The Dark Secret Behind the Royal Family's Wealth | Empires of Dirt

As the world mourns Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, it’s also important to acknowledge that some of the significance and power of the British monarchy stemmed from slavery.

In the series Royal Empires of Dirt, VICE World News host Zing Tsjeng looks into the shady royal history that rarely gets talked about.

How Banks Made Money From Slavery

The Disturbing History of Tabacco

The Dark History of the UK’s Biggest Mansions

About VICE:
The Definitive Guide To Enlightening Information. From every corner of the planet, our immersive, caustic, ground-breaking and often bizarre stories have changed the way people think about culture, crime, art, parties, fashion, protest, the internet and other subjects that don't even have names yet. Browse the growing library and discover corners of the world you never knew existed. Welcome to VICE.

Connect with VICE:

The VICE YouTube Network:

#royalfamily #queenelizabeth

[trogdortheth]

This isn't a 'dark secret' it's historical fact how they maintained their wealth. Colonialism at its finest, and the sad fact is that so many stolen historical items they have will likely never be returned to their countries of origin, at least not in our lifetime.

[brianneff]

I didn't know colonialism was a secret.

[Screwby_Jones]

Fun fact:most diamonds and jewels on the Royal crowns are from Africa and if you are close enough you can hear the slaughtered kids that died for the parents to mine it.

[masquarra]

7.6 million spent by Willy and Kate for one renovation on one property. They actually have 5 and the amounts would make one’s eye water. Yet, they were never demanded to pay back any of these amounts

[justmadeit]

Greetings world from me in Manchester, England. Tip of the day, dont put anyone on a pedestal and remember that theres no such thing as very important people, there are just people. If anyone is important its the surgeon who saves your life in an operation.

[haitiyouyou]

Do one about France and their wonderful colonialism 😉

[AirConditioner]

It boggles the mind why the Queen and the royal family is so loved when they did all this. And THEY DON'T EVEN PAY TAXES!

They're spitting in the face of their own people. Insane.

[agalva]

I’ll use that next time I own an apology - “I express profound sorrow”

[hikki]

Exemption from inheritance tax sounds so wrong to me when commoners all need to pay for that…

[MrDragon]

There's a hell of a lot misleading info here. The majority of those holdings (including Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace and Hampton Court Palace) are owned by what's called the Crown Estate or 'The Crown'. The Crown and Crown Estate is not the monarchs' private wealth. The Crown Estate essentially doesn't actually belong to anyone (though you can say it 'belongs' to the monarch in name only and The Crown as the state). It is technically held in the monarchs name during their reign, which is then passed onto the next monarch. They can't manage it, sell it or profit of it - the revenues don't belong to the monarch. It's run by a separate independent body and the profits go to the UK treasury (ie tax), as well as some going to the Sovereign Grant (maintenance/operating costs of the properties etc). Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace and Hampton Court are all owned by The Crown as an entity, not privately by the reigning monarch. Kensington Palace and Hampton Court are run by a self-funding charity called Historic Royal Palaces and open to the public. Buckingham Palace is a working state building, to carry out the functions of the Head of State and is also the Head of State's official residence (ie they have a flat there). It is essentially like the White House, without the government operating there, just the Head of State instead.

The monarchs' private asset property is the smaller Duchy of Lancaster, which a is a load of land and property holdings around the UK, worth about £650 million. They make an income on that and pay tax on it. There's also the Duchy of Cornwall which is passed on to the heir to the throne, which again they pay taxes on. Most of those property assets are just originally derived from centuries old land monarchy ownership in Great Britain - which you can argue about exploitation of Brits from centuries ago, but probably don't have much to do with the slave trade.

I don't agree with the sealing of the royal wills, preventing the public from seeing what kind of assets have been passed on over centuries, but Crown assets like Kensington Palace or Hampton Court - which may at one time had some connection to profits from the slave trade - are essentially part of the British state/the nation and not privately owned by the monarch. I mean Hampton Court is just a historic building open to the public, the Royals don't have anything to do with it. It was built before the English/British monarchs (Elizabeth I and the Stuarts) who invested in the slave trade, though some of the later renovations under the Stuarts could have partially come from their slave holdings profits.

Further, you do realise that the line of Stuarts - who created the Royal African Company - are a different family to the Windsors? They're very distantly related: ie multiple cousins removed. The Windsor's historic connection - to line of accession to the throne - came from a non-monarch Stuart who predated the two British monarchs' involved in the RAC (Charles II and James II). The RAC's assets were then spun off into a bunch of other private owners until the organisation became insolvent. I suspect you're very unlikely to see any private inherited wealth from Charles II and James II (Stuarts) to the replacement family Hanover, and now Windsor, line to the throne. You're also very confused if you think the British monarch is going to personally address an idea of 'reparations' for colonialism. The British Head of State is not allowed to be political. It's completely outside their remit or choice. If there ever were such a thing it would come from the UK government.

Lastly, 'more and more former colonies' are NOT 'saying they want out of the Commonwealth'. It's the opposite, more countries are wanting to join, recently Gabon and Togo this year. You are confusing Commonwealth Realm status with The Commonwealth. Commonwealth Realms are certain specific independent sovereign countries - within the Commonwealth - that still have the British monarch as their titular Head of State. The ones that want to stop being Commonwealth Realms don't want to leave the Commonwealth, they simply want to move forward and become republics. Which is completely normal. What's surprising is they've chosen to stay Commonwealth Realms for so long.

This is really bad journalism. Misleading and often devoid of genuine context and facts. And doesn't really get to a realistic idea as to how you would deal with the concept of 'reparations'. Which would be hugely complex, hard to actually quantify in any kind of factual meaningful audit to today, especially when it actually involves a lot more than one or two different royal families, from several centuries ago, who don't exist anymore. In fact, I suspect the deeper you actually try to properly financially audit something like slavery from 2-3 centuries ago, or colonialism, the harder it's going to reach any realistic resolution today.

I think there are ways to do certain 'reparations' by richer nations, but this aint it.

[ndles]

Wait - why is this being called a secret? We call this history

[brandonyadon]

It would also be a good conversation to talk about how mankind went from chattel slavery into economic slavery. And why the monarchs face is on the money

[change]

that prince andrew sweat joke was hilarious 🤣

[bartholetbay]

Intriguing, I always knew there was more to life and i have also been looking for a way to find not only protection but a way to be influential to the human society.

[chrisedge]

There’s a man in Scotland who plants trees every day and lives in the woods and will probably die in the woods very few would ever know he did this that’s where my respect is, there’s no honest rich person all living for today and not tomorrow

[kulljiop]

The Pyramids of Giza still remains in Egypt because it is too huge to display inside the British Museum.

[shahidullislam]

I have no money, no job or houses in the UK. Whats the point of the Royal Family if people are living in these conditions.

[BallenPod]

I find it simply hard to believe so many people think so highly of these grifters living off of them it's sick

[davidliddelow]

Its really important to understand the reason they seem like such nice old people is that its their job and their one and only survival strategy. They’re like the guy in the santa costume at the mall on Christmas. Except that the old man playing Santa is a billionaire doing the whole thing for a tax break and a government handout.

[RiversBliss]

Historical facts are now known as dark secrets.