kensington Palace.
